Superman And Me By Sherman Alexie

771 Words2 Pages

Jenessa Bjork
Professor Mosher
English comp. 2
April 17, 2016
Paragraphs in one big long essay
“The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” written by Sherman Alexie and copyrighted in 1998 is a short story. The short story describes Alexie's life as an Indian boy and how writing and reading shaped his life into what it is today. This piece of writing talks about how he first learned how to read, and his intelligence as a young Indian boy, and Alexie as an adult teaching creative writing to other Indian children. In the first paragraph, Alexie describes that he first learned to read with one of the Superman comic book. Before he could read the comic, he taught himself about paragraphs, how they relate to the real world. He even thought …show more content…

Alexie learned quickly compared to his Indian classmates struggled to read basic words and vocabulary. The words he used in his story where: "I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky." Indian children were often stereotypically supposed to fail in the classroom, most did. Alexie was smart, and the Indians who weren't, scorned him. He goes on to say “Those who failed were ceremonially accepted by other Indians”, therefore those who excelled weren’t. Alexie loved to read so much that he would read everything he possibly could, even if some weren't books. He now visits schools to teach creative writing to Indian kids. Many of the children read his books and write their own, they want to learn and succeed. Unfortunately, there some of the children have already given up and sit in the back row and ignore him while he speaks. He is trying to open the minds and encourage the children who have given up to write. This short but powerful story explains the struggles Alexie and his Indian peers have encountered on the way to success in a non-Indian environment. Alexie surpasses all the …show more content…

He also applies this to real world situations and excels in being an author. I think Alexie talks a little bit about how hard it was growing up as an Indian in a non-Indian world and how he also surpasses the fact he is Indian and succeeds in being the author he is today. I’ve gained knowledge from Alexie through his story “Superman and Me” such as his methods of learning how to read, his "refusing to fail" attitude, took him far. I think Alexie's reading methods to teach young children how to read could be very beneficial. He first learned the essay structure by comparing everything to paragraphs. I think that children will learn more effectively about essays if they learned the structure of a paper before reading and/ or writing one. That way they may not as confused on what a paper should always look like. With that said, by understanding the text, he was able to look at the picture and guess what the person or persons was saying and/or doing. Also, the children should first learn the letters and what they mean before trying to guess the sentence. Strongly and unlike many of the other Indian children, Alexie refused to fail in school. I don’t think any child no matter their ethnicity should ever give up but instead keep a positive attitude and always have the type of attitude Alexie had

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