Wowzers. I've been saving this one for a while, almost in an "IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS" kind of way. And now that I'm somewhat homebound with a ruptured achilles I finally indulged in this perfect collection of literary comfort food.Absolutely loved it. And once again validated my belief that Sherman Alexie is the best writer of my generation.

Sherman Alexie really kicks ass, doesn't he? I always approached the tenth most attractive white woman at any gathering. I didn't have enough looks, charm, intelligence, or money to approach anybody more attractive than that, and I didn't have enough character to approach the less attractive. My feelings are my feelings, said Salmon Boy, they belong to me, and you don't have to worry about them at all. "What did you do?" "I broke my heart." "I didn't realize that was illegal." "Well," he said. "...

I can't believe it's taken me this long to know this Alexie book exists. It's by far one of my favorites. I am amazed by the intensity, brilliance, and emotion of Alexie's writing in these short stories. I think they rank right up there with some of the best I've read, including Etgar Keret, Dubus, and Hemingway. His writing is like opening a door and getting knocked sideways by a gale of wind that has rolled all the way from the Spokane reservation, bringing with it the secrets, ghosts, tall ta...

Rarely disappointed by anything I have read from Sherman Alexie. "Dear John Wayne" was not at all what I expected, and I'm glad. "One Good Man" and "South By Southwest" are two other favorites in this collection. Again, I point out that in just one sitting with any of these stories, this reader was totally transported into the lives, travels, heartaches, and realizations that the characters were engaged in. Much of Alexie's work really pulls me in to the stories, even the ones that seem the most...

AMBIVALENCE.“The silence is not about hate or pain or fear. Indians just like to believe that white people will vanish, perhaps explode into smoke, if they are ignored enough times.”—The Toughest Indian in the World. (p. 22)I absolutely love Sherman Alexie’s writing/storytelling—he’s a consummate wordsmith; while absolutely hating some of his stories—too dark and depressing. In his collection of nine short stories entitled, The Toughest Indian in the World even the title story left me less than

One or two I didn't especially like, though each and every one of them is a pretty great short story. But I loved the ones I loved, and am rather in awe that one person wrote all of them, and the way they play with sexuality and identity and belonging from many angles. The way that people move between worlds and what that means to them, what it does to them. And of course I love the points of view, and the complexity and the absence of charicature and all the things I really hate in a lot of wri...

My prior experience with Sherman Alexie was An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, which was great and absolutely wrecked me. I was saving this book for a time I needed some feelings. And there are feelings a-plenty to be found in these short stories, especially the last one "One Good Man." A son takes care of his father during his dying days, asking "What's an Indian?" but also silently asking "Who am I?"But these stories lean more to thoughtfulness than pure sentimentality. Alexie exp...

Outstanding, just like all of Alexie's other work I have (and will continue) to read. I won't add much more as I've written volumes about Alexie's wonderful exposition of what it 'means' to be 'Indian' and the concept of race and how it divides. A fantastic collection of short stories.

This collection of short stories spans many different genres--realistic fiction, magic realism, sci-fi--all exploring the identity of the American Indian. Some were better than others, but it was one of the most cohesive short story collections I have ever encountered. Alexie uses these perfect little gems to communicate the complicated feelings he has about race and belonging.I didn't know when I first picked it up that it was a short story collection, and I was a little sad when I figured it o...

"Sexually speaking, Indian women and men are simultaneously promiscuous and modest. That's a contradiction, but it also happens to be the truth."That true contradiction is a tidy way to sum up the style of this collection. Promiscuous and modest, tough and vulnerable, stoic and maudlin, elegant and clumsy, smart and naive. And by contradiction I'm talking extremes, no pansying moderation but full-on over-the-top ballsy commitment to both poles. Maybe it's that contradiction which ties the whole

I've been meaning to read one of Alexie's books for a while, especially since I taught the short story "Dear John Wayne" in the class I TA-ed last fall. Unfortunately, I found the short story collection The Toughest Indian in the World to be disappointingly uneven. Part of this may be the result of Alexie's unifying theme here--he says in the introduction to this edition that he set out to write "love stories... of white-collar Indians," which in practice seems to mean relying on heavy-handed us...

“Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk.” “I'm not exactly racist. I like white people as a theory; I'm just not crazy about them in practice.”“Son, if your going to marry a white woman, then marry a rich one, because those white-trash women are just indians with bad haircuts.”I am going to let these quotes serve as a review, because I think they capture Alexie's voice better than my inarticulate ramblin...

One notable line: A character says he is Indian, and someone responds, "Dot-on-the-head Indian or arrow-in-the-heart Indian?" I appreciate the window this book gave me into Indian culture as Alexie knows it. However, it seemed that almost every story had some mention of sex or sexual disfunction, and after awhile I started wondering if it was necessary. At one point a character says, "I just want to tell the whole story," and I do think this is part of Alexie's writing, to write everything in th...

I have to say that I have yet to find a book by Alexie that I didn't like. I will admit that the first 3 stories in this short story collection didn't make much sense but had some sense of truths in them. But really the last half of this book contained some thought provoking and touching stories about "what is an Indian?" If you are looking for a diverse read that has meaning then read this.

If you are considering not reading or not finishing this book of short stories based on the first several stories, at least read Dear John Wayne and One Good Man. I hate to think how many readers missed them because they gave up before reading the last two stories!

Sherman Alexie has been attracting attention for his poetry and fiction since the early 1990s, when he was in his late twenties. This collection of short stories took its title from one of the stories therein, which was originally published by The New Yorker. The most obvious thread in common to all these stories is the presence of Native American characters living in a white-dominant society. The central characters, however, vary in the degree of assimulation, and the objects of their efforts a...

I was moved to tears by several of the stories. I was totally surprised as I bought this secondhand book after reading his youth novel, The Absolutely True...which my 12 year old LOVED and which I also though was amazing (buy this book for any tween or teen male). I was not prepared for the sexual turns, the adultness of the material. Which was wonderfully done. I loved his humor and turns of phrase, his gender notes and homoeroticism. Also, noticed my feelings of pain as the outsider... the whi...

I've read, and enjoyed, most of Alexie's fiction. This collection, however, is probably my least favorite of his books. I was kind of surprised by the amount of graphic sex in the first four stories here. It didn't really fit the Alexie style. When I got to the fifth story, the middle of the book, "The Sin Eaters," I was shocked. Not by sex, this time, but because this story is science fiction. Perhaps an allegory, a metaphor, but it very much left the realm of realism far behind. The last half

I read Sherman Alexie’s book of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven some years ago and was expecting The Toughest Indian In the World to be comparable. The Lone Ranger had a simplicity about it that I found intriguing, and I felt like it captured some of the struggles of the modern American Indian. I felt the hopelessness and anger of the characters, and saw the stereotypes that they lived with day in and day out. Toughest Indian operated along much of the same lines, as

It isn’t easy to describe one of Sherman Alexie’s provocative collections of short stories. Reviews often seem limited to a string of adjectives—touching, funny, angry, passionate, bittersweet, tender, mysterious, magical, vivid and haunting. Real. Suffice to say that he is incredibly skilled at directing human emotions into words, which is no small feat considering most of us can’t even put our own thoughts into words, let alone good words. Really good words, as the case may be. Alexie is the m...

Native Americans are the greatest story tellers. Sherman Alexie is the best of the best. This is the best book of short stories that I have ever read. One of the things I liked the most about it was that while each story carries some of the same themes of how being a Native American is ironically kind of like being a stranger in a strange land, the characters in each story are all unique and three dimensional. I liked that I was able to hear the voice of a reservation Indian telling these storie...

More Sherman short stories, I think this is my favorite form of his work. I like how he creates characters that sometimes overlap into his other stories, they are like old friends, even like family. There was one particular story in this book that affected me because I felt my life was in these pages and it scared me a little. Sherman said in a speech in March that people often tell him how his books have affected them and I have to say some details in this story seemed eerily personal and I wan...

An excellent, cohesive collection of short stories. Alexie has mastered developing rich, complex characters in such short narratives. At the end of each short story, I longed to know more about the lives of the protagonists, other than the few glimpses I had been allowed. Very few authors could get an audience so emotionally invested over the span of several pages.

The first couple of (shorter) stories in this collection are absolutely amazing. I'll be revisiting these to help improve my grasp of short-story writing!Alexie manages to build characters with an inner calm that verges on an intense fury, which sounds oxymoronic, but isn't. Alexie's oeuvre is definitely moving up my to-read list.

I really enjoyed Alexie's earlier work, especially Tonto & the Lone Ranger, but this particular collection was disappointing. The wry humor from other books was overwhelmed by bitter overtones and there was way too much indulgence in tired cliches and stereotypes. It made me dyspeptic.

I found this collection of short stories about various Native American related themes overall interesting, if only in the idea of juxtaposing related themes on a central topic. Some were definitely better than others. Alexie seems to have a fetish for disenfranchisement by white people and for sexuality, and he seems to have explored every possible outlet of sexuality. Some of the language is terse, and some of the images he draws are downright crude. As a work of entertainment, this book I do n...

It's hard to say anything about these stories, because they're so good. They're delightful in substance, style, and soul. Reading them made me feel that Alexie loves writing and loves intensely what he's writing about . . . I think those are the highest qualifications for a writer. My favorite line came in the last story, where the narrator is standing by the side of the road with his dying father."I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he'd eve...

A fine collection of short stories from Sherman Alexie. There is an earlier volume, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven which has stories about Indians on the reservation, whereas this collection focuses on Indians off the reservation. As such, questions of fitting into mainstream (white) society as well as being "Indian enough" are raised, as well as the looking at adherence/respect/reverence for traditions/ceremonies within that context. My favorite story in the book is South By Sout...

I heartily recommend this set of short stories. I love Sherman Alexie's writing. These stories are published in 2000. It is interesting that Alexie said, in a Bill Moyers interview, that after 9/11 he changed his view of "tribalism." I think that is true when one reads his later work. But more than that, the stories get stronger. Some of these stories were not strong. I loved ""Saint Junior" and "One Good Man." Both stories taking place on the reservation. The stories depicting tension between w...

This is a collection of short stories about modern day American Indians. The theme is that Indians have to struggle. Race plays a major role – white people are advantaged and Indians are disadvantaged. The complicated relationships between Indians and the reservations are examined as characters work through their lives on and off the reservation. Often the characters are looking for lost love and find it where they lost it. In one story of inter-racial marriage the Indian family is accepting of