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Authors: Sherman Alexie
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could she say to him that would matter? She’d spent her whole life talking. Words had always been her weapon, her offense and defense, and she felt that her silence, her wordlessness, might be the only thing she could give him.
“The thing is,” he said, “the two best, the two most honorable and loyal people in my life are my white mother and my white father. So, you tell me, kid, what kind of Indian does that make me?”
Corliss knew only Harlan could answer that question for himself. She knew the name of her tribe, and the name of her archaic clan, and her public Indian name, and her secret Indian name, but everything else she knew about Indians was ambiguous and transitory.
“What’s your name?” she asked him. “What’s your real name?”
Harlan Atwater faced her. He smiled, turned away, and walked out of the store. She could follow him and ask for more. She could demand to know his real name. She could interrogate him for days and attempt to separate his truth from his lies and his exaggerations from his omissions. But she let him go. She understood she was supposed to let him go. And he was gone. But Corliss sat for hours in the bookstore. She didn’t care about time. She was tired and hungry, but she sat and waited. Indians are good at waiting, she thought, especially when we don’t know what we’re waiting for. But there comes a time when an Indian stops waiting, and when that time came for Corliss, she stood, took Harlan Atwater’s book to the poetry section, placed it with its front cover facing outward for all the world to see, and then she left the bookstore and began her small journey back home.
Lawyer’s League
M Y FATHER IS AN African American giant who played defensive end for the University of Washington Huskies, and my mother is a petite Spokane Indian ballerina who majored in dance at U-Dub, so genetically speaking, I’m a graceful monster. But my father spent more time reading Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis than pumping iron in the weight room, and my mother played supernatural point guard for an all-Native women’s barnstorming basketball team, so culturally speaking, I’m a biracial revolutionary leftist magician with a twenty-foot jumper encoded in my DNA.
I grew up in Seattle, played basketball at Ballard High School, and attended North Seattle Community College on a partial athletic scholarship. But I soon grew bored of school and small ball. I played backup power forward—averaging seven points and five rebounds a game—on a crappy team in the middle of a forty-seven-game losing streak, and I’d taken all of the college-prep courses in high school and had earned eighteen college credits through the Advanced Placement tests. I was underqualified for CC basketball and overqualified for CC academics. Don’t get me wrong. I think United States community colleges are the most successful models of socialism in the history of the world, but I was already an intellectual gladiator eager to do battle with the capitalistic lions. I quit the basketball team, transferred to the University of Washington, my folks’ alma mater, and earned a summa cum laude BA in political science while playing rat ball at the intramural gym five or six days a week. I still loved basketball and was a better hoopster than 99 percent of the dudes I faced, but I had better things to do and be.
During college, I interned for Norm Rice, the first African American mayor of Seattle; after graduation, I went to work for Gary Locke, the first Chinese American governor in United States history. I am currently Locke’s executive liaison to Washington State’s twenty-nine Indian tribes, which are growing in political power due to casino revenues, and I also manage the Native Voices Now! voter-registration drive. Let me tell you, that is a tough gig. Do you know how difficult it is to get Indians to trust any politician? In the long history of treaty making and treaty breaking, there have been no significant
“The thing is,” he said, “the two best, the two most honorable and loyal people in my life are my white mother and my white father. So, you tell me, kid, what kind of Indian does that make me?”
Corliss knew only Harlan could answer that question for himself. She knew the name of her tribe, and the name of her archaic clan, and her public Indian name, and her secret Indian name, but everything else she knew about Indians was ambiguous and transitory.
“What’s your name?” she asked him. “What’s your real name?”
Harlan Atwater faced her. He smiled, turned away, and walked out of the store. She could follow him and ask for more. She could demand to know his real name. She could interrogate him for days and attempt to separate his truth from his lies and his exaggerations from his omissions. But she let him go. She understood she was supposed to let him go. And he was gone. But Corliss sat for hours in the bookstore. She didn’t care about time. She was tired and hungry, but she sat and waited. Indians are good at waiting, she thought, especially when we don’t know what we’re waiting for. But there comes a time when an Indian stops waiting, and when that time came for Corliss, she stood, took Harlan Atwater’s book to the poetry section, placed it with its front cover facing outward for all the world to see, and then she left the bookstore and began her small journey back home.
Lawyer’s League
M Y FATHER IS AN African American giant who played defensive end for the University of Washington Huskies, and my mother is a petite Spokane Indian ballerina who majored in dance at U-Dub, so genetically speaking, I’m a graceful monster. But my father spent more time reading Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis than pumping iron in the weight room, and my mother played supernatural point guard for an all-Native women’s barnstorming basketball team, so culturally speaking, I’m a biracial revolutionary leftist magician with a twenty-foot jumper encoded in my DNA.
I grew up in Seattle, played basketball at Ballard High School, and attended North Seattle Community College on a partial athletic scholarship. But I soon grew bored of school and small ball. I played backup power forward—averaging seven points and five rebounds a game—on a crappy team in the middle of a forty-seven-game losing streak, and I’d taken all of the college-prep courses in high school and had earned eighteen college credits through the Advanced Placement tests. I was underqualified for CC basketball and overqualified for CC academics. Don’t get me wrong. I think United States community colleges are the most successful models of socialism in the history of the world, but I was already an intellectual gladiator eager to do battle with the capitalistic lions. I quit the basketball team, transferred to the University of Washington, my folks’ alma mater, and earned a summa cum laude BA in political science while playing rat ball at the intramural gym five or six days a week. I still loved basketball and was a better hoopster than 99 percent of the dudes I faced, but I had better things to do and be.
During college, I interned for Norm Rice, the first African American mayor of Seattle; after graduation, I went to work for Gary Locke, the first Chinese American governor in United States history. I am currently Locke’s executive liaison to Washington State’s twenty-nine Indian tribes, which are growing in political power due to casino revenues, and I also manage the Native Voices Now! voter-registration drive. Let me tell you, that is a tough gig. Do you know how difficult it is to get Indians to trust any politician? In the long history of treaty making and treaty breaking, there have been no significant
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