...within the system. As displayed in both Sherman Alexie’s “Superman & Me” and James Baldwin’s “A Talk To Teachers”, children of minority are not given the same opportunities as white children and it is almost predetermined that black or indian children cannot be successful in school. While both essays argued the same general point about education, the way each point was presented contained differed tones and styles, setting the two pieces apart. In Sherman Alexie’s “Superman & Me”, Alexie begins his story by introducing how he learned to read, by using a Superman comic. This is important because it stresses the fact that Alexie did not have the same extensive resources that privileged white children do. Alexie read whatever he could find to educate himself, because he was aware that the only key to success is through obtaining an education. Alexie’s sharing of personal experience creates a connection with the audience. When Alexie speaks about how he learned to read from a comic book, this is almost a depressing statement. However, the audience knows that Alexie was able to overcome this depressing situation to become successful, even though he was never given proper educational resources. This also draws a deep respect from the audience. The irony that Alexie is very successful and he learned to read from a comic book with very limited resources growing up is inspiring and makes the audience feel sympathy and respect for him. Sherman Alexie is critical of the education system...
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...In his short autobiographical essay “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie uses powerful sentences, visualization, and repetition to create a well-written vivid story. Alexie addresses his own childhood experiences with education. He was a young boy that lived in poverty on an Indian reservation where Indians were derided for being educated. He states that “Indian children were expected to fail in the non-Indian world” (Alexie 584). His parents would be considered poor in most western standards, but to reservation standards they were a middle-class family. Even with the odds of expectation and poverty against him, Alexie describes how he escaped these circumstances by teaching himself how to read. This ambition for success derived from his father who had a passion for reading. Because of his love and dedication to his father, he decided to have the same passion. Before he could read words he was able to review his father’s books and distinguish what a paragraph was. This initiated his path to success by comparing everything in his life to a paragraph “a paragraph was a fence that...
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...“The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” How does this Sherman Alexie essay compare to the Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X essays we read earlier in the semester? What implications does Alexie invoke with his use of the Superman imagery? In comparing the three essays, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie, to “Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, one immediately recognizes that all three authors place high importance on the value of reading and writing. When one has the ability to read and write, one has the ability to achieve many goals. One also has the ability to make a difference in the lives of others and society. In “Learning to Read” by Frederick...
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...Demarcus phillips Ms. Falk English 100 b61 6/2/16 In the short story "Superman and Me", by Sherman Alexie, tells how he learned to read having very limited resources on the Native American reservation where he grew up when he was a younger kid. Alexie starts his story by introducing how he learned how to read using a "Superman" comic book. Alexie learned to read by looking at the pictures and assuming what the comic book boxes would say based on those pictures. Alexie mentions that he does not remember the plot of the "Superman" comic book he used. This is crucial because it stresses the fact that he used a comic book to read because unlike Alexie did not have the correct educational resources that the white children had. He had to use whatever he could find in order to obtain an education. This is also expressed when he tells the reader about how he would read his father's odd collection of novels. Alexie read whatever he could find, he didn't care what it was about, and as long as he was reading he was pleased. Alexie details the fact that growing up on a Native American reservation meant that you were look at to fail. Knowing a lot of people were stereotyping Alexie, it motivated Alexie to become an exception to this rule. He knew that a key to success was reading and an education. Later in the story, after becoming a successful writer, Alexie went to a Native American reservation to speak to a class about reading and writing. He stressed the fact that an education was crucial...
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...Ava Duckhorn Mrs. Ely AP Lang. 28 August 2017 Essay Summaries “You’ve Got Rapture” by Nora Ephron In Nora Ephron’s essay, “You’ve Got Rapture,” originally published by O, the Oprah Magazine in June 2002, Ephron reflects on her lifelong love of great books and their ability to capture a reader for days at a time and leave the reader speechless for days after, examining the details and considering the epiphanies found within dog-eared pages. According to Ephron, books have been the only constant throughout a life filled with years of love, sorrow, and new couches; she recalls times of personal upheaval and the specific books that first comforted her with their dazzling plots and dreamy characters, then prompted her discovery of unhappy or exhausted...
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...Larry Johnican Professor Carter English 100 B07 January 24, 2014 The Little Indian In the essay “Superman and Me” Sherman Alexie discusses his life as young Indian boy growing up in Eastern Washington State. Sherman Alexie describes how his father created a love for books to him; when he says “My father loved books, and since I loved my with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.” Alexie explains why the comic Superman has turned him into the great writer he is. Alexie’s family was of the middle-class by reservation standards. His loved his father “with an aching devotion” and he played a very important role in his life. Alexie’s father was the reasons he started reading books. “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well. Alexie thinks of a paragraph as “a fence that held words.” He compares his reservation as “a small paragraph within the United States.” He is comparing his reservation to words and comparing the United States to the “fence” or a paragraph. Some ways Alexie’s education is positive to him is that it paved a way for him to escape from poverty and to branch out and have other more opportunities in life. He gains a lot of motivation to escape poverty and to become educated. Some ways Alexie’s education was negative to him is that he constantly was bullied and feared by his classmates because Indians were not expected to be smart. He lost associates because of this fear from...
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...through their lifetime are shown through Jeannine Capó Crucet’s essay “Taking My Parents to College”, Amy Tans “Mother Tongue”, and Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me.” Jeannine Capó Crucet is a first generation college student who was born in the US, to her Cuban born parents. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida in a low income family. (Crucet 1) These are all intersectionality’s that she sheds light on her essay “Taking My Parents to College”. Crucet has quite a few culture shocks when she starts her freshman year of college at Cornell University. She finds that she was raised differently than the other students. Other students were eager to say goodbye to their parents during the first week while she was hesitant to let them go. (Crucet 1) Jeannine finds herself without the...
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...lost when kept within boundaries? For Sherman Alexie the answer is yes. He is a Spokane Indian and also a prominent writer. He is the author of “Superman and Me” a short essay first published in Los Angeles Times, April 19 1998, as part of the series “The Joy of Reading and Writing”. In this piece Alexie describes how he taught himself how to read at the age of three and how he manage to literally read his way out of the reservation in which he grew up. By narrating his own story, he illustrates how few were the chances for him as well as for all young Indians in a reservation to succeed in life, not only because of poverty or because of the limited school system, but more precisely because of the mental barriers Indians have imposed themselves when exposed to the challenges of the Non-Indian society. In contrast to this panorama, and against all statistics and predictions, Alexie succeeded...
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...Being literate is something that you and I are capable of, if not we wouldn’t be able to get through this essay. In American society, being able to read and write is superior to any form of communication and is the norm for most. What if I told you about two individuals who were not as fortunate and were incapable of these skills? Who were deemed unworthy and too oppressed to learn to read and write through the normal route? Sherman Alexie and Frederick Douglass were the two people mentioned, they were people who were determined and sought out their own passage in learning these skills. In “Learning to Read and Write’’, Douglass focuses on overcoming the challenges of having to teach himself literacy as an enslaved man, on the other hand, Alexie’s essay, “Superman and Me”, focuses on the obstacles of him...
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...In Sherman Alexie’s essay, “Superman and Me”, Alexie explains how his life is as an American Indian. He explains all of the consequences of being an American Indian and how most people considered them to be lower class and not as smart as others. During this time, American Indians were not taught how to read and write or really learn anything at all considering that they were identified as being “dumber” than the other kids by society. Sherman Alexie did not agree with being treated like this, he wanted to be smart, and he also wanted to learn. He taught himself how to read and write and when he got older he taught other kids how to read and write as well. In the essay titled “Superman and Me” it states, “I throw my weight against their locked...
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...forget about this common goal that we all share, and instead prioritize other things such as land, wealth, and power they forget about the people around them and treat them as if they are not of the same species. The same idea is shared by the author Sherman Alexie in his essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”. The essay reflects upon the life of an Indian boy living in a reservation in today’s America. His main argument highlights how determination is a useful weapon when it comes to facing segregation in a society, and offers insight of how he is trying to save the children currently living on these reservation by getting them to open up to literacy and adaptation. Alexie was made a victim of racism. He was in an environment where the society’s restrictions allowed no one to go further in life. Everyone was required to follow the same old tradition and be under certain standards. Most followed these beliefs, but Alexie, he was different. He always loved reading and hoped to become a pediatrician. He was considered an oddity by his own people for being smart. He never liked the negative influences of the Indians and therefore never followed them. For this he always got in a brawl with his classmates, “They wanted me to stay quite when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid” (Alexie 17). Alexie views this as an opportunity to show the outside world how an Indian society works....
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...Compare and Contrast Sherman Alexie’s Story with My Experience Every people may have their own favorite book when they were young. It could be a bedtime story, fable, or novel. This would pretty much affect their lives in a good or bad way. In Sherman Alexie’s essay, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, he simply explained about himself as an Indian kid who loved to read even he lived with low standard of living. Sherman’s dad had always spent his extra money to get new books for him. However, Sherman was different with most of Indian people in his age, because he read books that quite difficult for kids in his age at that time, such as “Grapes of Wrath”. He read everywhere and he believed that he could save his life by reading books. Based on Sherman’s childhood, I realize that reading a book could influence someone’s life, enrich someone’s knowledge and lead them to be a successful person. In his essay, Sherman tells us that non-Indian people mostly would underestimate Indian kids. Therefore, Sherman proves that they are wrong. He struggled with his lives and tried to read everywhere, because “(he) was trying to save (his) lives”. Ultimately, he becomes a successful writer instead of pediatrician. He writes books and teaches creative writing to Indian kids. According to Sherman’s experience, I feel that we have got common things. When I was a kid, I used to read a novel by Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”. The story tells us about a man who has to understand every...
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...In the essay “The Joy of Reading and Writing,”Sherman Alexie claims reading saved his life. It explains Alexie’s life as an Indian boy and how reading and writing shaped his life. He learned to read despite having limited resources. Alexie proves that you do not have to be affluent to obtain an education. Alexie and his family come from an underprivileged Indian reservation in eastern Washington state. Although his family was considered very poor in American society, on the reservation he was from a middle class family. This shows how tough life was on the reservation and how much poverty there was. His father had a passion for reading and would buy cheap books from pawnshops. It rubbed off on Alexie and he would pick up books before he could...
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...Report Name In Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” he talks about racial stereotypes, negative peer pressure and other obstacles he must overcome. He also wants kids growing up in a similar situation to succeed and not be another statistic. This essay really stood out to me because Alexie must conquer problems that are greater than himself. In order to not be stuck and labeled as another reservation Indian he must fight against what is expected of him. Sherman Alexie is able to overcome and persevere which speaks to me because I have had to overcome lots in my life. Through the use of analogies, anecdote and repetition Alexie is able to relay the story in a way that leaves a lasting...
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...The essay, “Superman and Me,”by Sherman Alexie, is a story explaining how a young Indian child teaches himself how to read refusing to follow customary Indian traditions. The purpose of this essay was to make an example for people back home, mainly Indian kids living on resverations. Alexie was motivated, loved to read books because of his father, if it wasn’t for his father, Alexie would have not be successful. Alexie’s family was poor, he had 4 siblings.his father worked on and off, eventhough he began to buy books and bring them home to read everyday.it was untradtional for his dad to want to read and go to catholic school”My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well”(89)....
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