Week 15 Readings and Responses

Red Velvet Dress, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Response to Naomi Shihab Nye

Red Velvet Dress, by Naomi Shihab Nye, is something of a blunt instrument--it reads like (and I imagine and hope that it is) a children’s story.  While there is undeniable subtext, certain subtleties, and a certain complexity in spots, the story is pretty “in-your-face” in its presentation of a “moral.”  That moral is, of course, the idea that people are people, not to be defined solely on the basis of their race, culture, or ethnicity; as well as the idea that such divisions as race, culture, and ethnicity are characterizations that may also be rich sources of beauty and wisdom.  By finding a balance between seeing past cultural divisions and understanding different cultures, Nye seems to be saying, we can find a peaceful and open way of dealing with those around us.    

For the young narrator, her manner of describing the neighborhood children emphasizes individual characteristics and “quirks,” rather than any sort of broader cultural category.  “The Collins boys and the Parker boys,” for example, are simply boys with whom Lena picks berries, who have a “lizard collection” and a “turquoise stone . . . in a pouch inside an egg carton with old pennies worth ten dollars each and the rusted key . . . dug out of the ground.”  They are not “black” children, but rather simply children.  

This particular “lesson,” while seemingly already a naturally understood one, is brought into relief with the arrival at the door to Lena’s house of two children asking (innocently enough, it seems) to see “the Arab.”  While Lena knows that they are speaking of her father, she informs them that they “don’t have one.”  This experience of denial serves as a sort of existential moment of epiphany and guilt.  Lena feels guilty for having denied her father’s presence, yet struggles against the idea that her father is an “Arab,” for she defines him not by his “Arabness,” but rather by the role that he fills in her life--father, man who burns brush in the backyard even though it might get him in trouble, catcher of balls with her brother, speaker to bats, etc.  

Her father, however, sees this event not as one to be taken seriously, but rather as the innocent gesture that it appears to be.  He is good-natured in his reaction, and even tells her that he should have exaggerated his own “Arabness” in order to make the intruding children happy.  “‘I could have put on my headdress for them! You could have pretended I didn’t speak English.  Maybe they’ll come back and we can make them happy.’”

Lena’s father’s own nonchalance about the episode, paired with the arrival from the Middle East of a gift of a dress that has been made by Lena’s family, lead her to embrace her Arab heritage and proudly show it off at school, telling people that, “It is my Arab dress from my Arab relatives far across the sea.”  She learns that she can both embrace her father’s culture and American culture (as well as her mother’s German ancestry and the ancestry and cultures of all of those around her): “It meant they were connected, just as she felt connected to all the people on her block and her friends lining their lunch sacks up beside her own.  Now when she pledged allegiance, it was secretly to everywhere.”

Notes:

* As Sharif S. Elmusa points out in an interview with the author, she has “achieved a veteran status, working for thirty years . . . on children and young readers’ poetry.”  Perhaps if I keep this in mind, the story seems somewhat better.

* I’m confused, I admit, by the scene in the grocery store, in which “Lena’s mother stared” at a woman in the grocery store, and says, “I should have been her.”  I really have no idea what is going on here.  I’m very interested to hear the opinions and ideas of others on this matter.

* One part of the story that I do indeed like is Lena’s conversation with her father, which reminds me (in its tone) of the speaker’s conversation with her father in Nye’s poem Blood.  His response to her in this story that “All the questions have more than one good answer,” is really nice, and adds some hint of complexity to this story.

Works Cited

Nye, Naomi Shihab. Interview by Sharif S. Elmusa. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics , No. 27, Childhood: Creativity and Representation  (2007), pp. 107-113

Week 14 Readings and Responses

Sherman Alexie - This Is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona

This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, by Sherman Alexie, is a quirky, humorous, heart-rending short story from Alexie’s collection of short stories/novel The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.  Like other stories from the collection, this story focuses on the importance of forgiveness and community within an environment of broken dreams, broken community, and self-destructive behavior. 

The picture that the narrator provides of the reservation on which Victor lives is not a pretty one.  We see that the environment is one of poverty (“Who does have money on a reservation, except the cigarette and fireworks salespeople?”) and alcohol abuse (“The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams.”). The sense of community on the reservation has been lost (“Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community?), a fact that is highlighted by the fact that Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the resident storyteller of the reservation, is someone that “nobody wanted to listen to” (288).

As Benedict Anderson has shown in his seminal book Imagined Communities, communities (in most of his explanation, nations) are “imagined,” in that they are defined and held together by unifying narratives that assist the varying members of a community in seeing themselves as inextricably linked to their fellow citizens.  It would follow, then, that we can see the fact that Thomas (and his stories) is ignored as a sign that a certain sense of community, a shared feeling of belonging, has been lost in the community under discussion here.  As we see, for Thomas to be ignored is “like being a dentist in a town where everybody has false teeth” (288).

That this community is obviously falling apart does not mean that it has completely fallen apart, for Thomas, though ignored by all others, does not fall beneath the weight of such a futile and seemingly useless task and “profession.”  As he tells Victor, “Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world.  It doesn’t matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories” (299).  Thomas is something of a martyr in this story, as well as something of a Cassandra figure, doomed to tell the future (or even just the present), while nobody listens to him.  His very hope and courage are an affront to his fellow community members, who, jealous of his conviction, mock him and beat him.  “They hated Thomas for his courage, his brief moment as a bird,” we read.  “Everybody has dreams about flying.  Thomas flew” (297).

What is most important, however, in regard to this specific story under discussion, is that Victor, faced with little room for decision, needs Thomas’s help in order to recover his father’s body and belongings.  This trip in itself is of course important, for it is clear that Victor’s relationship with his father is, at best, ambivalent (he hasn’t seen him in years, and has barely spoken to him), and to embark upon a journey (a quest? An important “Indian” symbolic act?) to (re)claim his father is in itself a cathartic and important act.

It is in this journey that the power of Thomas’s storytelling becomes clear, for through his remembrances of Victor’s father and his providing of the information that Victor’s father has asked Thomas to “watch out” for him, he offers Thomas the chance to forgive his father and see him in a different light:

Victor was quiet for a long time.  He searched his mind for memories of his father, found the good ones, found a few bad ones, added it all up, and smiled (296).

            Thomas’s most important lesson that he shares, however,  relates to the need for the community to “take care of each other,” which he does by providing Victor with assistance, forgiving Victor for his earlier cruelty as a young man, and providing Victor with a space to forgive himself and his father and to ask Thomas for his forgiveness.  As is clear from Victor’s thoughts toward the end of the story, this lesson sticks:

Victor was ashamed of himself.  Whatever happened to the tribal ties, the sense of community? The only real thing he shared with anybody was a bottle and broken dreams.  He owed Thomas something, anything.

            As is clear from this text, Alexie puts great stock in to the role of the storyteller as one who maintains the sense of community for a community, and who speaks from a moral standpoint for the community.  This self-reflexive writing also presents the idea that a storyteller’s duty is to provide a community with a sense of the holy, a sense of something greater than themselves, and to tell a tale that raises the mundane to something much greater.  We see, for instance, how Thomas tells Victor what he plans to do with his half of the cremated remains of Victor’s father, and how he tells Victor, “your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home.  It will be beautiful.  His teeth will shine like silver, like a rainbow.  He will rise, Victor, he will rise.”  It is, of course, no coincidence that Victor plans to deposit his half of the ashes in the same place, but that before hearing Thomas’s description of the mythical nature of the event, he had seen it differently, he “didn’t imagine [his] father looking anything like a salmon . . . thought it’d be like cleaning the attic or something” (300).  Thomas’s value here is that he shows Victor that “nothing stops,” and that his actions are much bigger, much more important, than “letting things go after they’ve stopped having any use” (300). 

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2006. Print.

Response to Today We Will Not Be Silent, by Victoria Lena Manyarrows

                Today We Will Not Be Silent, by Victoria Lena Manyarrows, acts, as Mr. Farmer points out, as a “forceful declaration.”  By establishing a connection between the distant past, the recent past, and the present, the speaker develops an understanding of a historical, and ongoing, struggle, placing herself, and others like her, into that struggle as forces of resistance.

            When the speaker declares that “we  will not be invisible or silent,” it is as first unclear who this “we” really is.  It quickly becomes clear, however, that this “we” is a vast group of people, held together not by their inherently shared qualities, but by their shared resistance to (and suffering under) the colonization, genocide, and exploitation of the United States class of (white) power.

            The first connection to the (distant) past that we see is in the reference to the “pilgrims of yesterday,” which establishes a connection between the first white settlers in North America and those in power in North America today.   This act of connection continues with the recent past, making a connection between the Native people of the US and the citizens of Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador, all countries that have suffered under the yoke of oppressive military meddling by the United States (see the Contras in Nicaragua, the CIA-supported military takeover in Chile and the subsequent 17-years of dictatorship, the CIA organized coup in Guatemala in 1954—which led to an over 30-year civil war, and the US support of the military junta during the civil war in El Salvador, which was characterized by the murderous tactics of death squads and mass murder).  By making such a strong connection (and one that is characterized by the US meddling in foreign affairs), the speaker establishes the US government within the US as a similarly foreign power, responsible for genocide and “elimination” of the Native/original population.

            The poem also references geography and the physicality of the land, ignoring, in a way, the arbitrary and artificial borders established by the European powers, in order to make the case that there is little difference between the people of the “Americas,” who have all been oppressed by the European  people and their descendants.    

            Such preoccupation with the geography of the Americas is not unique in this poem . Much of Manyarrow’s poetry shows a similar concern for the geography of the American continent and makes a metaphorical connection between this geography and the essential unity of the continent.  We see, for instance, how in America/Love Song to the Native Lands, Manyarrows describes geography in a sensual, sexual language, describing her desire to demonstrate her love for the Americas:

                        America

                                    my native land

                        will you ever know how much i love you?  (Manyarrows 9)

Works Cited

Manyarrows, Victoria Lena. "America/Love Song To The Native Lands." Hurricane Alice 10.2  (1994): 9. Humanities International Complete. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.

Week 13 Readings and Responses

Holy Toledo, by Joseph Geha

Holy Toledo, by Joseph Geha, is a complex tale that examines notions of home (homeland, homelessness), family, and culture liminality, specifically in the context of the Arab American community.  As A.J Wardi and K. Wardi Zonna point out in their article “Memories of Home: Reading the  Beduoin in Arab American literature, “Geha reminds readers that home is a complex negotiation of place, geography, memory and politics.”

            Movement, and the ways in which notions of home are both fluid and moored to specific cultural practices, is symbolized and expressed in many ways within this short story, not least of which is the use of the “charm against the Evil Eye”—the search for which takes up a great deal of this story.  The amulet is a complex metaphor—it serves as a physical marker of cultural permanence even in the midst of movement (this is a small glass bead, worthless perhaps, but which continues to signify something over the course of generations and physical removal from its original “birthplace”), as well as a symbol of how things that are lost (even tiny little things, like the children in the story) often seem to eventually be found.  The amulet is always lost in Sitti’s house, “but despite the clutter of this house . . . it was forever turning up again too.” Similarly, the appearance of this amulet was also a similar tale of loss and finding – “A Lazerine monk claimed he’d found it lying amid the rubble of an ancient excavation,” and even after Sitti’s uncle had been given it, it “was forgotten, mislaid until after his death when it turned up again among his things.” 

            The amulet serves as well as a reminder of the perdurance of tightly-held cultural beliefs (and superstitions).  Like a sharp pebble in a shoe (interestingly, and on a side note, the word “scruple” comes from the Latin word for a small, sharp stone (scrupus à scrupulous), and was used metaphorically by Cicero to describe our modern sense of a “moral misgiving”), this little piece of ceramic beading will not seem to disappear.  Sitti’s uncle may find no value in this pebble (“Nothing more than a drop of porcelain painted to look like a miniature eyeball”), and yet this “drop of porcelain” means a great deal to Sitti, and travels with her from Syria to the United States.  Later, when her son Eddie heads off to sea, he takes it with him as a protective item, even though it “was usually just the old people” who gave importance to such things.  Within the context of the events taking place in this story, we see to how Nadia, attempting to help Sitti (and get her to stop moaning so loudly), spends a great deal of time searching the house for the missing apotropaic symbol. 

            While this amulet may symbolize many things, the concept of “home” is one of the most important of these.  For Sitti, this necklace, like the “pages from Arabic prayerbooks, shreds of holy palms plaited years ago into the shapes of crosses and crowns of thorns,” is a piece of the homeland that has accompanied her on her journey to America.  For Uncle Eddie, it is a reminder of home (now in America) while he is at sea.  A sense of home, as mentioned above, is the overarching concern of this narrative and the one that most directly seems to apply to the young protagonists of this story.  For these children, many of the familiar signs of “home” are no longer present—their mother is dead, their father has abandoned them, and they have moved from one house to another (though they are so similar as to be nearly identical).  For these two children, who in the end of the story finally establish a common front against their Munchauseny grandmother and abusive uncle, home doesn’t seem to be a place that offers comfort or protection (quite the opposite), and rather than finding solace in the physical home or the home rooted in a sense of “culture,” they dream of heading off to “America,” much as their father has done.  In the final lines of the story, we read of them “lost in the American homesickness,” and of how Nadia “tried to imagine America, how it will be, and what they should take with them when they go.”

            This clever re-imagining of “America” lays at the center of much of what is taking place in the story.  These children are, of course, in America.  They are in Detroit, and yet when they look at the world outside of their own immediate environs, that is what they consider “America.”  When their father disappears, Sitti will only tell them that he has gone to “America”—he is “gone, swallowed up somehow by the vast America beyond these streets, alive, forever luckless, and free.”  When the “college mums” come to shop in the streets of Little Syria, Nadia “wish[es] that she were one of them, returning with them into that huge strangeness, America, luring her despite the threat it seemed to hold of loss and vicious homesickness.” 

            Homesickness, like a sense of home, is an interesting concept within this story, for as the above quote shows, for Nadia (and perhaps for her brother Mikhi), homesickness is an enticing (and frightening) notion.  Revisiting the family’s explanation of Nadia’s father’s whereabouts, we can see that he is both considered “luckless” and “free.”  For Nadia’s Uncle Eddie, being away from home seems quite difficult (he repeats again and again how he was “lost the whole time,” and how it’s “great to be back), and yet his sullen and violent behavior in the months following his return seems to hint at some ambivalence and confusion in his emotions upon returning home.   

            For Mikhi, perhaps the most intriguing and complex character in this story (though all of them, to be honest, vie for that title), a similar ambivalence seems to reign in his psyche.  He is, of course, like Nadia (even more so), anxious for escape—he plans to go somewhere “away,” though he isn’t sure when or where.  He is also “irreverent” toward the symbols of the past (the amulet and such customs as the kissing of a fallen piece of bread) and it seems that such symbols of the old world have lost power for him.  At the same time, at certain points in the story (in particular while in the basement), we see too that this nine year-old child is frightened by a total loss of “home,” afraid that his grandmother will die, upset when his grandmother appears to have fallen upstairs. 

            Everyone in this story, it seems, is trapped in a middle ground – stuck between the past of the “old world” and the present/future of America.  The difference is in their reactions to this confusion—Nadia’s father abandons the family to head off into “America,” Uncle Eddie leaves but returns, yet seems trapped by his decision and its consequences, Sitti seems trapped by her old ways and yet must use a variety of manipulative techniques to make those around her give her the attention that she desires, and Nadia and Mikhi are totally afloat, lost in death and abandonment and the unrealized dreams and desires of almost America. 

Works Cited

Wardi, A. J., & Wardi-Zonna, K. (2008). Memories of Home: Reading the Bedouin in Arab American Literature. Ethnic Studies Review, 31(1), 65-79,9. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.jproxy.lib.ecu.edu/docview/215486016?accountid=10639

Wing Tek Lum - Going Home

            Wing Tek Lum’s poem Going Home approaches a topic with which we are now quite familiar – that of a (presumably) second generation Chinese American who is both intimately connected and woefully disconnected from her “cultural roots.”  Like the narrator in Gish Jen’s What Means Switch, the speaker of this poem has a very limited linguistic knowledge of Chinese—the phrase that speaks at the beginning of the poem (which we can assume means something like “Where do you live?”) is “the only phrase” that she knows “besides the usual menu words.” 

            While the old man in this poem appears to be the focus of the poem, it is in fact the speaker who is our most important subject to consider; in seeing her attempts to help this old and confused man find his way home, we are afforded a glimpse into her own inability to find “home.”  Like this lost man, it appears that she too is lost.

            Language is of course of great importance in this poem, and serves as both a symbol and as a more concrete example of the interstitial, liminal space often evoked in the poems in this collection.  As a symbol, the language in this poem calls to mind the confusion and sense of anguish that might be caused by an existential search for one’s place, the culture to which one belongs.  We read, for example, that the speaker is “still able to hear those familiar, / yet no less incomprehensible sounds.”  There is a sense of belonging and familiarity that we can glean from this, but meaning, we see, is still out of the speaker’s grasp.

            From a very real point of view, language is important here as well, as the speaker’s inability to speak the language of her ancestors prevents her from helping this man, from helping him (and herself) find home.  The futility of her attempts, and the anguish caused by this futility, send her running from the situation and leads her to “hastily cross the street.” 

            The final lines of the poem open the poem to an even wider theme, and greatly complicates the poem.  Leaving the scene, the speaker wonders, saying aloud that “Chinamen aren’t supposed to cry.” This line, which demonstrates both  confusion and disconnectedness, also demonstrates that the speaker (like so many of those in the “outside” world), in her disconnectedness, has reduced “her” people – “Chinamen” – to a simplistic and reductive stereotype (the “Chinaman” in her mind, I presume, should remain “mysterious,” their emotions unseen in facial movements and external signs). (This particular stereotype, that of the "inscrutable" Chinese, is a rather common and pernicious one, and is explained well by Rey Chow, who writes, "the failure of . . . outsiders to comprehend Chinese (facial) expressions—a kind of corporeal writing—is projected retroactively onto the other as the other’s essential quality, inscrutability” (71).  Unfortunately, for the speaker, there do not currently appear to be any “young fellows” to guide her in her search, and she is left heading to the only “home” that she still knows, still lost. 

Works Cited

Chow, Rey. How (the) Inscrutable Chinese Led to Globalized Theory. PMLA , Vol. 116, No. 1, Special Topic: Globalizing Literary Studies (Jan., 2001), pp. 69-74

Week 12 Readings and Responses

Enid Dame's Drowning Kittens

                Drowning Kittens, by Enid Dame, is a story rich in metaphor and symbolism. Perhaps the strongest of the many symbols that make up this story is that of the Persian cat, “a placid aristocrat with large feet, tufts of hair in her ears, and guileless blue eyes.”  This cat, which appears (both in an original version, as well as a “reincarnated” one) throughout the story, serves as a strong symbol of male domination, female rebellion, sexual liberation, and historical memory, as we see in both the ways in which the cat itself behaves as well as the ways in which the characters in the story behave in relation to it.

                When we first are introduced to the cat, we learn that the narrator’s grandfather has received the cat as payment from a customer unable to pay, and that the grandfather, not a lover of the animal, sees it as a means to making money.  The grandfather, in effect, wishes to impose his own desires on this animal, which he sees simply as a kitten-making device (which should translate to a money-making device).  He acts, to put it simply, as a cat pimp. As we see, however, this cat (her name was Dinah) acts in a way contrary to the grandfather’s interests, rejecting the purebred male cat that he brings for her, and instead choosing to mate with a “striped, marauding tom with one ear missing.” 

                This behavior is important, of course, for we see how this “liberated” feline’s behavior enrages Jake, the narrator’s grandfather.  Also important, however, is the fact that Renee, the narrator’s grandmother, is pleased with the cat’s behavior, revealing a rebellious and liberated streak of her own that is generally obscured by her skill at “becoming invisible when necessary.”  We read: “She was pleased when Dinah rejected his advances, giving him a sharp rap just below his hairy right ear.  She drew blood, and Sultan sulked in a corner.”

                Renee’s own liberated stance in life is not a complete secret, of course.  At other points in the story, we see the manner in which she makes decisions and takes action in a way that reveals an inner strength, fortitude, and willingness to “fight.”  We see, for instance, how she elopes with Jake, going contrary to general societal expectations by spurning the man to whom she is engaged. 

                Jake’s reactions to Dinah’s pregnancy, and the appearance of her kittens, goes further in illustrating his somewhat tyrannical, patriarchal attitude, for we see how he wishes to destroy/murder the kittens, who are the fruits and proof of an un-sanctioned coupling.  We also see, in Renee’s reaction to Jake’s fierce act, the ways in which she is able to make use of subversive and clever means to getting what she wants.  Hiding within the guise of subjugation, she subverts male privilege by allowing Jake to think that he is saving the kittens because of their incredible talents, when in fact he’s saving them because of his own ignorance (and Renee’s knowledge) of normal feline behavior. 

                Renee is simultaneously, of course, not like Dinah in many ways, for though she chooses to elope with Jake rather than marry the more suitable man (“maybe he just isn’t her type”), she proceeds within her marriage in a more subdued, quiet fashion, and certainly is not giving anyone a “sharp rap just below his hairy right ear.” 

                Annie (Renee’s daughter, and the narrator’s mother), from the little that we know of her, seems to act in way much more in line with the Dinah’s behavior.  Like the cat, she seems to act in life in a way that is much more direct.   She is angry with her mother’s “long-game” manner of saving the kittens, and enraged that she could “take such changes with the great, stupid, dangerous forces.”  We see that she becomes political, and involved in strikes, and that even later in life is somewhat iconoclastic, mistrustful of marriage and in support of women being liberated and independent (“Every woman needs a little money of her own”). (As Burt Kimmelman points out in his article "Enid Dame's Householdry," relationships between daughters and mothers come up often in Dame's work.  He writes, "At the heart of Dame's understanding of fate lies her vexed relationship with her mother" (Kimmleman)).    

                This feline symbol, however, should not be considered solely as a quid-pro-quo type of symbol, though it is important in that way too (as discussed above).  Rather, we can also consider the use of the cat as a symbol deliberately employed by the characters in the story (in particular Annie) to express the ideas delineated above.  Said differently, this is a literary symbol that isn’t just literary—it is a real symbol within the world of the story, and the characters seem to see it that way.  It is for this reason that Annie gives her daughter a Persian cat, which she very importantly pairs with another gift – the very story that the narrator tells us about the cat.  “The story of the attempted drowing [sic],” when paired with the physical animal, serve as a means by which Annie can pass on her personal history, and that of her mother, to her daughter.  It serves as a living memory of the story, a constant reminder of the lessons that the story is meant to impart, and a symbol of the strength of women and the power of the dispossessed “undercat.”  

Works Cited
Kimmleman, Burt. "Enid Dame's Householdry." Rain Taxi Online Edition. Summer 2009. Web. 5 November 2013.

Powwow Polaroid, by Sherman Alexie

                 Sherman Alexie’s poem Powwow Polaroid examines the powwow as a simulated event that “freezes” Native American cultures in a timeless and false past upon which the “gaze” of the outside world has its way.  By purposefully confusing the actual movement of the dancers in the poem with the frozen image captured by the camera of a tourist, Alexie calls into question the relationship between the performer and those for whom he is performing.

            There is something surreal about this poem, and we as viewers must accept the alternate reality presented here – a reality in which a photograph literally captures someone (Alexie is also, it seems, playing with popular conceptions of Native American beliefs here – the old “photograph will take your soul” trope).  This photograph is something magical (not in the sense of a wonderful thing, but something possessing power) and stops the movement of reality:

She took the picture, the flashbulb burned, and none of us could

move.  I was frozen between steps, my right foot three inches off

the ground, my mouth open and waiting to finish the last sound.

In this case, the photograph, which by its very nature is reductive and limiting, capturing only a moment within a constant and never-ending stream of movement, is seen doing what it always does—separating moments, examining them out of context and by themselves. 

            What perhaps makes this even more complex is the fact that a powwow such as this one, attended by camera-toting tourists, is already something separate, something taken out of context.  It is already a simulacrum, a copy of something that may have once existed, but which at the moment is simply an image out of time presented for the outside population.  In this sense, the photograph is a copy of a copy (of a copy of a copy, perhaps). 

            The response of people is illustrative as well, in that this captured moment is a point of success for the photographer-tourist—she is triumphant at this moment, but for others in attendance, as well as the now frozen dancers, this is a frightening event.  For the other members of the community, the speaker’s aunt for example, this is also frightening – the aunt weeps “into the public address system.” 

            Importantly, at this moment, frozen in time, as the crowd flees and the dancers remain still, the only ones moving, the elders, are those expressing sadness and, importantly, as the uncle says, “forgiveness.”  As Jennifer Gillan has convincingly shown, in her article Reservation Home Movies: Sherman Alexie’s Poetry, these final lines serve to both express the continued community of the tribe, but also a “reconciliation with the Anglo world,” which she (wisely) categorizes as “tentative.” 

Works Cited

Gillan, Jennifer.  Reservation Home Movies: Sherman Alexie’s Poetry. American Literature , Vol. 68, No. 1, Write Now: American Literature in the 1980s and 1990s (Mar., 1996), pp. 91-110