Merinder's House

Some very gifted writers are brave enough to make us laugh over the top of political correctness, not for the sake of seeking attention or making a name for themselves, but because they are real artists. Sherman Alexie is amongst the greatest of those today. Perhaps the reason he is able to do so is because he is heartily sick of everyone romanticising the generic and is more interested in what does not fit than what does.

He writes about “Indians” as opposed to “Native Americans” and is allowed to, because he has dared to cross the line. He writes about people who break the mould in their own communities, because it’s harder to be different in a small place than in a large one. Like Thomas King, he writes about the absurdity of political and literary stereotypes, but he also tackles the ones communities use to protect themselves when they gang up on the wayward because they are afraid to be labelled human. The important thing is the right to be different, or the same for that matter, and we are just as prone to deny each other that right as the authorities are to deny it to our communities.

Finally (and maybe it is the same thing) he writes about identity, which is the hardest one of all, the right to be allowed to be part of something we think we belong to and at the same time walk the long, dark road to becoming ourselves. It is the age-old intellectual struggle between home and uncertainty. As Alexie shows us, the bravest thing of all is cutting through the red tape and demolishing the stereotype coming at us from all directions.

The road home is a catalogue of broken links.