Sherman Alexie is an Indian, as in Native American. His characters are Indian, living on an Indian reservation. But they don't just happen to be Indian, the way, let's say, Tolstoy's characters would happen to be Russians living in a Russian village. These guys' whole lives revolve around their Indian-ness. Any of them could hardly utter a sentence without somehow referring to himself or some aspect of his life being Indian and juxtaposing himself with someone, who is not an Indian, or a different kind of Indian. I mean, I'm Jewish, and we Jews do tend to go on about our Jewishness, but i've never met a jew who was as single mindedly obsessed about his ethnicity as Alexie's Indians are. This may be an accurate description of the way Indians think and talk for all I know (never met an actual Indian outside book pages), but nevertheless it gets tedious rather quickly, so much that i could barely force myself to finish the book. Even white characters in the book are described solely through their relation with the Indian race (as either Indian haters, Indian sympathizers or Indian wannabes). I did enjoy Alexie's first novel, An Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, but that one, despite having a fair measure of Indian motifs, did touch on other, universally human, subjects. Reservation Blues, on the other hand, offers nothing except endless Indian this, Indian that. A disappointment.

I can only quote Frederick Busch of The New York Times Book Review when he writes "quiet, powerful...Alexie creates stinging commentary and he shows his determination to make you uncertain whether you want to laugh or cry..." I think that this is a must read.

لذتبخش و تأمل برانگیز.

Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie

Reservation Blues is a 1995 novel by American writer Sherman Alexie (Spokane-Coeur d'Alene).

The novel follows the story of the rise and fall of a rock and blues band of Spokane Indians from the Spokane Reservation.

In 1995, Thomas Builds-The-Fire, Junior Polatkin, and Victor Joseph, who also appear in Sherman Alexie's short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, meet American blues musician Robert Johnson.

He sold his soul to the devil in 1931 and claims to have faked his death seven years later.

The three boys start a rock and blues band in Spokane using Johnson's enchanted guitar.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سیزدهم از ماه اکتبر در سال2016میلادی

عنوان: آوازهای غمگین اردوگاه ؛ نویسنده: شرمن الکسی؛ مترجم: سعید توانایی؛ تهران، روزنه، سال1394؛ در360ص؛ شابک9789643345051؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 21م

بسیار خواندنی است، در آستین هر پاراگراف، قصه ای، و شعری سروده شده است؛ «رابرت جانسون»، مرد سیاه‌پوستی است که در معامله با شیطان (آقا)، به قدرتی بی‌همتا، در نوازندگی گیتار (سبک بلوز) رسیده، او سر از اردوگاه سرخپوستان «اسپوکن»، درمی‌آورد، و با «توماس» آتش به پاکن، بدترین قصه‌ گوی قبیله، برخورد می‌کند؛ او گیتار خودش را، هگامیکه با راهنمایی «توماس»، برای دیدار با «بزرگ مادر»، به پای کوه «ول‌ پینیت» می‌رود، در ماشین او جا می‌گذارد، و همین بهانه‌ ای می‌شود، تا «توماس» همراه با دو دوست دیگر خود، به نام‌های «جونیور پولتکین»، و «ویکتور جوزف» («چس» و «چکرز»، دو دختر سرخ‌پوست از قبیله «فلت‌ هد» نیز، در ادامه به عنوان خواننده ی کر به گروه اضافه می‌شوند) گروه موسیقی راکی را، با نام «کایوت اسپرینگز» تشکیل می‌دهند؛ آن‌ها برآنند، تا درد و رنجی را که در طول تاریخ پر فراز و نشیب بومیان، بر آن‌ها رفته، به موسیقی بدل کنند؛ ...؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 12/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 01/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

(3'5)
Leído para mi asignatura de Multicultural Literature, si quieren reseña pídanme los apuntes.

(es broma)

No es un libro que yo hubiera cogido por mí misma, pero la verdad es que la lectura se me hizo amena y me gustó mucho el tono sarcástico que usa el autor para tratar algunos temas desgarradores. Alexie también incorpora muy muy bien ese elemento onírico —tan importante dentro de la cultura nativo americana— en la novela, lo que le da muchísima más profundidad. Ahora siento que estoy un poco más educada sobre la realidad social en la que viven los nativo americanos en las reservations.

As a major music-head, I really liked how Alexie tackled the idea of neo-colonialism and lived experience of Indigenous communities through the angle of music. There's a lot of social and historical content packed into the story from the prejudice that one can experience from members of their own community to distorted perceptions of self as a result of years of mistreatment. Each chapter opens with a brief poem/lyric which beautifully sets up the mood for the following pages.

While I enjoyed the book, the story arch felt quite plateaued to me for some reason (I know - that's ridiculous considering all that occurs...but there's so much conflict throughout the book that when you reach the climax it, unfortunately, seems expected.)

Alexie dives into magical realism, with guitars that channel your ancestry into blues music and control your destiny. However, I am conflicted, because at the same time that I enjoyed Alexie's modest accents of deep-mystical-shit and dreamcatching without going overboard, I also wanted more. It's hard to visit the same characters from Smoke Signals: A Screenplay and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and to see them fail once again, without reprieve.

But on the reservation (or off it, in this case), how could it ever go right? I guess not even magical realism can help Junior, Victor, and Thomas Builds-the-Fire.

Buy this title from Powell's Books.

I LOVE THIS BOOK!

This was a Goodreads Deal with an appealing premise: Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson wanders onto an Indian reservation and inspires the formation of a band.

The story Sherman Alexie builds from that premise is rich, emotional, mystic, and wonderful. The central characters are Thomas, Victor, Junior, Chess, and Checkers, but a universe of characters revolve around them, including Robert Johnson. Alexie moves the narrative along by shifting from today to centuries ago to a generation ago and even into the spirit realm.

And it works amazingly well. Reservation Blues has joy, grief, achievement, failure, and more. It’s a wonderful book.

I've read this book several times. I forgot (always forget) how profoundly sad it is. But there is always hope inside the stark reality of Sherman Alexie's writing, who can have you simultaneously crying and laughing like no other writer I've read.

I can't believe that I read/skimmed this through to the end. Full of crazy dreams, cardboard guitars, priests kissing parish girls, by the end I felt just as crazy. Maybe this is what it feels like to be Indian, not fitting into either world. Pretty sad.

Counting as my book in which a character of color goes on a spiritual journey for the 2017 Read Harder Challenge.

I don't know what I was expecting when I picked this up. I had read some of Alexie's short fiction anthologies and enjoyed them. Upon moving to Seattle and finding out that he was a local, I picked this up at a used book store, figuring I'd give it a read. I did not expect Thomas-builds-the-fire to get under my skin and change my life. Yet somehow he did.

I grew up a stone's throw from the Southern Ute and Navajo reservations. I had friends from both tribes through most of my public school years. Yet I had never understood what it was to be a Native American. "Reservation Blues" made me realize that I may never fully understand, but gave me new eyes to help me at least see.

Truly one of the best novels I've ever read - perhaps because it was the perfect time of my life to read it, perhaps for other reasons. But there are few books that compare in my experience for capturing a generous slice of humanity in a very true manner.