The Toughest Indian in the World: A review

The Toughest Indian in the World (2001) is one of Sherman Alexie’s collections of short stories.

Find it on Bookshop.

It comes before his most recent collection (Ten Little Indians) but after The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (which features many of the characters who would later appear in Alexie’s novel Reservation Blues). It is also the first one I read. Unfortunately, I feel like it may not have been the best first choice.

Alexie is a wonderful writer, of whom I am a huge fan. His writings usually revolve around the lives of various Indian (“bow and arrow not dot on the head”) characters and their complicated feelings about the reservation they love while being desperate to get away from it. This collection of stories follows a similar theme.

The thing about short stories is they’re short. Writers only have a limited amount of time to explain everything and to develop characters. I don’t know how other readers feel, but I’m of a mind that I like Alexie better as a novelist because there is more time to get to know his unique characters and understand his (at times) complex plots. I found The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to be more engaging because different stories clearly refer to the same characters–making them more dimensional.

Back to this collection:

As is true with any talented writer, Alexie does have some gems here. “Saint Junior,” “One Good Man,” and “South by Southwest” are especial favorites of this reviewer possibly because these stories most resemble the combination of acerbic humor and gravity common to Alexie’s novels. To take “Saint Junior” as an example: Alexie examines the relationship between a married couple who met at “Saint Junior” university and continue to choose each other every day. In the story, the husband goes to take his SAT’s wearing a traditional dance costume while, later in the story, his wife preserves the tribal tradition of making Salmon mush.

These stories are not passive. If anything, they are visceral. This collection combines elements of magical realism with painfully real moments of sadness and hardship in the lives of Alexie’s modern Indian characters.

The main problem I saw with this collection is that it remained distractingly distant. Most protagonists go unnamed, sometimes barely described, which makes it difficult to connect with either the characters or their stories. Worse, the stories alternate between nearly absorbing to disturbingly jarring. “The Sin Eaters” hauntingly presents an apocalyptic world where Indians are put through their own kind of Holocaust. This story is angry and, no doubt, important. But by the end it is too angry and too horrific, so that it became a chore to read the remainder of the book for fear of what other catastrophes it might describe.

Any fan of Sherman Alexie’s writing will want to read through The Toughest Indian in the World to get a better sense of Alexie’s work on the whole. That said, readers unfamiliar with Alexie would be better off beginning with one of his novels or perhaps a different story collection.

Easily entertained

Sometimes it amazes me how little I need to stay amused. I’ve been compiling a list of children-appropriate fantasies for work and catching up on book reviews. Surprisingly, it’s the most fun I’ve had this weekend.

This is neither here nor there, but I’ve finally started backing up music that only exists on my computer. I burned what has become my interpretation of a country music mix. (This actually translates to some folk, country, pop and one inspirational song.) It has stayed in my CD player all weekend and remains similarly engaging.

The Namesake: A Review

You’ve heard this story before. Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, Anzia Yezierska, and Edwidge Danticat are just a few of the authors who have told their own versions. The story they all have in common: The immigrant experience in the United States. Each of the above authors tackles this subject from a different enthnographic perspective, but the pull between the old (native) culture and the new (immigrant) one is always present.

Pulitzer prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri adds to this conversation with The Namesake (2003) the epic story of the Ganguli family’s arrival and assimilation into the world of the United States.

Find it on Bookshop.

The story begins when Ashoke and his wife (of an arranged marriage), Ashima, come to Massachusetts where Ashoke is a graduate student at MIT. The year is 1968. At the beginning of the novel Ashima is pregnant with her first child, a son.

In Bengali culture, it is common for people to have a formal name and a pet name (nickname). Ashoke has no problem coming up with a nickname for their son: Gogol. Unfortunately, due to a variety of mishaps and misunderstandings, the formal name proves harder to settle on and even harder to enforce. So Gogol Ganguli grows up with only a pet name–one that is not American, or Indian, or a first name.

No one really cares that Gogol’s name is so unique, except Gogol whose anxiety over his name is bothersome enough that no external taunts are necessary. Gogol eventually resolves to rename himself, but not after learning the life-changing story that inspired his father give Gogol his name in the first place.

Despite the vast period Lahiri writes about, the novel’s focus remains narrowly focused on the characters, especially Ashima and her son. Despite the authenticity that Lahiri brings to her main characters, certain scenes remain naggingly artificial–feeling simultaneously improbable and contrived.

Lahiri’s writing here (I’ve yet to read her short stories) is beautiful without being pretentious or overly self-aware. The story feels authentic and compelling despite the fact that so many of the cultural references remain worlds away.

Even more interesting is the fact that I enjoyed almost the entire novel despite having a strong dislike of Gogol and several of the secondary characters. (I’d say more about what this means in terms of the writing style/skill but I still haven’t figured out how that happened.) Despite my misgivings throughout the novel, Gogol does work toward redeeming himself by the end of the story.

Regardless of my nitpicks, The Namesake remains a must for anyone interested in the immigrant experience in America. Lahiri’s narrative hearkens back to Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex which has a similar scope, tracing three generation’s relationship with Detroit.

The Namesake deals with common themes but, as any good book should, Lahiri makes these subjects new and original with her unique characters and wonderful writing.

Possible Pairings: The Secret Side of Empty by Maria E. Andreu, Drown by Junot Diaz, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, A Step From Heaven by An Na, The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan, The Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska