Escape Stories: Narratives and Native Americans in Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Author: Dix, A.

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 31, Number 1, 1 January 2001 , pp. 155-167(13)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

Through close study of Sherman Alexie's short story collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), this essay aims to explore the dialectics of Native American narrative now. First, the blockage or thwarting of narrative in Alexie is identified and interpreted as a crisis for Native American representation. However, a second section suggests that Alexie queries the centrality accorded narrative within his tradition. Yet the final section finds that the non-narrative or anti-narrative strategies thereby explored are also, in their turn, questioned by Alexie; in postmodern fashion, his work considers the possibilities for Native Americans of `little narratives'.

Keywords: Sherman Alexie; Native American narrative; postmodern fashion

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Loughborough University

Publication date: 2001-01-01

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A supplement to the Modern Language Review, this journal includes articles and reviews on the language and literature of the English-speaking world. Most of the volumes published so far are 'Special Numbers', collections of between fifteen and eighteen commissioned articles on particular topics, such as the impact of the French Revolution on English writers; literature in the modern media; and colonial and imperial themes in literature.