Phase 1, Prompt 3

            The term, “reservation realism”, used by Sherman Alexie in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven can be defined in many ways. Alexie choses to leave the term undefined in the introduction by saying, “Well, I’ll let you read the book and figure that out for yourself” (xxi).

            While doing some research I came across this on a website (ipfw.edu): “Alexie’s statement presents a contradictory definition that is reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s similarly contradictory attempt to define how to tell a true war story in the Things They Carried. O’Brien’s definition similarly asserts that “a thing may happen and be a total lie, another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (Things They Carried 89). The difference, the narrator notes later, lies in the fact that “story-truth is something truer than happening truth” (TTC 203). This really opened my eyes to what I think Alexie meant by “reservation realism”. He means that something is not necessarily real just because it is true. In fact, he means that something that is not true can be even more real than something that is. What I am trying to say is that the kind of realism Alexie is referring to is realism on a whole new level.

            Indian Education is one of the short stories from the book that shows what “reservation realism” is. I did some research and found that what the narrator experienced in school was a typical experience for Indians growing up. “In the 1960s, a congressional report found that many teachers still saw their role as civilizing American Indian students, not educating them. The report said the schools still had a "major emphasis on discipline and punishment” (npr.org). This report goes hand in hand with this quote from Alexie’s short story: “Once, she [the teacher] gave the class a spelling test but set me aside and gave me a test designed for junior high students. When I spelled all the words right, she crumpled up the paper and made me eat it. “You’ll learn respect,” she said” (pg. 173).

            Another short story from the book that I feel really shows what Alexie means by “reservation realism” is Family Portrait. There are many examples in this story that I perceive as “reservation realism”. One example is, “For instance, in the summer of 1972 or 1973 or only in our minds, the reservation disappeared… Finally, I remember thinking, but I was six years old, or seven. I don’t know for sure how old; I was Indian” (pg. 192).  This is a good example because the narrator of this story admits that he does not know if this even happened. It is considered realism because it was real to the narrator which justifies it as real to the story. Another example from this story is, “Will my children love me when I’m old?” she [Mother] asked, but I knew she wanted to ask me, “Will I regret my life?” (pg. 194). The realism behind the mother kicking her son out into the snow because she thought he saw the future is that she wanted him to see the future so she could know if she would regret her life later on.

            My personal definition of “reservation realism” is something like this: Reservation realism is what a person gets out of a memory, a conversation, or a situation. It is what the person considers “real”, what sticks with them afterward. For example, it could have been something that was said that was never really said at all, like on page 195. “My sister told me she could recognize me by the smell of my clothes. She said she could close her eyes and pick me out of a crowd by just the smell of my shirt. I knew she meant to say I love you.” Do you see what I mean? The sister never once said that she loved her brother, but that is what he took from what she told him. “Reservation realism” is a way to see past things like “small talk” and get the real(ism) from it.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865

http://opus.ipfw.edu/english_facpres/58/