A couple weeks back, I read Sherman Alexie's Flight. High school English teachers take note: This is the kind of book I wished I had been assigned in High School. It's at once funny and heartbreaking, irreverent and deeply serious, easy to read but with ample thematic meat. Plus, it's not too long (about 180 pages of big print), there's no actual sex, and the protagonist is a teenager.
Representative passage:
I think of the great Oglala Sioux warrior Crazy Horse, who was given his name after he battled heroically against other Indians. [...]
I think of how Crazy Horse was speared in the stomach by a U.S. Cavalry oldier while his best friend, Little Big Man, held his arms. I think of the millions of dead and dying Indians.
"Do you know about the Ghost Dance?" I ask.
"No," Justice says. "Teach me."
"It was a ceremony created by the Paiute holy man Wovoka, back in the eighteen-seventies. He said, if the Indians danced this long enough, all the dead Indians would return and the white people would disappear."
"Sounds like my kind of dance," Justice said.
"Yeah, but it didn't work. All of the Ghost Dancers were slaughtered."
"Maybe they didn't have the right kind of music."
"Yeah, they should have had Metallica."
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