Notes on 'Superman and Me' by Sherman Alexie
Setting and Background
Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. The family was poor, but books surrounded them: his father bought books by the pound, built shelves, and filled the house with westerns, thrillers, biographies, and a -book Apache westerns series. The father’s love of reading shapes Alexie’s own. He was years old when he first learned to read with a Superman comic, though he cannot recall the issue or the villain. He remembers the moment the words themselves were foreign, yet the pictures and implied dialogue let him pretend to read. The home atmosphere makes reading a core part of his identity from an early age.
Path to Literacy and the Paragraph Concept
Alexie learns to read by interpreting the visual narrative in a panel: a door breaking, colors, and characters, while he imagines the words. He discovers that a paragraph is a fence that holds words and serves a purpose. He begins thinking of the world in terms of paragraphs: the reservation is a small paragraph within the United States; his home is a paragraph; each family member is a separate paragraph within the whole. He also sees Superman’s panel as a -dimensional paragraph—image, dialogue, and narration together. This leads to the idea that reading is about constructing meaning from both pictures and implied words.
Stereotypes and Resistance
Alexie notes the social pressure: Indian children were expected to be stupid in the non-Indian world, while outside the classroom they could tell complicated stories and songs. A smart Indian was seen as a dangerous anomaly, feared and ridiculed by both Indians and non-Indians. He fights daily to break these expectations, resisting the idea that he should remain silent or fail. The classroom environment often forced conformity, but many Indian kids showed strength outside school—yet the stigma persisted. He refuses to fail; he is determined, capable, and stubbornly persistent in his pursuit of reading.
The Power of Reading and Identity
Alexie reads obsessively—late at night, at recess, in the car at powwows or basketball games, in bookstores, on cereal boxes, in the library, and even on junk mail. Reading becomes a lifeline; it is his way to survive and to imagine a different future. He initially planned to become a pediatrician, but ultimately becomes a writer, traveling to schools to teach creative writing to Indian kids. He observes that Indian students often lack access to teachers who recognize Indigenous writers, and he notes that many kids read his books and others, while some sit with empty notebooks and resist.
Conclusion: Books as Salvation
Books serve as both escape and salvation for Alexie and his community. He repeatedly urges the value of literacy as a tool to save lives, both personally and collectively. He ends with a personal creed: