While reading Sherman Alexie’s  Superman and Me and the selection of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, one could learn, what seems to be very small on the surface, lessons that they could apply to their own life. In Alexie’s passage, Alexie talks about the exact moment he first realizes the purpose of a paragraph as he was teaching himself how to read. He says, “I still remember the exact moment when I first understood, with a sudden clarity, the purpose of a paragraph.” I annotated, ” This can be said with any goal: significant moment when you are able to do what you wanted/ practiced to do.” Alexie had a “lightbulb moment” when he realized the purpose of a paragraph, this lightbulb moment can be translated into any situation that one is trying to learn something such as how to read. This moment is very significant, it shows you are on the right path and, more times than not, then motivates you to keep going since it shows you are on the right track; and this is what happened with Alexie. This moment motivated him to do so much better. Later in the narrative, Sherman Alexie notes how most Indians in his school hid within the shadows despite being very colorful and well-rounded characters. Alexie says that Indian children were “expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside.” He then goes on to give examples. I noted that it is very sad that the students could not be themselves or show how smart they really were so they opted to stay low. Alexie notes that Indian children “were expected to fail in the non-Indian world.” I commented saying “[This] goes back to Carol Dweck’s TED Talk about stereotypes and how they expect certain ones to fail due to them.” Here I was explaining how stereotypes often hold people down because they feel like they have to live by the low expectations that stand behind the stereotypes that they feel as though they may or may not fall under. This hinders one’s ability to learn and prosper. But Sherman Alexie did not let these stereotypes hold him back. In the second to last closing paragraph, Alexie talks highly about himself, but in a very good way. He states all the way he has succeeded: “I refused to fail. I was smart. I was arrogant. I was lucky.” I wrote, “I love this paragraph because [Alexie] refuses to give in to the bad stereotypes and embrace who he was and is.” No matter how many odds were against him, Alexie never allowed the bad stereotypes to shape how he planned his life. He never let them have control over him; and in turn he prospered and eventually became a very successful author. Sherman Alexie’s experience in his narrative inspired me to compete against all odds, that no matter what I can show that I am a successful young woman and can do what I want when I put my mind to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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