Sherman Alexie Discusses His New Memoir on Fresh Air

Sherman Alexie was on NPR's Fresh Air this week talking about his new memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me. Alexie told Terri Gross that "there was more going on in Native American literature in 1991 than there is now." More highlights from the interview:

On the book's title, taken from the Dusty Springfield song

My mom sang a lot and she was always singing the songs on the radio. ... Music filled my childhood, as it does with a whole bunch of folks. So I looked at my birth year and I thought, "What songs would my mother have been singing in my birth year?"

I looked through the songs and I hit on Dusty Springfield's song ["You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"], which of course I've heard, everybody's heard, everybody knows. Somebody called that the most heartbreaking love song of all time, and I don't disagree. ... I mean, sitting here right now I can't remember a specific instance of [my mother] saying "I love you." Nothing is coming to mind, and not from my father either.

On being influenced by white medical professionals as a child

I had brain surgery when I was a kid, and I spent most of my first seven years of my life off the reservation, in and out of hospitals, for speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, so it ended up being as a toddler that my primary peer group was white, adult doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, nuns, priests at the Catholic hospitals, so you become who you're with.

So in those early formative years, I was primarily influenced by all these obsessive-compulsive workaholic white people who had gone to college. So I was imprinted by white college graduates, I was like a little duckling following these white doctors and nurses who were wondering, "What's this strange feathered creature following me?"

So at the time, I was being raised by my native family, of course, but I was being influenced by them, but I was also being influenced by white folks in a way that natives of my generation on my reservation did not receive then. I was being given so much kindness and care. I was being taken care of in a way by white folks that natives on my reservation of my generation were not.

Read it all at NPR.