Alexie's life at the
reservation school was also challenging because he was constantly teased by
other kids on the reservation. They called him "The Globe" because he
had a large head due to the hydrocephalus. It also didn't help that he had to
wear government-issued glasses. Until the age of seven, Alexie suffered from
seizures and bedwetting and had to take strong drugs to control them. He was
excluded from many of the activities that are rites of passage for young Indian
males because of his health problems.
Despite this rough upbringing, Alexie excelled academically. He loved to
read and he read everything he could get his hands on, including auto repair
manuals. By the age of twelve he had read every book in the entire library at
his school. It was clear he was looking for a greater challenge in his
education.In order to better his education, Alexie made the decision to leave the reservation and attend Reardan High School in Reardan Washington. The school was thirty miles off the reservation and Alexie was the only student of Native heritage among mostly white students. He excelled at this new school and became a star player on the basketball team, not to mention the only Indian. The team was ironically called the Reardan High Indians. Along with the basketball team, Alexie was also class president and a member of the debate team.
His successes in high
school won him a scholarship in 1985 to Gonzaga
University, a Roman Catholic school in
Spokane. Originally
Alexie enrolled in the pre-med program at Gonzaga with hopes of becoming a
doctor. However, he became
squeamish in his anatomy classes. After an unsuccessful try at medicine, Alexie
switched to law, but that didn’t work out either. The pressure of succeeding in
college became too much for Alexie and he began drinking heavy amounts of
alcohol to cope. Though he was not happy with his choice of career path, Alexie
found comfort in literature classes.
In 1987 he dropped out of Gonzaga
University and enrolled
at Washington State University (WSU).At Washington State, Alexie enrolled in a creative-writing course taught by Alex Kuo. Kuo was also of Indian descent. Alexie was at a low point in his life and Kuo served as a mentor to him. Kuo gave Alexie an anthology entitled Songs of This Earth on Turtle’s Back by Joseph Bruchac, which is a book that changed his life. The book inspired Alexie to start writing. He was inspired from reading works of poetry that were written by other Native Americans. With his new appreciation of poetry, Alexie started work on his first collection, The Business of Fancydancing: Stories and Poems, which was published in 1992 through Hanging Loose Press. With the success of his first published work of poetry, Alexie stopped drinking alcohol and quit school just three credits short of a degree. However in 1995 he was awarded a bachelor’s degree from Washington State University.
In 2005, Alexie became a
founding Board Member of Longhouse Media, a non-profit organization that is
committed to teaching filmmaking skills to Native American youth, and to use
media for cultural expression and social change. Mr. Alexie has long supported
youth programs and initiatives dedicated to uplifting at-risk Native youth. Alexie is married to Diane Tomhave, who is of Hidatsa, Ho-Chunk
and Potawatomi heritage. They live in Seattle
with their two sons.Mr. Alexie's official website for further consideration can be found at http://www.fallsapart.com/