Alexie’s Healing Stories for American Indians’ Collective Trauma

Abstract

Sherman Alexie’s two short stories with long titles, “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” and “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” narrate about an Indian father who is “lost” and his son who is trying to connect with him. Both stories that first appeared in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven in 1993 are told by protagonist Victor. In the former, Victor recalls his father who looked like a hippie, demonstrated against the Vietnam War, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, drank and listened to Jimi Hendrix’s “The Star-Spangled Banner” all night long, made love to his wife, quarreled with her, separated from her, and eventually left them and never came back. He was a lethargic alcoholic but Victor misses him tremendously. In the latter, Victor takes a journey to Phoenix with Thomas Builds-the-Fire, an estranged friend known as a lunatic storyteller “whom nobody wanted to listen to” (164), to collect his deceased father’s remains. Victor had been disconnected from his father for a few years, but “there still was a genetic pain,