{"id":22974,"date":"2014-11-14T11:30:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=22974"},"modified":"2014-11-14T12:14:19","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T17:14:19","slug":"author-sherman-alexie-on-writing-for-young-adults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2014\/11\/14\/author-sherman-alexie-on-writing-for-young-adults\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Sherman Alexie, On Writing For Young Adults"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Author<\/a>

Chase Jarvis \/ Grove Atlantic<\/p>

Author Sherman Alexie.<\/p><\/div>\n

When we sat in on classes at Miami Northwestern High School to report on the Million Word Campaign<\/a>, one of the writers whose work was discussed was Sherman Alexie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alexie frequently writes about American Indian life<\/a>, including the movie Smoke Signals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alexie also appeared at the Miami Book Fair International last year to talk about writing young adult fiction. This year’s Miami Book Fair International<\/a> opens this weekend, so we thought we’d re-post the interview Alexie did with StateImpact Florida last year.<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

Q:<\/span> How is writing fiction for young adults different than the kinds of stories you wrote before\u00a0Flight<\/a>\u00a0and before\u00a0The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0A: <\/span>I didn\u2019t write Flight for teens. It just worked out that way. I still don\u2019t think it\u2019s for \u00a0teens necessarily. It\u2019s a book that contains a\u00a012-yr-old\u00a0girl genitally mutilating a Cavalry soldier. I don\u2019t remember that in the last Harry Potter novel.<\/p>\n

I think the fact that Flight does get taught is great. But I never meant it to be that.<\/p>\n

In writing True Diary, I didn\u2019t necessarily think of it that way either.<\/p>\n

Teens, young readers, are going to sniff condescension right away. So I always go by the definition my editor has for young adult literature: young adult literature is whatever a young adult happens to be reading at that moment.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Talking about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian\u2014it deals with some real, often rough subject matter. Alcoholism, domestic violence, poverty, teenage boy sexual frustration. They\u2019re subjects that you\u2019ve tackled in other works. What does having a teenage protagonist allow you to do in that kind of story that you haven\u2019t done before?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>I don\u2019t think I talked about masturbation in my work as much as I did in True Diary. He mentions it three times. He mentions it three times; he doesn\u2019t do it. And that\u2019s enough to get it banned in some schools.<\/p>\n

I think those sort of teenage obsessions are something I get to write about because I\u2019m writing about a teen, but it\u2019s also fun.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>It\u2019s a New York Times bestseller, it won a National Book Award, and like you mentioned, it\u2019s also been banned in a few places. What does that tell you?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>That I wrote a great book. I wrote the book that needs to be read.<\/p>\n

Percival Everett, the writer, always says that if you\u2019re getting banned then you\u2019re offending the right monsters.<\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 <\/span>Which monsters are those?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Repressive, conservative religious freaks who want to control everybody\u2019s reading material, not just their children\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What are the stories that you read as a kid that have stuck with you?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Oh my gosh. Stephen King, who was always writing about underdogs, and bullied kids, and kids fighting back against overwhelming, often supernatural forces. The world aligned against them.<\/p>\n

As an Indian boy growing up on a reservation, I always identified with his protagonists. Stephen King, fighting the monsters.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>You have children of your own, right?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Yup. Two boys, 16 and 12.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What are the books that you\u2019ve handed them?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Those days are long over. They are free agents in the reading world. Their recommendations now come from their peers.<\/p>\n

I know my younger son has really been getting into\u00a0John Green<\/a>, which is great. John Green is awesome.<\/p>\n

And my older son is very much a World War II and John F. Kennedy assassination buff right now. He goes on the Internet to look for what he should be reading and then he asks me if I have that book. I end up being a resource, a lending library rather than the librarian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we sat in on classes at Miami Northwestern High School to report on the Million Word Campaign, one of the writers whose work was discussed was Sherman Alexie. Alexie frequently writes about American Indian life, including the movie Smoke Signals. Alexie also appeared at the Miami Book Fair International last year to talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":20670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[1120,889,1153],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22974"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22980,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22974\/revisions\/22980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}