First published 2017
Sherman Alexie turns to writing when his mother dies at seventy-eight. He creates a memorial through seventy-eight poems and seventy-eight essays, paired with family photographs. The book explores his childhood on an Indian reservation where he lived in extreme poverty as one of four children. His parents struggled with alcoholism while raising their family in difficult circumstances. Alexie presents his mother as brilliant and beautiful but also volatile and abusive. He writes with raw honesty about their relationship, mixing anger with tenderness, humor with pain. The memoir captures the complexity of loving someone who caused deep hurt. Through concrete memories and unflinching examination, Alexie builds a portrait of family bonds that survive damage and loss.
Genres: family, autobiography, memoir, biography-memoir, native-american, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, raw, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-bonds, grief, love-hate-relationship
Setting: Indian Reservation
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
457 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: abuse, alcohol-abuse, domestic-violence