Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me” (pg. 27) is in the genre of auto-biography.
The main ideas of this story are Sherman Alexie’s experience of learning to read, the power of
words, Sherman Alexie’s experience overcoming diversity and his path to success. The story
begins with him teaching himself to read using a Superman comic book. He could not read the
words but, used his imagination to create a dialogue he believed went along with the pictures.
He advanced in this subject reading extensively above his age group. The story goes into him
being discriminated against by his peers and teachers. His talent is overlooked due to the fact he
is a Native American from a reservation. He was bullied because of his intelligence. He felt he
was expected to fail, but chose to overcome that expectation by working hard. He originally
planned on becoming a pediatrician, but, after becoming squeamish during his anatomy classes
he was drawn to writing. He likes to visit schools to teach creative writing to Native American
children. The children he is teaching are excelling. Many are writing their own stories and
poems and reading many books.
Sherman Alexie was interested in reading at a very young age. He mentions his mother
and siblings, but writes a whole paragraph about his father and his love of reading. This portrays
to the readers that this had a great impact on his life, even if he did not realize it at the time. He
writes about his childhood saying: “We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope,
fear, and government surplus food.” (pg. 28). This sentence gives the readers the sense that
perhaps he lived in a dysfunctional home and his childhood was filled with instability. One
thought would be that he used reading as a form of stability. Sherman Alexie taught himself to read using a Superman comic book. He writes