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Summary of “the Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”

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This essay will provide you with the summary of the short story “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” written by the American writer and filmmaker Sherman Alexie in which the author shows his target readers how the process of reading and writing can improve one’s cognition of the world and people all around on his example taken from the childhood. Speaking of Sherman Alexie Superman and Me analysis, we should mention the following facts.

In his short story “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, published in The Los Angeles Times in 1998, the writer Sherman Alexie dwells upon his childhood experience of reading a comic book about a Superman and also tackles the most common stereotypes existing in the modern society about Native American boys, regarding them as someone not that smart and intelligent, and also too shy. However, the author finds one of the sources of such stereotypes in the incorrect behavior of the Native American students.

Overall, it is possible to state that Sherman Alexie is quite successful in referring to his own story, analyzing the plot of a Superman comic book he used to read in the years of childhood. This process is also connected with the author’s sweet memories about his father, and this fact only intensifies the positive impression of the general narration. The author analyzes the summary of Superman and Me and identifies the Superman and Me main idea.

The story is focused on the author’s personal story taken from his childhood when the little boy was struggling with his school teachers and students, being unwilling to follow those stereotypes towards the representatives of his nation, established in the society where he used to grow up. As the author is convinced, one of the reasons why these stereotypes still exist concerns the fact that these are the Native American students themselves whom to blame. Thus, as one may understand from the story’s plot, the fellow students of Alexie used to act just the way the others regarded them: either in a silly manner or just being unable to define themselves and represent their educational skills on the best level. It made Alexie look very unlike the rest of the students of his origin and become even more estranged and close-minded in the eyes of almost all the teachers and his classmates. However, this Native American boy finds enough forces in himself to resist acting according to these offending and illogical stereotypes, representing himself as a hard-working student who possesses his point of view concerning everything he could be asked about. He feels no wish to be an example of those stereotype silly boys the way his classmates do.

How to Catch the Main Essence of the Passage?

One of the main suggestions the author comes up with is that one should always care about dividing the story or book into several logically interconnected paragraphs to find out the main theme of each of them. First of all, with the help of this, one may look at both the characters and the philosophical implications of the story in a deeper way. The second positive thing about dividing the text into several paragraphs is that this reading technique is useful for the process of remembering the plot of the story in details. Moreover, the in-depth reading usually enables the readers to look at the things described in the book from quite a different perspective.

The professional usage of various rhetorical devices, such as, for example, metaphors and repetitions enable the author to provide the target readership with the highly thought-provoking and informative narration based on the author’s personal experience. In addition to this, the confident tone implied by the author makes the story description look vibrant and fulfilled at the same time. It is easy to follow the writer’s manner and feel everything the way the main character of the story does. The other thing to mention here is that the tone of narration sounds quite inspirational and positive. The story of a clever and stubborn Indian boy can become a good source of inspiration to everyone who feels problems with defining his or her identity in the educational or working environment.

All in all, it is necessary to mention that the story made us reconsider my views upon the perspective of reading and writing processes. Thus, it has taught us that people should always try to get rid of any stereotypes concerning one’s nationality and the corresponding intellectual level. This short story has explicitly shown us that the Indian people are the human beings, just like the rest of us, and that they can be both extremely smart and intelligent. The world has created various stereotypes about the Native Americans which, in fact, do not reflect the real situation at all. Whatever pathetic it may sound, the truth is that, as long as people would never mind being led by those numerous silly stereotypes about different nations, the society will face endless war conflicts and considerable misunderstanding between people will never come to its end. That is why we would highly recommend the fascinating story “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” to everyone who is interested in improving their reading or writing skills, as well as to those international students who is studying abroad and are constantly suffering from being morally abused or mistreated by their colleagues and majority of professors. Now it will not be complicated for you to make Superman and Me Sherman Alexie summary.

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