Award Winning Author Sherman Alexie Appearance in Missoula
Spokane/Coeur d'Alene based Native American author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie is coming to Missoula for a signing and reading.
Alexie is best known for his books and films Smoke Signals, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Reservation Blues and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Sherman Alexie is not only a very talented and award winning novelist and screenwriter, but also a poet and a very personable, fun-loving man. I'm excited that he's coming back to Missoula!
Sherman Alexie will share his new memoir "You Don't Have To Say You Love Me" with a reading and signing this Friday, July 7th, at the University Center. The reading begins at 7 p.m., is free and open to the public and hosted by Missoula's Fact & Fiction Books.
Family relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond with his mother Lillian was more complex than most. She plunged her family into chaos with a drinking habit, but shed her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything. She survived a violent past, but created an elaborate facade to hide the truth. She selflessly cared for strangers, but was often incapable of showering her children with the affection that they so desperately craved. She wanted a better life for her son, but it was only by leaving her behind that he could hope to achieve it. It's these contradictions that made Lillian Alexie a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated, and very human woman.
When she passed away, the incongruities that defined his mother shook Sherman and his remembrance of her. Grappling with the haunting ghosts of the past in the wake of loss, he responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is a stunning memoir filled with raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine, much less survive. An unflinching and unforgettable remembrance, YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME is a powerful, deeply felt account of a complicated relationship.