Living a Feminist Life in Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer

• In Event: Girl Power: Planting Seeds for Critical Reflection

Abstract

“To live a feminist life is to make everything into something that is questionable” (Ahmed, 2017: 2). This paper explores the meaning of this statement through a reading of Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer (1996), and a focus on its main female character, Marie. Marie's questioning provides an occasion for Alexie to critique a literary movement in which non-Indian authors write Indian books (Grassian, 2005: 104). “Thoughtlessly rebellious” according to her Indian Literature white professor, “a very vocal Indian student leader” according to the novel’s narrator, Marie is an exemplar of a feminist life of questioning, as this paper shows.

Presenter

• Dana Lloyd, Syracuse University