War Dances

Sherman Alexie was born and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington not far from my hometown of Spokane, Washington. He is from the same generation as me and I read and enjoyed his first book of stories and poems, The Business of Fancydancing from 1992. But I never followed up on his writing for some reason. I often think the premise of some of his work didn't appeal to me on some level for some reason. But I recently read and enjoyed the short story "War Dances" from the The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010, so I decided to read the collection from 2010. This collection is a combination of poems and short stories. Some of it is uneven, but there are several aspects of the writing that is very specific to the region where Alexie and I grew up-so there are shared memories of places like the Fox theater, the YMCA on Maple, Gonzaga University, and the art of making mix tapes among other things. So I think I will investigate other short story collections and try a novel or two as well.