Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, welcome to Talk Easy, a weekly podcast
Speaker 1: of intimate interviews with the people shaping our culture. I'm saying, fragoso,
Speaker 1: thank you, tuning in a reminder off the top if
Speaker 1: you can do kindly consider giving us a review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: I'm not even saying to give us a review on iTunes,
Speaker 1: just maybe you know, consider giving us one. Reaching new
Speaker 1: listeners when a show is new like ours is really
Speaker 1: incredibly hard, so anything you could do to help us
Speaker 1: grow would be much appreciated. This week on the podcast,
Speaker 1: we have beloved novelist, poet, and filmmaker Sherman Alexey. Born
Speaker 1: on an Indian reservation and spoke Anne Washington, Alexey is
Speaker 1: unafraid to write what he knows, while still daring to
Speaker 1: venture outside his comfort zone. A great deal of his
Speaker 1: books revolve around Indian Americans of all varieties, from poverty
Speaker 1: stricken natives on the reservation to middle to upper class
Speaker 1: college freshman leaving home and their ancestry to start anew.
Speaker 1: In the case of his most critically and publicly acclaimed book,
Speaker 1: The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian, the
Speaker 1: protagonist is essentially Sherman himself. The two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: National Book Award winner, is about a quick witted, bookish
Speaker 1: team who begs his parents to leave the reservation to
Speaker 1: attend an all white private high school. This pretty much
Speaker 1: parallel Sherman's childhood, which in conversation he describes as simultaneously
Speaker 1: joyful and painful. When we sat down, we talked about
Speaker 1: the criticism he often faces from the reservation, the need
Speaker 1: to be seen, and how maybe Bernie Sanders is not
Speaker 1: as revolutionary as we've made him out to be. But
Speaker 1: first we start with the fun stuff, the depression and
Speaker 1: loneliness that affects Sherman's life and work. So finally, here
Speaker 1: is Sherman Laxey. I rarely read outside of the curriculum
Speaker 1: in high school, but for some reason, my mom bought
Speaker 1: your book. I don't know why. What a crazy idea
Speaker 1: that was. She saw it and she's like, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: that just that sounds funny, it's not interesting. She brought
Speaker 1: it home, and again, inexplicably, I read. I read it
Speaker 1: in its entirety and throughout high school. It was pretty
Speaker 1: much in the top three of like the books I loved,
Speaker 1: And I think it was the loneliness of it. I
Speaker 1: definitely identified with that. I was like, God, damn, I
Speaker 1: just moved to California, Okay, and people who listened to
Speaker 1: this show kind of are familiar with that narrative, But
Speaker 1: I moved. I didn't know anyone. But you know it
Speaker 1: does with great literature movies or any art does it
Speaker 1: makes you feel just a little bit less alone. A
Speaker 1: friend and I had a very similar email conversation about this.
Speaker 1: We were both trying to, uh, we're trying to that
Speaker 1: we got happy or at least sane when we turned
Speaker 1: our childhood loneliness into adult solitude, and the difference between
Speaker 1: the loneliness and solitude that solitude is something powerful and
Speaker 1: energizing and renewing, and loneliness is just sad, yeah, and
Speaker 1: self destructive. So uh, and you don't feel that loneliness anymore,
Speaker 1: oh constantly. I'm not an adult yet, So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because I mean, the weird thing is I've created this
Speaker 1: job where I'm alone all the time, right, that's the
Speaker 1: job of being a writer. Yeah, And I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't think people understand that. Uh. And and in
Speaker 1: fact that the more successful you get, the more time
Speaker 1: you're going to spend a loan right, because you're going
Speaker 1: to be on the road promoting your books, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be going to college is to speak. Uh and and
Speaker 1: I mean I have two million flyer miles over the
Speaker 1: last twenty four years. You're like George cliney and up
Speaker 1: in the air. Yeah, exactly. You know, I'm a little
Speaker 1: better with metaphors and not and about twelve percent as handsome,
Speaker 1: so twelve percent less handsome, twelve percent as handsome as handsome,
Speaker 1: like I'm in the twelve percent time and uh and
Speaker 1: and it's it's you know, if you have a substance issue,
Speaker 1: if you have an addiction issue, if you know, if
Speaker 1: you're have mental problems, emotional problems, and you're in the
Speaker 1: midst of being a writer, it just it just it
Speaker 1: makes it worse. I think that's why so many writers
Speaker 1: fall apart, and less so now though it's interesting because
Speaker 1: less so I think because we have more medication. I
Speaker 1: think Hemingway would have really been better off in this
Speaker 1: era because somebody would have been doping him with with,
Speaker 1: you know, some serotonin controlling substance or another. At least
Speaker 1: that's my hope, is that he'd be a happier dude.
Speaker 1: Because we know more about the various mental illnesses that
Speaker 1: can harm artistic minded folks. But you know this firsthand, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, oh yeah, I'm bipolar and I'm depressive. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the old term for it, which
Speaker 1: is actually much more descriptive, much more poetic. Manic depressive
Speaker 1: says more about what it is than bipolar. Bipolar makes
Speaker 1: it seem geographical. I'm that adjective. Yeah, I mean jumping
Speaker 1: right into it. But I you know, has it gotten better?
Speaker 1: Has it gotten better for me? Yeah? It isn't like
Speaker 1: is it easier now? Well I'm medicated. Well, the big
Speaker 1: thing is the big, biggest difference in being diagnosed and
Speaker 1: medicated mostly properly because because it varies, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're really trying to catch up all the time to
Speaker 1: your own brain. But I sleep, Uh, I sleep, And
Speaker 1: that wasn't a thing you would do. No. I was
Speaker 1: an insomniac for from the age of six till the
Speaker 1: age of thirty or forty one. So for thirty five
Speaker 1: years I was an insomniac. And then about three months
Speaker 1: after getting the right combo of drugs what is that,
Speaker 1: I slept cocktail. Yeah, I take three different things. I
Speaker 1: mean I have. I'm a you know, I am a
Speaker 1: uh if you, if you, if you put metals on
Speaker 1: the chest of the mentally ill, you know, some people
Speaker 1: would be private first class and some people would be
Speaker 1: five star gen roles. I'm somewhere in the middle of
Speaker 1: the mental illness metals. You keep a sense of humor
Speaker 1: about all this. Oh well, I mean you have to.
Speaker 1: I mean you don't have to. Well, well, then you
Speaker 1: then you turn into an asshole. Yeah, you either, because
Speaker 1: I mean if you don't, I mean, if you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I granted, my case is not so bad that it
Speaker 1: leaves me on the streets, you know it, you know,
Speaker 1: but it certainly gives me more empathy for people on
Speaker 1: the streets when I see them and I think, well,
Speaker 1: they have what I have. They just have it worse, right,
Speaker 1: But in order to survive it, you have to be
Speaker 1: funny about it for me at least. And I mean
Speaker 1: it's all connected to being native as well. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm not only mentally ill. I'm a reservation raised Native American,
Speaker 1: and that stuff bleeds into each other. I mean, I
Speaker 1: could possibly be mentally ill because I'm a reservation Native American.
Speaker 1: You know, the descendant of genocide? Does that do it? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, there's a study I read about I think
Speaker 1: it was John Hopkins where they took these rats and
Speaker 1: they subjected these rats to electric shock. I like when
Speaker 1: people compare human beings to rats, But go ahead, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with it. And that said something about you, and yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with comparing myself to any animal. And they
Speaker 1: they subjected him to a shock, an uncomfortable shock, when
Speaker 1: they went into a certain room. And so this this
Speaker 1: generation of rats, they did this too. And then those
Speaker 1: rats had babies, and then the babies were put in
Speaker 1: that situation, and the babies avoided that room without having
Speaker 1: ever been taught by their parent rat to avoid that room.
Speaker 1: So the memory of that pain was in the DNA.
Speaker 1: And there have been other studies, psychological, poetic poems, literature
Speaker 1: about that idea that pain is genetic, that the memory
Speaker 1: of pain is genetic. So when you're talking about a
Speaker 1: people Native Americans like me, like all the rest of
Speaker 1: us in this country, the memory of the genocide, the
Speaker 1: memory of the massacres, the memory of the loss is
Speaker 1: in our DNA. And then add that on top of
Speaker 1: the loss, we actually experience in our own time. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's exponential, it's a lot, it's exponential. So how
Speaker 1: could we not, you know, have mental and emotional problems?
Speaker 1: When did you know as a kid? I mean you know,
Speaker 1: you look back once you get the official diagnosis, and
Speaker 1: then you look you think, well, hey, maybe when I
Speaker 1: was seven and would stay up all night, that probably
Speaker 1: wasn't a good thing. So, I mean I was six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight when I would stay up all night obsessed with something.
Speaker 1: What were you obsessed about? Oh? Projects? Sometimes they had,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was school. Sometimes one of the the things
Speaker 1: I would do is I would get graph paper and
Speaker 1: I would color in the squares. I would stay up
Speaker 1: all night filling in graph paper and just just because
Speaker 1: you like graph paper, and just because I needed to
Speaker 1: do that, the obsessive nature of it, the I mean,
Speaker 1: I have obsessive compulsive disorder too, but the idea, and
Speaker 1: I think trying to have structure, trying to finish something,
Speaker 1: and then just this energy pouring out that I needed
Speaker 1: to express in some way, and I had less options.
Speaker 1: When you're an eight year old, you don't have a
Speaker 1: whole lot of options for a manic period, right, And
Speaker 1: I don't even you know, looking at the literature now,
Speaker 1: I don't think they even believe that an eight year
Speaker 1: old can be bipolar. I don't, Yeah, but certainly I
Speaker 1: was obsessive. And what was I? Was I pre bipolar?
Speaker 1: Was I pre depressive? I don't know, but I knew.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many words you get to have
Speaker 1: now for what you are. Yeah. I had no words
Speaker 1: back then other than weird. You were just called weird.
Speaker 1: I was weird. Does your narrative of leaving the reservation
Speaker 1: followed the protagonist and the absolute true diary and that
Speaker 1: you know, like kid goes to school and he's he's
Speaker 1: using the same textbook as his mother. Yes, that happened exactly.
Speaker 1: So that so this is not the semi out of broadcast.
Speaker 1: It's pretty out of a graphical. It took me a
Speaker 1: year to get up the courage to leave, though in
Speaker 1: the book he leaves immediately, but in my real life
Speaker 1: it took me a year. What was that, You're like, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty bad because in order to gain the courage, I
Speaker 1: was telling everybody around me that I was leaving. So
Speaker 1: I turned it into a ceremony. Oh, like Kobe Bryant, goodbye.
Speaker 1: I hate Kobe Bryant. That's so oh my god, is
Speaker 1: that what I did? I did a Kobe Bryant farewell
Speaker 1: turned And when did they beat me up? I deserved
Speaker 1: to get beat up. I deserve to get beat up.
Speaker 1: I was being Kobe Bryant Immediately. When I say Kobe Bryan,
Speaker 1: I'm like, God, damn it. How did I just compare
Speaker 1: him starting a new and leaving the reservation to Kobe Bryant?
Speaker 1: You know? But I mean, but I think I better thing.
Speaker 1: I think it's apt. I think that's how I probably
Speaker 1: I was perceived. You were by the other people, hated
Speaker 1: by most, but really talented and gifted. Hey, and it
Speaker 1: was a completely selfish move on my part to leave,
Speaker 1: to leave completely individualists. But how old are you here? Thirteen? Yeah?
Speaker 1: There was no teamwork involved though, and that's a thing.
Speaker 1: But I was part of a tribe, right, I was
Speaker 1: part of a tribe with all those social expectations. But Sherman,
Speaker 1: when has a teenager ever acted anything but selfishly? Well,
Speaker 1: But we don't get to have that. Nobody talks about
Speaker 1: us that way. We don't get to have those discussions
Speaker 1: about ourselves as Native Americans. Everything about us from birth,
Speaker 1: tell death, is put in terms of the tribe, put
Speaker 1: in terms of well, how Indian is that? Huh? You know,
Speaker 1: we live inside this giant Edith Wharton novel where there's
Speaker 1: so many social manners and rules. I mean, people white
Speaker 1: liberals especially love to think of the Native American world
Speaker 1: that's so free flowing, you know, and it's not. It's
Speaker 1: incredibly rigid and conservative. Tribalism by definition is fundamentalism. So
Speaker 1: I grew up in a fundamentalist environment, so that even
Speaker 1: making what would be viewed by the rest of the
Speaker 1: world as something typically teenager, we don't get that luxury
Speaker 1: in our culture of thinking of it that way, but
Speaker 1: you got the luxury. Well. I had amazing parents, as dysfunctional,
Speaker 1: alcoholic as they were. They let me go wide dysfunction, pain, agony,
Speaker 1: mental illness. They were they were happy with each other. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were happy with each other.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were happy with anything. So,
Speaker 1: but they that a common thing in reservation. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a common thing in the whole world. What's
Speaker 1: what's the divorce rate in the United States? My family? Yeah? Ye,
Speaker 1: are your parents together? No, it's not a common thing,
Speaker 1: but white folks in the Bay Area on the Bear.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, you know my parents, my mom and
Speaker 1: my dad, my mom my dad, because I know they're listening.
Speaker 1: They split up when I was one. Oh so I
Speaker 1: don't remember that, So you don't. You didn't have the fracture,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot. Yeah, but the marriage fracture. No,
Speaker 1: ahead of their marriage, like like we can go on
Speaker 1: and other they punish each other. No, no, no, they
Speaker 1: were good to each other. Okay, yeah, what about your parents.
Speaker 1: Oh no, they're always nice to each other, to each other, yeah,
Speaker 1: but not to you. No, they're nice to me. They
Speaker 1: were just sad, I mean, you grew up sad because
Speaker 1: they felt trapped, trapped because of their lives. I mean
Speaker 1: my dad's my dad's dad died in Okinawa in World
Speaker 1: War Two when my dad was five, and then his
Speaker 1: mom died of tuberculosis six months later. So my dad
Speaker 1: was an orphan raised by his grandparents. So extensive loss.
Speaker 1: And then what we talked about earlier, the genetic memory
Speaker 1: of genocide racism. My mom got married at fifteen and
Speaker 1: had a baby at sixteen. So when you tell them
Speaker 1: I have to go, I can't be here anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're okay with them, they said, okay, And then for
Speaker 1: five years you are an outliar here, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is unprecedented. Yeah, so you just got luck to
Speaker 1: completely luck that you have two parents, and then tribe
Speaker 1: are like okay, okay, And then they did all sorts
Speaker 1: of things over the next five years to make sure
Speaker 1: I could keep going to school there. Yeah, they weren't upset.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course they were upset and sad. I
Speaker 1: mean when I mean, I have a nineteen year old
Speaker 1: and the fourteen year old now and they'll be leaving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's coming. Yeah, and I'm sad. Yeah, but I know
Speaker 1: it's necessary. Yeah, And usually that doesn't happen when your
Speaker 1: kid is thirteen. No, no, and that and that, and
Speaker 1: that they knew and I think I knew that in
Speaker 1: leaving at thirteen, I mean I still lived at home,
Speaker 1: but I went to a different school. I think in
Speaker 1: leaving the reservation that way, I think they knew I
Speaker 1: was gone forever, that I was fundamentally changing my destiny.
Speaker 1: You went to predominantly white, it was school, completely white.
Speaker 1: My first year there, it was me, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: my sisters and then a friend and over the years
Speaker 1: a few more folks, but when I went there, I
Speaker 1: was the only brown person in the entire building. Do
Speaker 1: you have a guarly vivid memory from that that has
Speaker 1: not been written in that book? Because that book is you.
Speaker 1: I think you and I can both say that book
Speaker 1: is the semi autobiographical. Is bullshit? Is? Well? No, because
Speaker 1: it's it's not bullshit because there are invented Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are. There's inventions. There's enough Invengeance to call
Speaker 1: it fiction. And he's smarter than I was. He was
Speaker 1: more self aware. Yeah, I was very reflexively acting. I
Speaker 1: wasn't pondering the future. I was just saving my ass.
Speaker 1: So uh, but a moment I have well, I mean
Speaker 1: I uh, I mean, it's like some of the profound racism,
Speaker 1: it's not in the book. Maybe we'll make it into
Speaker 1: the sequels if I ever finish them. But I was
Speaker 1: in the Future Farmers of America and there was speech contests,
Speaker 1: and I was really good at that speech, and I
Speaker 1: was a heavy favorite in state and in the semifinals
Speaker 1: I spoke and it was extempering in your speech, where
Speaker 1: you'd get a topic and then you'd have twenty minutes
Speaker 1: in a room to write a speech, and then you'd
Speaker 1: have to deliver a twenty minute speech with twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of writing. And now you knew there was like two
Speaker 1: hundred topics. You knew all the topics you could possibly
Speaker 1: get right. So but still, I mean, there's an incredible
Speaker 1: test of the lot that's quick. Yeah, and I was
Speaker 1: good at it. And semifinals we I did it, I
Speaker 1: got up, I did well. And then there was five judges.
Speaker 1: Three of them had me in first, one of them
Speaker 1: had me in second, and one had me in fifth
Speaker 1: out of five and it ended up being when you
Speaker 1: added up all the scores up that I ended up
Speaker 1: in third place yea, and didn't go to state finals.
Speaker 1: And we got the judge of scorecards back, and that
Speaker 1: judge who put me in fifth said, well, he needs
Speaker 1: a haircut, he has a funny accent. And all these
Speaker 1: things that she graded me down on were all physical
Speaker 1: appearance things, physical manifestations, and had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: my speaking ability, nothing to talk with my subject matter.
Speaker 1: It was a racist move and so one of the
Speaker 1: most important things to me doing that contest. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to go on to state because of a racist judge.
Speaker 1: What was her name I don't remember, and so and
Speaker 1: I ran into that a lot, you know, even in
Speaker 1: the community, just racist moments, like folks who didn't like
Speaker 1: it when I was captain of the basketball team because
Speaker 1: they thought they would say, well, it should be a
Speaker 1: who's from here, which which has almost never been said,
Speaker 1: like that's like such a strange qualification. Yeah, they most
Speaker 1: high schools recruit people from out of state and so yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's people become the captain to a kid from here.
Speaker 1: So I mean, how do you respond to stuff like that? Well,
Speaker 1: when you're a kid, you can't. I was alone. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a powerless feeling against it, because the thing is,
Speaker 1: I mean there's one person or two people or four
Speaker 1: people saying it allowed, but you have no idea how
Speaker 1: many people think that way and you have no allies
Speaker 1: in it. Maybe now they do. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I mean I am still and and thing as you
Speaker 1: get trained that way too. So even now when I
Speaker 1: run into situations like that, are feel that sort of
Speaker 1: thing happening? Do you hold yourself back? No, I don't
Speaker 1: look for allies. No, I fight now, I'm very loud, so,
Speaker 1: but I don't think to think about allies. You don't
Speaker 1: look for allies now because you think you wouldn't find them.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, it's interesting. I was in
Speaker 1: the green room for the writers here and a writer
Speaker 1: came up to me and she and she's younger, and
Speaker 1: she said, uh, you know, thank you for thank you
Speaker 1: for being here all these years. And I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean. She goes, wow, She goes, well, look
Speaker 1: in this room, this green room. I mean, I bet
Speaker 1: when you started, you were the only brown person in
Speaker 1: the room, weren't you. And I said, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, twenty two years ago, I was almost always
Speaker 1: the only brown person in the room. And now you know,
Speaker 1: things have changed. Now half the people in the room
Speaker 1: are brown. But I used to be alone. And I've
Speaker 1: never i mean, I'm going to start, I've never had
Speaker 1: another writer acknowledge that. I mean, it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: what just happened an hour and a half ago was
Speaker 1: and I'm I haven't had time to think about it,
Speaker 1: and now I'm thinking about It's really one of the
Speaker 1: most important moments in my literary career is being seen
Speaker 1: and being recognized and the accumulated weight. I mean, we
Speaker 1: started talking about loneliness when we started, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: the loneliness of being the only brown person in the room.
Speaker 1: And even when there's a lot of brown people, you're
Speaker 1: almost always the only Native American, right, the only one.
Speaker 1: And this woman, this black woman saw me. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's been really hard the last few years, says in
Speaker 1: Cultural Changes Inside. I mean, I'm I'm turning fifty and
Speaker 1: I was teasing you guys before we started talking about
Speaker 1: I mean this new generation of you know, brown liberals,
Speaker 1: brown skin liberals, radicals who are amazing and wonderful. And
Speaker 1: I love what they're doing and their energy. But uh,
Speaker 1: I get catch some grief because I'm part of a
Speaker 1: previous generation. Uh. And other writers like me catch grief
Speaker 1: because we're older, and so the generational stuff hurts. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and seeing you know, see, I mean I see like
Speaker 1: they create there, these you know, they have these multicultural
Speaker 1: groups of writers who have banded together as artists and
Speaker 1: active and I mean, I'm liked. Nobody even asked nobody
Speaker 1: even asked me to join that because there wasn't. We
Speaker 1: were fighting for crumbs. And now they have such power
Speaker 1: and community and visibility. And I'm jealous of the community
Speaker 1: they get to have and I get sad when I
Speaker 1: get judged for not having had what was never available
Speaker 1: to me. Hm, how do you get past that? I
Speaker 1: don't know, Maybe you don't. I think it's probably a
Speaker 1: function of every community, right, generational differences, you know. And
Speaker 1: there's some old rowdy people. Maybe I'll become even rowdy.
Speaker 1: I'm becoming one of those grandpa grandpa lefties, you know,
Speaker 1: swatting at people with McCain metaphorically and literally. You wrote
Speaker 1: a lot of books before The Absolute True Diary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty two of them, and yeah, I mean I'm still
Speaker 1: more leftist than all of them. You know. That's the
Speaker 1: one thing that gets me mad too, is the I'm baffled.
Speaker 1: I'm baffled by the you know, they're they're they're baffled
Speaker 1: by why I you know, like Brodie Sanders are Clinton
Speaker 1: to me are interchangeable? Interchangeable? I mean, I bet I
Speaker 1: could give a I bet I could write now, reel
Speaker 1: off twenty tweets by Clinton and Sanders and nobody would
Speaker 1: be able to tell me who wrote which one. Huh,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't uh? And do you think, Ah, that's not
Speaker 1: where I was gonna go with that, but that you
Speaker 1: went there. Yeah, you wouldn't. I would. I would the
Speaker 1: most committed Sanderite. I bet you I would fool them
Speaker 1: with Hillary Clinton's tweets. They'd go, yeah, Bernie, yeah, Bernie.
Speaker 1: And then I'd say, well, actually that was Hillary. You
Speaker 1: could do that. Yeah, and and And it's not that
Speaker 1: I'm some big fan of hers. It's just that there's
Speaker 1: no revolution happening with Bernie Sanders. He's an old, white,
Speaker 1: multi term United States Senator from Vermont. There was nothing
Speaker 1: revolutionary about him. You give me a lesbian Latina to
Speaker 1: vote for for Democrat, the Democrat nomination, and then then
Speaker 1: I'll believe your revolution is happening. So, uh, you give
Speaker 1: me a single lesbian Latina, not even a married one,
Speaker 1: because pretty soon married gay people are gonna be boring.
Speaker 1: So you know, we've we've got about two years of
Speaker 1: coolness for married gay people, and then they're gonna be
Speaker 1: just as politically boring as us straight married people, which
Speaker 1: is gonna be an awesome moment in civil rights history
Speaker 1: when when gay marriage is as boring as straight marriage.
Speaker 1: I don't know that's every gonna be in history textbooks. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: but in twenty twenty two, it appeared that it's all
Speaker 1: boring when you're married. Yes, exactly U and uh, but
Speaker 1: until then, you know, until then, it's incremental steps. And
Speaker 1: I think the fervor for revolution is real and beautiful
Speaker 1: and powerful, and we so wanted that. We've assigned this
Speaker 1: dude all this power and all this poetry when he
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve it. He's a standard leftist guy. It's a
Speaker 1: little more left. Ah, he's not more left than me.
Speaker 1: You want me to call a guy who's not more
Speaker 1: left than me revolutionary? No, but Sherman, you're not as senator,
Speaker 1: you know, senatorial aspirations. And then exactly right, But it's
Speaker 1: kind of good you didn't because you have to do
Speaker 1: the thing that you are particularly good at. Yeah, so so.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, I would be deliriously happy if
Speaker 1: he was the president, Bernie, Yeah, I'd be incredibly happy.
Speaker 1: And then as I was incredibly happy when Obama got elected, right,
Speaker 1: did that feel revolutionary? Yeah? And because because of his race, right,
Speaker 1: not because of his politics. And then look what happened.
Speaker 1: He became a president of the United States, and you're not.
Speaker 1: The president of the United States has to do number one,
Speaker 1: has to govern a country of incredible political diversity. Also,
Speaker 1: presidents have to bomb people, right, I don't have to,
Speaker 1: but it seems that it's kind of inevitable. There's a
Speaker 1: choice they have to make, right, and there in fact
Speaker 1: they're making choices we don't even know about it, and
Speaker 1: they're protecting us from things we don't even know about,
Speaker 1: some things I don't want to know about exactly, and
Speaker 1: I end up no, that's just the thing that happens, though,
Speaker 1: is that the far left is disappointed with him. I
Speaker 1: think he has been a B plus a minus president.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. Who's the
Speaker 1: last B plus A minus president? Uh fdr and and
Speaker 1: uh uh. And the things that would happen is Bernie's
Speaker 1: Bernie would come in with all the fervor that Obama
Speaker 1: did behind him, and then Burnie would have to govern,
Speaker 1: and then Bernie would run into all the same problems
Speaker 1: of being even more problems, I think, yeah, right, I
Speaker 1: think his leftist politics would actually meet more resistance than
Speaker 1: Obama's blackness, probably because Obama is actually, you know, he's
Speaker 1: a middle of the he's a he's a he's a
Speaker 1: moderate lefty left. Yeah, yeah, he's left. He's not a
Speaker 1: moderate he's a moderate lefty, right, there's a difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and you seem particularly riled up about this.
Speaker 1: It's it's I mean, the Bernie thing is a bunch
Speaker 1: of white people. He had again telling me what I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to think. And you've had this to your whole
Speaker 1: My whole life is whether it's white conservatives or white
Speaker 1: liberals telling me what I'm supposed to think. Give me
Speaker 1: a brown leader. I had one, he had eight year,
Speaker 1: good years. Now give me another one. Right. Yeah. If
Speaker 1: if so, if these Bernie acts actually want a revolution,
Speaker 1: then then next time, let's see you support that lesbian latina.
Speaker 1: I think I'm in favor of that. Yeah, and doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be lesbian latina. Just give me, give me,
Speaker 1: give me a Spanish speaking brown woman. You say it,
Speaker 1: and if you know, if you build it, they will
Speaker 1: come exactly. So bring me that, you know, make that happen.
Speaker 1: All you, all you white people listening to this because
Speaker 1: you have all the power. Yeah, that's that's also what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's it's you feel powerless still, No, not me,
Speaker 1: but my people are. I don't feel powerless at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually have a lot of social political power. Do yeah.
Speaker 1: So no, it's not me. I'm talking about brown people
Speaker 1: in general. It's not brown people leading this. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you when you go, what is the reservation's response
Speaker 1: to your work? And obviously that's you know, in the
Speaker 1: rough in the early years, it was rough before before
Speaker 1: because and the reason I mentioned that you had written
Speaker 1: all those books is that like most people did discover
Speaker 1: you as I did through the young adult book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I'm still wondering how you felt about that. Oh
Speaker 1: it's awesome, Okay, good, Yeah, I don't know. You wrote
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff, a lot of really great stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but I mean I'm I had that great career.
Speaker 1: I still have a great career. Yeah, and those great books.
Speaker 1: If I'd never written True Diary, I'd still have a
Speaker 1: great career. Yeah. So no, I'm happy with it all.
Speaker 1: And the great thing is is watching the younger readers
Speaker 1: who read my Team book. I mean it's been uh
Speaker 1: nine years now, yeah, so I'm watching What's happening now
Speaker 1: is that people who read me in junior high are
Speaker 1: graduating college and and but the thing that happens is
Speaker 1: is they read that book and then as they get older,
Speaker 1: they find my other books so it's been amazing too.
Speaker 1: I just don't have fans from different generations. Now I
Speaker 1: have fans, and as they move through their own generation,
Speaker 1: like it's kind of beautiful series. Yeah, that people who
Speaker 1: are with me. Now there are fourteen year old people
Speaker 1: who are now, you know, twenty three years old, and
Speaker 1: they've been with me the whole time. So it's it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And now I think, because I've written a picture book,
Speaker 1: I think, Wow, what if what if eventually, eventually, like
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, you're planned in the seat. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna meet some person who said, I first read you
Speaker 1: for the first time when I read Thunderboy Junior the
Speaker 1: picture book. My mom read it to me. My mom,
Speaker 1: I love that book, my mom. I'm gonna hear that
Speaker 1: someday some kids get some kids, some college graduate's gonna
Speaker 1: say to me, my mom read your picture book to
Speaker 1: me all the time. You know, it's amazing, Sherman, Is
Speaker 1: that how excited you are? And I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in any sort of sarcastic way.
Speaker 1: I mean completely genuinely. It's like, um, you know, I
Speaker 1: I do a lot of these yeah, and people just
Speaker 1: don't want to express like the goodness of their career,
Speaker 1: like then the good things that are happening. Oh, and
Speaker 1: like they're the I's not it's not even about humility.
Speaker 1: It's just like they don't they almost don't acknowledge that
Speaker 1: it even exists. And there's so much like excitement, and
Speaker 1: I wish I could and there's like a video of
Speaker 1: you so people could see this. Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the thing is politics. We're just talking politics, and it
Speaker 1: makes me feel sad and cynical, and it makes me
Speaker 1: get it makes me get angry. You're angry. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it does because and the thing is it does it
Speaker 1: to everybody. Yeah, because it's supposed to and it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing is really the thing is the
Speaker 1: thing when it comes down to is when you're talking
Speaker 1: if you really want a representative democracy, if you want
Speaker 1: a country that represents the will of the people, very
Speaker 1: little should ever happen stagnation. Everything should be incremental, incremental,
Speaker 1: which people then in turn perceibist diagnation right and and
Speaker 1: and in fact, in the United States, incremental has sped up.
Speaker 1: I mean it's sort of been this thing where social
Speaker 1: change happened over decades and then it was over years
Speaker 1: and then it was over. I mean, I'm astonished how
Speaker 1: fast gay marriage became federal astonished, But this country grew
Speaker 1: up that quickly, and I think that's going to continue
Speaker 1: to happen. But but but it still fights, fights, fights, fights, fights,
Speaker 1: and nothing feels good. Even when something I agree with happens.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel good, like when when Sanders or Clinton
Speaker 1: defeat Trump in the fall, and it's going to be
Speaker 1: Clinton when he defeats, it's going to be so filled
Speaker 1: with anger and frustration all over the place, and it's
Speaker 1: just going to feel ugly. But today in Berkeley, I
Speaker 1: read my book outside in the park here and I
Speaker 1: had kids reading with me, performing with me, four kids
Speaker 1: who had volunteered. And then as I was reading the
Speaker 1: end of the book, like she was maybe three, three
Speaker 1: year old girl ran out from the crowd and was
Speaker 1: standing there and I held the mic up to her,
Speaker 1: and then she started reading the book with us. How
Speaker 1: could I mean, the collected joy of the storytelling in
Speaker 1: that moment drew that little girl pulled her into wanting
Speaker 1: to become part of the story too. Just beautiful and amazing,
Speaker 1: and there's no way to feel cynical about it. There's
Speaker 1: no age. It was just beauty. And in my career
Speaker 1: there I mean, and I forget. I forget. I get
Speaker 1: so wrapped up in the minutia of my job as
Speaker 1: a writer of promotion and book selling and numbers and royalties,
Speaker 1: and I get wrapped up in it. Sometimes, but invariably,
Speaker 1: somebody will show up with and do something that is
Speaker 1: so spectacular to remind me of why I'm doing it.
Speaker 1: That little girl yesterday and Dallas, a Native woman named Jody,
Speaker 1: had read about how much I liked Prince and how
Speaker 1: sad I was about his death. She made me a
Speaker 1: beated Prince button. Wow, that's nice. So I know through
Speaker 1: books I can change the world. Because I have read
Speaker 1: so many books that have changed my world. I know
Speaker 1: I can do it there. I know I can make
Speaker 1: a positive contribution to human beings in a way that
Speaker 1: I never could with politics. And it started in part
Speaker 1: I think that the songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, right,
Speaker 1: I just know. Yeah, when you opened that book, is
Speaker 1: that in the light Bulb? That anthology of contemporary Native
Speaker 1: American Poetry that was in nineteen eighty seven, what is that?
Speaker 1: Twenty nine years ago. Yeah, opened that book up and
Speaker 1: twenty nine. Yeah, so that's yeah, twenty yeah. I read
Speaker 1: a book first time. I read poems by natives, anything
Speaker 1: written by contemporary Native American first time ever. And the
Speaker 1: one poetry line that killed me by Adrian Lewis's friend
Speaker 1: of mine now Piot Indian. Oh, uncle Adrian, I'm in
Speaker 1: the reservation of my mind. I'm in the reservation of
Speaker 1: my mind. I read that and that was it. Boom,
Speaker 1: I knew, I this is what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to write things like this. Did you think
Speaker 1: you were gonna use that and put it in the
Speaker 1: first chapter of Ten Little Indians? Oh? I had no
Speaker 1: concept of that at all. Uh, I'd had no concept
Speaker 1: that this was gonna happen to me. Who but this
Speaker 1: career has done. I mean, how could a I mean
Speaker 1: that I laugh because you know sometimes you hear that thing,
Speaker 1: Oh you're you're just pandering. You're right, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Oh you're successful a little And I laugh. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was twenty years old, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: the way to fame and fortune homes about Native Americans.
Speaker 1: Love it. People gonna eat that. It's gonna be like
Speaker 1: Jane Austin Mills. They're gonna eat that. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: so uh and and well yeah, I just I love
Speaker 1: my job. I love my job. I love my job.
Speaker 1: I love my job. And it's never waivered. It waivers,
Speaker 1: But when from beginning? When does that happen? When it wait?
Speaker 1: When it is the waiver? Yeah, you know the worst
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened to I mean, I live in
Speaker 1: You know, Native American world is very gossipy. All worlds
Speaker 1: are gossipy, but Native American world is very good because
Speaker 1: it's so small and we all know each other. Plus
Speaker 1: you've broken the threshold. And what hurts the most and
Speaker 1: what most often makes me feel like giving up or
Speaker 1: hating my job is when I get criticized by other
Speaker 1: Native Americans in unfair ways. That hurts the most. Does
Speaker 1: that happen often? Yeah? I think, like, what are the criticisms?
Speaker 1: I know it comes out of the same stuff I
Speaker 1: got when I was young. You know, what I'm doing
Speaker 1: is not Indian enough or the wrong kind of Indian thing,
Speaker 1: or or it's always it's always Native American criticisms of
Speaker 1: each There are always about how Indian is that right?
Speaker 1: How Indian is that? How Indian is that which what
Speaker 1: you are doing. But you're forty nine and then accomplished.
Speaker 1: Now you're not thirteen. Yeah, oh, you never stop being
Speaker 1: thirteen and twelve. You never stop being You never stop
Speaker 1: being every age that you've ever been. That's a good quote.
Speaker 1: But what I mean by that is not to take
Speaker 1: down from your great poetic quote, because this is poetic
Speaker 1: and beautiful sermon. But when you do get those criticisms,
Speaker 1: I don't imagine you just just just taking him. They hurt.
Speaker 1: And I'm responding now in a way, but not specifically
Speaker 1: right because because why it's boring and the thing is
Speaker 1: me engaging with that makes it seem like it's a
Speaker 1: legitimate criticism, but it is. You're hurt by it. No
Speaker 1: makes it seem like it's important. It's personal, and it's
Speaker 1: important to me personally. But in terms of advancing the
Speaker 1: art of Native American literature, our criticism is archaic. M
Speaker 1: We're having the same conversations about Native American literature that
Speaker 1: that we had in nineteen eighty seven. The critical apparatus
Speaker 1: inside the Native American intellectual community has been having the
Speaker 1: same conversations since I started. Yeah, so by me engaging
Speaker 1: in it, it it sort of legitimizes archaic notions of criticism.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean have you have you pointed that out? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And they say and then they say, well, that's not
Speaker 1: very Indian of you to say, or some other, you know,
Speaker 1: archaic way of thinking about it. I know how you
Speaker 1: don't just you're a better person than I am. And well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not better person than hardling, anybody, serial killers,
Speaker 1: I'm better than dictators. I'm better then. I have a
Speaker 1: low bar for being better than what Why do you
Speaker 1: do that all the time? Why why are you putting
Speaker 1: yourself down so much? Because this is what's the point
Speaker 1: of this. It's a way of moderating my own behavior.
Speaker 1: Number one rules be suspicious of yourself, right, but I'm
Speaker 1: highly suspicious of myself. The number two rules should be
Speaker 1: don't hate yourself. Wow, I don't hate myself. You don't
Speaker 1: have to put yourself down all the time. Well, I
Speaker 1: kind of need that. I'm addicted to it. Although my
Speaker 1: uh my therapist once said to me, remember Sherman, that's
Speaker 1: self loathing is just another form of a narcissism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it totally is. I have a good therapist. She retired.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to find one new one for years?
Speaker 1: Really did you go for? She and I were together
Speaker 1: for twelve years and then and then she retired because
Speaker 1: she got old, I know, but I really like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I just come over for tea like me? That's
Speaker 1: not how more than you don't become friends with your therapist.
Speaker 1: I tried, and you shouldn't and your therapist shouldn't. He
Speaker 1: he didn't work at all, Yeah, didn't work. He was
Speaker 1: a kid. Yeah, he was good then and she was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah we yeah, did you try? No, but you'd like
Speaker 1: you want her to like you? Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: she did. Yeah, who knows that? Right? And in fact,
Speaker 1: I've kept I know where she's at. I've kept tabs
Speaker 1: on her in her in her retirement life. I've never
Speaker 1: contacted her. That sounds almost well killer there, Well, now
Speaker 1: you're back to this year. I'm just aware. I'm just
Speaker 1: aware of I'm aware of where she is and what
Speaker 1: she's doing in her corderoyea, and not like her personal stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm just aware of when she does professional things in
Speaker 1: her retirement because she just does an individual a counsel,
Speaker 1: but she does other things. She teaches people how to counsel. Right,
Speaker 1: so how long have you not been going to therapy. No,
Speaker 1: I've been going to therapy, just going to different people,
Speaker 1: trying to find the one that been going on five years.
Speaker 1: Oh that's hard. Yeah, and it's impossible. It's it's I'm
Speaker 1: doing that thing too. It's a romantic thing, right of
Speaker 1: of nobody lives up to her right. Did you have
Speaker 1: that with a girl? Uh? No, No, I never did
Speaker 1: that with it, but really romantically. You did it with
Speaker 1: a therapist, but you didn't do it romantically, partner. I mean,
Speaker 1: in fact, I don't even believe in that as in
Speaker 1: terms of romance. Really, that whole you know, love of
Speaker 1: my life thing, Yeah, it's a whole soulmate thing seems unlikely.
Speaker 1: You know. I have a poem about that. I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever published it. But I was flying into
Speaker 1: Do you want to recite it? I don't remember, have
Speaker 1: it memored. But I was flying into LA and I
Speaker 1: was pondering my my wife had sent me an email
Speaker 1: about a friend or her who was saying that, saying
Speaker 1: yet again, that she'd met her soulmate. She's met her
Speaker 1: soulmate anytime? Yeah, And uh, that whole term just kills
Speaker 1: me soul kills me, guarantees divorce and uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: because you can't, you know, you know you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't really shit in the same toilet with your soulmate.
Speaker 1: And uh and uh uh and uh. So I was
Speaker 1: flying into LA and LA is so huge, and there's
Speaker 1: so many lights, street lights, houselights. So as we were
Speaker 1: coming down, I started thinking doing math, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what you know there are I was probably seeing twenty
Speaker 1: millis the lights of twenty million people as I came in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I thought, okay, ten million women, right, And I thought,
Speaker 1: how many of those women would I find physically attractive?
Speaker 1: I'm very egalitarian. Out of those ten million women, I
Speaker 1: would have bet eight million, eight million, Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: find physically goods. Yeah. And then I but how many
Speaker 1: would find me physically attractive? Bless, significantly less. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: there are probably two million women on the flight path
Speaker 1: that would find me physically attractive enough to think about
Speaker 1: romance with. Have that two million? How many of are married?
Speaker 1: One million? So there's one million. How many are romantically involved?
Speaker 1: Otherwise another five hundred thousand, So I'm down to five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand single women. If I were a single hypothetically
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand. Okay, there's five hundred thousand women in
Speaker 1: this area. Yeah, that are that are? And how many
Speaker 1: would be compatible? Let's say they'd have to be book readers.
Speaker 1: I'd say, so, how many of them are serious book readers?
Speaker 1: That'd be the number one. But that would be is
Speaker 1: number one for you? Book? Oh yeah, books, bookish, bookish,
Speaker 1: bookish number one by far any before anything else, before
Speaker 1: anything else. Ok what's number two? Funny three? Height? Okay,
Speaker 1: we can stop there. Yeah, and uh so now now
Speaker 1: there's five hundred thousand, and I gotta go down bookish
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking probably what fifty thousand would be bookish
Speaker 1: enough for me? Centers? Fifty thousand would be bookish? Okay,
Speaker 1: So fifty thousand women who I think bookish? I mean,
Speaker 1: so ends up being fifty thousand, and how many of them?
Speaker 1: So I'm could I possibly meet even randomly? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So what it came down to me anyway? I didn't.
Speaker 1: There's more. It was a long equation in my head
Speaker 1: and this poem is all about this, and it came
Speaker 1: down to that in the Los Angeles metropolitan area are
Speaker 1: one thousand women I could spend my life with many Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then add that, you know, add that to Chicago, Miami,
Speaker 1: New York, DC. So in the country there's probably thirty thousand.
Speaker 1: But how do you do you find them? Know? What
Speaker 1: do you found someone? I found one of them, and
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly lucky. What age did you find her? I
Speaker 1: would have been It was in the nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: so I was twenty seven years old. I got incredibly lucky.
Speaker 1: I found one of them. What was the first meeting?
Speaker 1: I saw her in a chapel within a chapel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a chapel with with sunlight streaming through a window.
Speaker 1: What chapel? Whitworth College in Spokan. She was on the
Speaker 1: front of the chapel and I saw her in the
Speaker 1: light and I knew really, yeah that quickly. Yes, it's strange.
Speaker 1: You have these very um benchmarks. You remember the moment
Speaker 1: where you read this book, you know, and the book
Speaker 1: of poetry, and I had to beco writer. You say,
Speaker 1: you knew you were gonna marry this girl? Yeah, she
Speaker 1: didn't know. Well that's all. It's like, well, what if
Speaker 1: you really believe that? And then she was like no,
Speaker 1: I don't think so it could have easily. It could
Speaker 1: easily come out that I was not one of her
Speaker 1: one thousand? Right? Could it easily happen that way? And
Speaker 1: was it easy right away? No? No, she she, I
Speaker 1: had to she was dating another dude at the time,
Speaker 1: and you worked at it. I had I had to win.
Speaker 1: You see this as winning. I won her heart? Man,
Speaker 1: Jane Austen, Shit, yeah, did you write letters? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean the thing is it all cultures and at
Speaker 1: all times, the guy who can write poems is gonna win.
Speaker 1: I think that's a universal truth. Exactly, you have an
Speaker 1: unfair advantage over most people, I would say, exactly. So, Um,
Speaker 1: you know the goal when you talk about diversity, when
Speaker 1: you want more diversity in books, when you want more
Speaker 1: diversity in art, when you want more diversity inside of
Speaker 1: movies and TV. You know, I think some people get confused.
Speaker 1: Brown people think think it means. I think it edges
Speaker 1: into superiority sometimes, like the idea that we don't want
Speaker 1: are not superiority. They want the extraordinary, you know, they
Speaker 1: want heroes, when really we just want to be as
Speaker 1: ordinary as everybody else we want. I don't want my
Speaker 1: characters to be exotic, right or described as exotic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want. And I think that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that great things that's happened in my career is that,
Speaker 1: over the course of two decades, I think my fans
Speaker 1: read me because they want certainly or they want to
Speaker 1: read about natives. That's part of it, but really it
Speaker 1: ends up connecting to them in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 1: That's how I discovered you. I didn't. I didn't think
Speaker 1: about it. I want to know about Native Americans. No,
Speaker 1: I just was given a book. I was told it's
Speaker 1: funny and good, and I said, okay. And that's where
Speaker 1: we want to be, is to where we're just I mean,
Speaker 1: where we're part of the whole landscape of possibilities. And
Speaker 1: do you think you're inching. I've gotten lucky. I'm I've
Speaker 1: gotten incredibly lucky that I have a lot of fans
Speaker 1: where i'm I'm they love my work, and my nativeness
Speaker 1: is in their minds, as it should be, but there's
Speaker 1: also all sorts of other things in their minds. They
Speaker 1: need me for different reasons than that the idea I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the big thing is for most of my
Speaker 1: career it's been the way I write about my father
Speaker 1: and my relationship with my father, the relationship with the
Speaker 1: men in my life. How would you describe that painful
Speaker 1: failed father? Writing about the failed father, and in my
Speaker 1: whole career, I think that's been the strongest thing that
Speaker 1: people have responded to. And now you're a father. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I'm a failed one. I will
Speaker 1: find that eventually, But that's because so going back, someone
Speaker 1: made it a native. Critics think when I write about
Speaker 1: a failed father, I'm writing doing racial or ethnic stereotypes.
Speaker 1: And they never even they can't extrapolate that some white
Speaker 1: person who has a shitty father is reading me, not
Speaker 1: because I have a shitty Native American father, but because
Speaker 1: I have a shitty father, right, that they're reading me
Speaker 1: because we share that relationship, and that because I'm Native.
Speaker 1: It's a different way of looking at it. It expands
Speaker 1: people's world views of looking at the universal failed father universal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a white person. I'm going to read about a
Speaker 1: Native American version of it and expand my ideas about it.
Speaker 1: Why do you think it's universal. I'd probably have to
Speaker 1: get biological determine it, get all Darwinian about that good
Speaker 1: and and we have too much sperm men do you
Speaker 1: think that's the reason. I think that the very root
Speaker 1: of it it is, and then it becomes cultural and
Speaker 1: excess of sperm. Yeah, the biological. I mean, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: still animals. And so how have you been doing as
Speaker 1: being a dad? I mean, have you actively working on
Speaker 1: having less sperm? Yeah, let's go with that. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I got fixed, did you? Yes? When did that happen?
Speaker 1: Uh gosh, Oh my gosh, I mean fourteen years ago?
Speaker 1: Holy cow? And he just decided I had had to
Speaker 1: be done. Yeah. I don't want any more, right, We
Speaker 1: didn't want any more, my wife and I and I
Speaker 1: and regardless I didn't want anymore, right too. If she
Speaker 1: hadn't she and I had never worked, if she and
Speaker 1: I hadn't worked out, I wouldn't want anymore. His parenting
Speaker 1: been difficult at all. Uh, not in any extraordinary way,
Speaker 1: not in any earth chattering way. But I mean, do
Speaker 1: you ever think, um being like my dad here? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: my dad was absent a lot in my life. And
Speaker 1: currently I'm talking to you in a little room in Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and your family's and hundreds of miles away from my family, right,
Speaker 1: So yes, I think about the distance as I travel
Speaker 1: in my job in relationship to my father's absence in
Speaker 1: our lives. And do they perceive you as being absent?
Speaker 1: I tell them when I'm coming back, right, and I
Speaker 1: come back, you know, they know when I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: arrive in the house, and I always arrive when I
Speaker 1: say I'm going to arrive. I think it's the open
Speaker 1: ended absences that are very different, right, And so how
Speaker 1: do you reconcile with that? I don't. I won't ponder
Speaker 1: and worry and wonder. And my kids have had their
Speaker 1: own therapists for years. Do you worry that they don't
Speaker 1: think you're a good dad. I don't think they think that.
Speaker 1: What are you worrying about? That? My own pain and
Speaker 1: agony influencing the way I think about myself. I know
Speaker 1: that I think I'm a a minus dad. But it's
Speaker 1: like an Obama. Yeah, me and Obama. I've governed my
Speaker 1: I've been a father. They're like Obama has been a
Speaker 1: president mostly good, mostly good. You know, John killed the
Speaker 1: phil people. But that's okay. I think we can end
Speaker 1: on that. Thank you so much for doing this, Sherman. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Sam. Well, there it is. Thanks again to
Speaker 1: Lisa Morletta at Little Brown Books for Young Readers for
Speaker 1: helping arrange this interview. Another big thanks to Helena Brantley
Speaker 1: at the Bay Area Book Festival for providing a very
Speaker 1: pleasant recording space. If you can purchase Sherman's first picture book,
Speaker 1: Thunderboy Junior, now on Amazon and probably at a bookstore
Speaker 1: near you. And lastly, one final special thanks to Sherman
Speaker 1: for coming on episode ten of Talk Easy. If you're
Speaker 1: listening right now, do be sure to subscribe to the
Speaker 1: show on iTunes and SoundCloud or your favorite podcasting app.
Speaker 1: If you want to drop us a line about anything,
Speaker 1: please feel free to email the show at talk easypod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. You can also follow the show
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram at talk easypod. And lastly,
Speaker 1: if you have a spare moment in your hectic and
Speaker 1: crazy day, please do consider giving us a review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is provided by Vanilla. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is David Chen, graphics by Ian Jones, Technical assistance and
Speaker 1: photography by Garrett Frisbee. This week, the show is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Corey A. Tad. I'm your host, Sa Fragoso,
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Personal