There are so many short story collections postmillennium that convey exactly what the writer is all about (The interpreter of maladies, Olive kitteridge immediately come to mind). Ten Little Indians is no exception. The heartbreak of the modern Spokane Indian is palpable--S. Alexie is not only a master of his craft, he actually has valuable insights to contribute to the ongoing national discussion. He has something earthshatteringly Terrific & Terrible to say.

I picked this book up because I really wanted to read Alexie's other short story collection - The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (fabulous title!) and couldn't find it at the time. I'm not a fan of short stories, and I didn't enjoy this collection. But I can say that in my opinion the stories are well-written and if "bold, uncensored, raucous, and sexy" is your thing, then you might really enjoy the book. The story I enjoyed the most was "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" - telling the sto...

Awesome book. Very funny, deadpan. Also eye-opening, in that I had no idea there was (apparently, insofar as the stories are realisms) so much anti-Native racism in the Northwest. His dialogue is fantastic, especially when people talk past each other. Most people seem to think the "9/11 story" or the last, longest story are the show-stoppers; it certainly has the longest stretches of hard-fought transformation, and features a man and his (dying) father, and actually, like many of Alexie's storie...

Three stars is being generous, it's more like 2.5. Most of the stories seemed pretty pointless and even though the books "theme" was Indians, most of the stories had nothing to do with that. If the author deleted the sentence that told you the main character was an Indian, there wouldn't be anything. This was very disappointing.

The last few years I've been trying to read more short stories. It isn't a genre I really gave much time to in the past because I figured my TBR of full length novels was too long. I'm glad I've been expanding my reading horizons, though, even if some of the collections I've read have been hit or miss.However, Sherman Alexie never misses. These nine stories were fantastic, really taking me away. All of them were more or less set around where he lives and featured Spokane characters, many of whom...

White people looked at the Grand Canyon, Niagra Falls, the full moon, newborn babies, and Indians with the same goofy sentimentalism.

It’s been awhile since I’ve thought to myself “I’m too much of a prude for this” and felt bad about it. I certainly don’t mind erotic fiction, judging from my enjoyment of romance novels and explicit fan fiction. But there’s a difference between the happy-ending stuff and the stories in this, each of which contained an explicit sex scene or references to explicit sex. It was unexpected, for starters, since the summaries focus on Alexie’s (well-deserved) reputation for insightful, clear prose. It...

This is Alexie's PERFECT short story collection. Alexie is able to portray gender, poverty, humor, grief and death throughout these stories. I was most impressed by the way Alexie is able to "accurately" portray women and give them a voice through his own. There's a deep understanding of what it is to be human and what it is to live - to live darkly, to live humorously, to live with grief, to live with love.

LOVE

The 2004 short story collection, "Ten Little Indians," by Sherman Alexie, is another one of those beautiful and gut-wrenching masterworks that made me laugh a lot and made me cry. These nine stories are trenchant, bitterly uplifting, and focused on various themes surrounding Native American identity in the United States after September 11, 2001.The phrase "bitterly sarcastic" appears in this book, and while the author's ruthless wit can certainly deliver an abundance of cutting zingers, these st...

I love these short stories by Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian whose works I have read over the years. I guess it's time to admit that he is one of my favorites, and his collection Ten Little Indians is one of the greatest collections of short stories ever written by an Indian raised on a reservation.Particularly good were "The Search Engine," "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above," and the last story, "What Ever happened to Frank Snake Church."There is a gentleness about Alexie's stories t...

You would be hard pressed to find a better application for the phrase “I laughed, I cried” than this collection of short stories, almost all of which are built around tragedies and heartbreak, but you’ll be so busy laughing out loud at the author’s talent for finding humor and beauty in all aspects of the human experience that the pain cannot stop you from enjoying yourself.

"I'm not scared of the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world. Jerry and Pat aren't the ones crawling in and out of the sweat houses and pontificating about how much they admire Indian culture. I'm scared of the white liberals who love Indians. I figure about 75 percent of white liberals who hang around Indians will eventually start believing they're Indians, then start telling us Indians how to be Indian." (p. 140) (from "The life and times of Estelle Walks above")I picked this collect

I'm still trying to figure out how to say this:The thing I like best about short story collections (by a single author), if they're written well and compiled well, is the feeling I get, after reading each story, of comprehending an intimate secret the author needed me to understand. Poetry and novels both can (and do) knock me out, but there's something about the short story that can really get into my blood.I am in love with this book. I couldn't get enough of it while I was reading it. It acco...

Hmmm....after absolutely loving The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, this one was a little disappointing. And it's funny, because there were some stories (like "What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church?" and "The Search Engine") that revealed the same open-hearted, funny writer that I loved in Part-Time Indian. There were others that just didn't ring quite as deeply true and one ("Can I Get a Witness?") that I found actively distasteful. I still look forward to reading more Alexie --...

This is the second book by Sherman Alexis I’ve enjoyed reading over the past few months. Because Ten Little Indians is a collection of short stories, it’s a shame Good Reads doesn’t allow for rating each story. This collection contains an occasional two star short story, mostly three and four star short stories and a couple five star short stories. I found myself regularly comparing and contrasting this book with the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro and Jhumpa Lahiri’s book, Interpreter

This is the third short story collection I’ve read by Alexie (the others are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World). If you’ve read his stuff before, you know what you’ll get: great prose discussing identity, Native American culture, and Native American struggles. But while his stories revolve around similar topics, I’ve always found his characters distinct and unique (other than a fixation on basketball). Ten Little Indians is no different. We get fa...

This was an unexpected read. Voted on by my book club. A collection of mostly compelling short stories of modern day experiences of varying people from the Spokane Native American Tribe. Emotional, heartfelt, and poignant at times. Funny and mildly erotic at others. Covering a wide range of topics from family, destiny, to racism and mental health. The author I feel has a smoothness to his writing style that makes this book more of a “page turner” than it might otherwise seem”. My only major crit...

It is extremely rare for an author to bat .500+ in these collections, but most stories here stand on their own merit and would be worthy of a magazine highlight. Particularly high highs were: Lawyer's League, Can I Get a Witness?, Flight Patterns, and What Ever Happened to Frank Snake Church? Written in the immediate impact of 9/11, the fixation on terror and towers seems a little dated but the other themes (grief, familial love, well-meaning failure, the social power of ascribed identity) are t...

I confess I don't like short stories very much. I prefer long novels I can get lost in for days or weeks. Sherman Alexie is one exception. His short stories are so insightful, funny, or sad, that they contain worlds. This collection is no exception. From the political lawyer who yearns for his glory days as a basketball player to the broke, homeless wanderer who sees his grandmother's dance regalia in a pawnshop, these stories take you far away into a world you can get lost in.

my favorite was the last one with frank snakechurch

Short story collection that focuses on the Native American experience of integration into mainstream American society. Different characters in each story, but all educated Native Americans finding their way/voice. As this was published 2003, also focus on 9/11 impacts. Funny, off-beat, unique perspective.

The collection of short stories were different enough to keep me interested but connected enough to feel like a book! 😂 It’s storytelling at its best about the lives of the modern day Pacific Northwest American Indian - irreverent, funny, insightful, and heartbreaking. And the writing is good which is always a bonus!

Ten Little Indians is a book of nine short stories by Sherman Alexie each dealing with trying to come to terms with lives that are no longer traditional and they need to fit into American culture. Each story is linked not by characters or even setting (even though all the stories are set in Seattle), but by ideas and themes.The most obvious example are the Indians (that’s what they call themselves) in the stories are searching for new ceremonies for the lives they lead outside of tribal systems,...

A collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie.The first story, "The Search Engine," is the type of story that will make a lover of books fall in love with an author. The way Alexie talks about books and poetry and readers (and people in general) in the first part of the story is beautiful and poetic and insightful. The rest of the story is great, but that beginning just grabs your heart for all kinds of reasons."Can I Get a Witness?" is a crazy story about a woman in a post-September 11th terr...

Titled after a fantastic dialog between two non-white men as they described their identities to one another, (in describing his Spokane Identity, the protagonist in "Flight patterns" describes himself not as a 'bejeweled' Indian from India, but the 'bows-and-arrows Indian to a cabbie. The cabby replies, "Oh, you mean ten little, nine little eight little Indians?"), this collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie showcases his talent at describing social relationships. I admire his ability to

This is a book that asks you to look deep inside and ask, "Who are you?" A series of short stories of Indians living off the Rez, struggling with their cultural identities. Each story is about relationships, whether good or bad and how they impact your life and color your identity. There are definitely some mis-steps, as I found "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above," and "Do You Know Where I Am" to be over-long and vague. You will find so much to laugh and cry over, whether its a young, br...

3.5 stars!My favorites:"Do You Know Where I Am?" "What You Pawn I Will Redeem"Honorable Mentions:"The Search Engine""What Ever Happened To Frank Snake Church?"It's a personal preference, but I like short stories with a definitive ending. Even if stories end on a somewhat ambiguous note, it should feel natural -- almost like it doesn't make sense for it end any other way. Or, at least that's what I like. "Do You Know Where I Am?" ends perfectly. For some of the others, it feels like Alexie just w...

I liked this collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie. All of them feature Spokane Indian main characters who are trying to make their way in modern American society. Toward that end, they must decide how much they will reveal of themselves to other Indians and to (white) society at large. For example, the main character in "The Search Engine" attends college and reads voraciously, but she does not let on to others of her vibrant intellectual life. In "The Life And Times of Estelle Walks Ab...

This is book is a collection of short stories about identifying as a Native American. I found a lot of the stories related to "identifying as a Native American after 9/11"--or at least that was certainly a component to the story. When I checked how old the book was, it looked as though it had been written in 2003, so obviously this was a poignant subject for Mr. Alexie. Also, many of the stories mentioned George W. Bush, so this was obviously a real-life character that was having a strong impact...