Jeremy Logan
The Communicator

“One of my mothers must have gotten it on with a jesuit,”
Sherman Alexie said. This was his way of explaining
his large amounts of body hair.
Alexie was the main speaker for a packed house that
gathered at SFCC’s Music/Performing Arts building last
Saturday night to support the Salish School of Spokane’s
efforts to preserve their language.
According to their website: “The Salish School of
Spokane is dedicated to creating a vibrant community
of fluent speakers of Interior Salish languages by
providing Salish language instruction to children and
by empowering parents and families to speak Salish in
their daily lives.” They teach Salish language immersion
to children from one to eight years of age.
Saturday night featured the Salish School’s children
performers who sang traditional salish songs, followed
by journal entry readings by SFCC students, and
finally guest speaker Sherman Alexie.
Alexie is the author of 24 books including the young
adult book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time
Indian,” which was recently banned in Meridian Idaho,
for it’s references to masturbation.
“My young adult book has been amongst the most
banned books in the last three years,” Alexie said. “The
number one banned book is, ‘Captain Underpants.’ How
sexually repressed and afraid do you have to be for ‘Captain
Underpants’ to be banned?
“He is shaped like an egg,” a kid from the audience
said.
“I know, that scares people,” Alexie said. “egg shaped
underpants people, scare conservative Christians.”
Alexie Also mentioned the book, “and Tango Makes
Three,” which has made the top ten list of most frequently
banned books. It’s a picture book based on a true story
about two adult penguins who were so close and loving
that when a baby chick lost its parents due to sickness,
The zoo administration had the two adult penguins adopt
the baby.
“And they did and its beautiful and amazing, but the
thing of it is… ,” Alexie paused before he added, “The
two adults were both males. And it was the most banned
book.”
“And I feel bad because it seems that the conservative
Christians in America are more afraid of little boys in
their underpants, and gay penguins than they are of Rez
(reservation) Indians.” Alexie said, “We need to step our
game up.”
He spoke a little about the school board meeting
that decide to ban his book. “It was some weird David
Lynch school board meeting, where people would
be crying when they talked about my book, and one
woman was crying saying, ’these children come from our
wombs’” Alexie said, “which is funny, but