Flight

A young teenage half-Indian, handed from one foster home to the next, involuntarily slips into the bodies of people in the past. What ensues is a journey through challenges to his and our views of what is right and what is wrong, wrapped up in unique settings and Native American history (at least for a European reader such as myself).Alexie keeps his story right in balance - it never becomes a sermon, it never becomes moralistic, and the time-travelling into other people's bodies never becomes corny. The book is very short, probably for this very reason, but it pulled me right in.The writing in the protagonist's voice cuts right to the core of his experiences, sometimes shockingly so (he is, after all, scarred by his abusive past). But this is a smart teenage boy, and as he reflects on the experiences of those people he temporarily "inhabits", he grows as a human being.Just as a warning: if you're expecting to have your romantic notions about Native Americans met, don't read this book. Reality is more beautiful, and more challenging than that.To others, I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

This is a book that takes off at a run and spins you along in its wake. I don't think it's a book for everyone - it got some quite mixed reviews - but I thought it was exceptional: witty, intense, fast-paced, and extremely thoughtful, with some very dark humour (the t-shirt saying, 'Fighting terrorism since 1492').It starts with a teenaged boy - an angry, anti-social, abused teenaged boy - examining his acne in the mirror in yet another foster home. He's so spotty that he calls himself Zits: we only find out his real name at the very end of the book. His mother died when he was a young child and his Native American father never acknowledged him. He's been passed from pillar to post for a decade. He's a runaway, an arsonist, a spanner in the works. A few pages along, and he's about to commit mass murder in the lobby of a bank.And then... he starts time travelling. First stop, an Indian reservation in the mid 1970s; second stop, Custer's Last Stand; third stop... and so it goes. Each time, he's in the head of one of the characters: he's an FBI man, an Indian child, a flying instructor and various others.From all of this he learns about betrayal and revenge and, oddly enough, forgiveness. You might read this book and say the ending is just too neat to be credible, but it moved me and gripped me to the very last word.

Slightly disappointing only in that it could have been longer and gone into more depth, but nevertheless an entertaining and enlightening read

Sherman Alexie is a profoundly beautiful writer who creates images and stories that speak directly to the heart. He bravely chronicles the challenges that face America as a whole, NOT just the plastic USA that is presented and promoted all over the world.This book left me stunned, grateful, humbled and angry.THANK YOU MR ALEXIE

One of the things I like about Sherman Alexie is how little he seems to care what anyone else thinks about what he is doing. He just does it. So "Flight" comes across to me as honest. I find honesty to be one of Alexie’s most appealing qualities as a writer.“Flight” is an exploration of how to grapple with and respond to oppression. One option is through violence: Alexie’s central character Michael, a.k.a. Zits, is a troubled teen driven out of desperation to the point of committing an atrocity. In the name of “justice,” which is both personified as a human character and symbolized in the form of firearms, Michael is prepared to commit a mass shooting of numerous, mostly Euro-American people who happen to be present when he goes to rob a bank.Michael is prevented from completing this violent act through a divine intervention which sends him traveling through time and across different personalities so that he can better understand who and where he is. In the course of his Flight, Michael considers his act within the context of such historical events as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, 9-11 and similar terrorist acts, and Ghost Dances performed by Indians who hoped to make Euro-Americans disappear entirely and forever.Michael remarks that Crazy Horse, “the greatest warrior in Sioux history[,] is a half-breed mystery” and concludes that a successful Ghost Dance would destroy not just Euro-America, but him along with it since he is the product of an intermarriage between an Indian and a Euro-American. Alexie frames the question of whether and how to exercise individual power over the lives and deaths of other people – not just in reality, but also in the imagination – in terms of whether Michael should be willing to kill a random Euro-American if it means he can have his deceased mother back. She was, incidentally, of Irish descent.Through his Flight, Michael is able to transcend himself and thus ultimately concludes that the violent choice would constitute an act of treason against humanity, and against his own sense of humanity. This conclusion is valuable to him not so much as an Indian person or as a complete and permanent solution to his personal problems, but as a young man in trouble who needs to acquire powerful psychological weapons to combat the effects of the negative, self-indulgent, and insensitive authority figures who traumatized him in his early life.Some of the people whom Michael inhabits during his Flight seem so different from him initially as to be anathema and impossible to connect to his own perspective. First, for example, he is forced to confront ugliness, irony, confusion, hypocrisy, and social complexity head-on in the shoes of a white FBI agent dealing with Indians who secretly collaborated with the agency on a reservation in the 1970s. Michael questions whether he can legitimately challenge the atrocities against Indians of the FBI agent whom he inhabits if he himself was willing to shoot random bystanders during a bank robbery. Believing he has already committed the mass shooting and after spending some time living from the agent’s perspective, Michael decides he is no better than the FBI agent.Michael later finds himself incarnated as a boy at home with his family in an intact Indian community at the site of the impending Battle of the Little Big Horn. As the boy, Michael is voiceless because a white soldier cut his throat on a prior occasion. As Custer’s Last Stand unfolds according to historical fact rather than familiar legend, Michael contemplates revenge, cycles of violence, and their consequences.He then finds himself in the form of a 19th century Irish soldier (an ancestor on his mother’s side?) at the scene of an U.S. Army massacre of an Indian community. As this nightmare unfolds, Michael is struck by the act of a white U.S. “traitor” who deserts to try to save an Indian boy from the slaughter even though this act will likely prove futile and suicidal. In contemplation of betrayal, which is an overarching theme of the book, Alexie conveys the message that the real traitors at the site of the massacre are not deserters, but soldiers who comply. Acts of violence perpetrated against other people constitute a form of treason. Those few who see reality for what it is at the time events unfold and who choose to stand on the side of real justice do not enjoy glory. They are martyred unceremoniously, but preserve their humanity as they make their own, anonymous "last stands."Michael’s Indian father is a mystery to him because he disappeared soon after Michael was born. Michael’s Irish-American mother cherished him until she passed away while Michael was still very young. As an orphan of mixed heritage, Michael was subsequently neglected, abused, and then abandoned by his Euro-American relatives, and wound up in the foster care system. The father Michael never knew embodies the confusion and complexity in his family background.In Michael's final incarnation during the Flight and before he returns to himself, he steps into his father’s shoes and comes to understand some of the reasons that he abandoned his wife and baby son. Understanding his father better helps Michael begin to move past anger, resentment, confusion, and insecurity, and to possibly embrace a more loving life in a healthy and positive environment with the “almost real family,” as he calls it, into which he is finally placed.Flight is an exploration of issues faced by children of Indian descent in foster care, and a plea on their behalf.

This is a wonderful example of contemporary urban young adult American Indian fiction --it crosses a lot of categories! I absolutely love the way that Alexie is able to weave in several examples of historical trauma throughout, thus showing the plight of the urban Indian today. There is a lot of material here, even though you could read this book in one sitting if you want (I did). There are some dark undertones here and not everyone has a happy ending. But this is an engaging novel that will get you thinking. I highly recommend it to those like like Alexie, are interested in contemporary Indian issues, and to pretty much everyone. It is worth a try to read this.If you want some information about the plot: This is the story of a boy named Zits. He does not know his Native father (and thus has trouble connecting to his Native identity) and his mother dies when he is young, so he finds himself in many foster homes. Not all of these foster families have been kind to him. He becomes a bit of a juvenile delinquent and experiments with drugs and alcohol. When he decides to react violently, fate has another plan for him, and he ends up traveling back an forth in time to visit significant instances in American Indian history. Other instances are not Native-specific (one revolves around the aftermath of 9/11). When he returns to his body, he must decide if he wants to change his life for the better, or continue down the same road. I was pleased with the outcome.

Sherman Alexie is my favorite contemporary author and has been since college. It's a short read, but it is lovely.I would give readers a head's up that if you have a childhood history of abuse and abandonment, this would be a story best read when you have someone with whom you can trust.I downloaded this on my mom's Kindle in print as well in the audio form. My mom is now disabled and cannot quite read, but she loves to be read to and follow along on the screen. It is difficult for her to talk, but she spoke with me at length about this book as best she could. It was excellent for her as a former tribal therapist. I love listening to her stories of the boys and girls she loved from the schools where she worked with kids in tribes in Wyoming, Arizona and Montana.

“Santayana says there is no cure for birth and death so you better enjoy the interval.” (pp. 24-25)WHAT WAS THAT I just read?Practically everything Alexie writes reads like it’s an autobiography. But, in Flight: A Novel, the autobiography takes some new and strange twists. With flights of fancy into the minds, bodies, times, and places of others, Zits, our protagonist, lives a life of wonder and despair. With Alexie, there’s always wonder and despair.Recommendation: Still, Flight is an engaging piece of storytelling. Now I can’t wait to read Sherman Alexie’s memoir: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me.“HAPPINESS NEVER LASTS LONG, does it?” (p. 66)“I feel like a carton of eggs holding up an elephant.” (p. 168)Open Road Media. Kindle Edition 182 pages