Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2008. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Sherman Alexie's work revolves around Native Americans—Native Americans who deal with problems such as poverty, alcoholism, transgenerational trauma, modern life, ethnic stereotyping, and institutionalized racism. His voice is thought-provoking, poignant, destabilizing, and also, absolutely funny. His unique approach to heavy political matters offers us a different way of resistance in which people laugh through their tears and maybe change how they react to the issues surrounding themselves. In this thesis, I offer an analysis of who Sherman Alexie is as an author in the United States. I also look into his importance for Turkey in terms of our issues of racism and our understanding of political humour, in hopes of influencing other destabilizing works through his translations. Later, I discuss how he is portrayed in the Turkish literary system by examining two of his translated books, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Çılgın Atı Düşlemek) and Reservation Blues (Kızılderiliye Yer Yok), through Lawrence Venuti's views on the foreignization and domestication methods in The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. Subsequently, I present my translation of "Lawyer's League", "Can I Get a Witness?", "Do Not Go Gentle" and "Flight Patterns" from Ten Little Indians as an alternative translation method. Finally, I analyse the foreignization method in relation to translating Sherman Alexie, before explaining my translation choices.

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Though bound historically through hundreds of years, the African-Native American relation has not received much attention by scholars of literature; hence, the emphasis of this thesis is to investigate the literary portrayal of the interethnic relation between African Americans and Native Americans through the blues trope. The blues trope provides an intriguing literary platform for the psychological and physical struggles in finding an identity within such a diverse multiethnic society like the United States. For African American writer Alice Walker and Native American author Sherman Alexie the blues trope is a successful literary device in expressing long lost and rediscovered emotions, identities and hopes among an ever growing multiethnic nation.

This paper proposes the notion that early Native American autobiographical writings from such authors as William Apess provide rich sources for understanding syncretic authors and their engagement with dominant Anglo-Christian culture. Authors like William Apess construct an understanding of what constitutes Indianness in similar and different ways to the master narratives produced for Native peoples. By studying this nonfiction, critics can gain a broader understanding of contemporary Indian fiction like that of Sherman Alexie. The similarities and differences between the strategies of these two authors reveal entrenched stereotypes lasting centuries as well as instances of bold re-signification, a re-definition of Indianness. In analyzing these instances of re-signification, this paper focuses on the performance of re-membering, the controversy of assimilation/authenticity, accessing audience, the discourse of Indians as orphans, and journeys to the metropolis.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, August, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until September 1, 2014. Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-99)

The Native American characters in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian experience prejudice from other Native Americans and suffer from internalized norms and values. This study examines whether or not the prejudice the fictional characters in Love Medicine and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indianexperience and express as Native Americans unite them as a community or not. It also investigateshow they view white society andif the Native American characters have prejudice against the members of their own tribal community. The analysis is partially based on postcolonial theory and focuses on terms such as internalisation, acculturation and prejudice. The thesis found that the communitiesare united on the premises that they conform to the Native American norms but any deviation from these norms has the potential to divide them.

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