You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

This book was a brutally honest memoir that at times was hard to read. The author's love for his mother is painful - she was not an easy person to love - and this book speaks to that love of a child for a parent, even when that parent does little to deserve it.

While it goes without saying that an memoir is going to be introspective, Sherman Alexie strikes the perfect cord of affecting and playful. Alexie wants to show you his scars and force the reader to acknowledge their own, and in that way heal and somehow laugh together. Alexie is haunted by his mother, not feeling Indian enough, and the road not taken. He also is an unabashedly unreliable narrator whom acknowledges as much in his musing about his own story telling quarks (which was exasperated by numerous brain surgeries. Told in short vignettes and poems revolving around his late mother, a worthwhile read even for those whom may not be overly familiar with Alexie coming in.

In this searing memoir, Alexie honors the memory of his mother, his older sister and the American Indian community in which he grew up and has come to represent through his art. Alexie struggles with the truth of his recollections fully understanding that our memories are fallible and yet every word rings true. He holds nothing back whether it's his resentment towards his mother's sometimes cold nature, the difficulty in leaving your home environment - especially when that also means leaving your race, addiction or politics. There are chapters of verse interspersed with his spot-on prose that will leave me reaching for this volume for quite some time.

Sherman Alexie was raised on a reservation in Washington state and spent his childhood in poverty and abuse, along with his siblings, alcoholic father, and mentally ill mother. As a teenager he elected to go to a white high school off the reservation and as a child he also suffered from a serious brain illness which carried on into his adult life and the book details his recent surgery and recovery. 

To say his relationship with his mother was complicated is an understatement. But in true Sherman Alexie fashion, he relays his story in a unique and beautiful way through his own memories as well as talking to his surviving siblings. From writing about his unreliable memories of her, to relaying her stories, many of which he isn't sure are even true to expressing the deep grief he feels at her loss, Alexie gifts us with his heartbreaking and inspiring story. 

I'm an unabashed and avid fan of Alexie, having read all his work and enjoyed all of it. This memoir, written in part prose, part poetry does not disappoint

This is the best memoir I have read in a long time. The stories are beautifully conveyed and the poetry is excellent as always.

Powerful!!!

I don't know what I was expecting when I requested to read this book. The title of this book caught my attention and the author's name was familiar to me. 

I was blown away by this memoir. There were parts of this book that I could haven't written myself when it came to my family life. I have been trying to think of words to describe this book and the only word I can thin of is Powerful!

I highly recommend this book.

I have always been a fan of Sherman Alexie but I didn't know his whole story. This book is an amazing window into the adversity our indigenous citizens have to face and is widely unknown or ignored by many of us. It is also a great introduction to the relationships unique to Native American communities and the day to day struggle and poverty that Native Americans face in reservation life. I have always been amazed with Alexie's body of work and had the honor of attending one of his author talks, I am even more amazed by him knowing more of his personal story.

BookFilter review: Sherman Alexie is a poet, speaker, activist, humorist and perhaps best known for his young adult classic "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." That hilarious and tough-minded book is about a kid who made the bold move to attend an all-white public school and thus symbolically leave the rez (knowing in a way it would mean he would some day literally leave the reservation for good and become an urban Indian). It's somewhat autobiographical and for fans who have read it, this memoir is sort of a funhouse mirror, as stories we have heard pop up but sometimes end differently or are sadder or rawer in ways that a (still pretty harsh) young adult book would not be. But this isn't a memoir covering Alexie's whole life so much as circling around and coming to grips with the complicated relationship he had with his mother. She is the beating heart, the inscrutable mystery and the reason for this work. It offers up poetry and stories and facts and descriptions of Sherman and his siblings debating what was and wasn't about their mother and their lives. (For those fabulists who just make stuff up, this is how it's done by artists and people who relish the truth -- lay it all out there.) Among the many heartbreaking details is the fact that his mother was the child of rape, a fact that Alexie typically zeroes in on with empathy -- did his grandmother see the rapist in his mother's face? Did that make her love his mother more, less or differently? And yet he takes in the wider scope, seeing Native Americans as a people defined by rape and brutality, from the white school teachers who literally beat their students and forced them into positions later seen as torture (Alexie got sick when he first saw photos from Abu Ghraib because it reminded him of school) to the wider rape of their land and peoples. This is an essay, a memoir, a history, a cry from the heart, a challenge to other Indians and a baring of his soul. Above all, by insisting on the unvarnished truth, it is an honor song to his mother. Poems can be found throughout but it's poetry from start to finish. -- Michael Giltz

I'm so picky when it comes to memoirs, but this one is truly something special. Sherman Alexie blends poetry and prose with a healthy dose of humor and gut-wrenching honesty. I loved how this book basically took everything great from his other work, put it in a blender, and added a wallop of naked honesty. The result is beautiful, heartbreaking, and breathtaking. (And at times, very, very funny.)

Whether or not you've ever read Sherman Alexie, whether or not you enjoy memoirs, this book is so completely worth reading. It's one of my favorites of the year so far. It's just so, so good.

This book absolutely blew me away. I'd give it 10 stars if Goodreads would let me! I laughed and I cried and I read this book in a day. Poetry and essays combined into one of the most heartfelt memoirs (and accounts of the travesties committed against American Indian tribes) I have ever read. If you don't know who Sherman Alexie is, you need to know him - look him up and read this book. If you already know his work, this will cement your appreciation for him. His life story is heartbreaking and his grief over the loss of his mother can almost be physically felt through reading. Absolutely, positively required reading for every adult. 

School librarian note: If you teach Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Thunder Boy Jr, you can now reference this memoir for your students and describe how much of the novel/picture book is autobiographical. This memoir is NOT appropriate to use in the classroom, however.

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie

Fans of Sherman Alexie's short stories (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven) and his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian will gravitate to his new memoir, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, an intimate and often painful glimpse at the relationship between the author and his mother when he was a child growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Like so much of his work, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a hybrid creation, including poetry alongside prose; the humor for which Alexie is known gets to the heart of the pain and grief experienced by the author and those he loves.

I always mean to read more of this author, and I check his work out a few times a year, but then I never actually read it.  This is a beautiful, difficult, irreverent read.  There are lots of things to think about, which I won't go into, but which make this an appropriate choice for a book group.

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me is a wonderful, moving memoir by one of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie. I first read Alexie’s work in high school, beginning with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a short story collection about life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. There are some echoes of that earlier work here, when Alexie reminisces on his childhood growing up on that reservation. This book is mostly a tribute to his late mother though, and Alexie pays homage to her with 160 poems, essays, and reflections throughout the book. Some are no more than a sentence or two. Some span several pages. Each is thoughtful, stirring, and unflinchingly honest.

Alexie’s stories of being born with an abnormal brain condition, then growing up incredibly poor with his alcoholic father and mentally unstable mother are an interesting glimpse into his early life and formative years. He consistently struggles with his identity and Native American roots, attempting to understand the violence, social injustice, racism, and abuse that he sees around himself. He is bullied attending school on the reservation, and eventually leaves to attend a white high school. He struggles both with being perceived as too Indian and not Indian enough, a theme that continues into his adult life.

Alexie recounts a complicated relationship with his mother, incredibly strained at times. He recognizes her as being the more dependable of his two parents and yet also describes her as hypocritical, inconsistent, cold, unpredictable, and at times, cruel. She was revered and widely respected by her tribe but could deal out a heavy hand of justice if necessary. He makes it clear that she was far from perfect. Still, the love that Alexie has for his mother is great, and all too obvious here. Alexie’s grief at her loss is palpable, his respect for her very evident. He references his mother as a salmon repeatedly, explaining that the salmon is a divine and sacred creature for his tribe, “our primary source of physical and spiritual sustenance for thousands of years.” He comes to terms with his mother as an unassailable part of his identity, and begins to understand and accept her in all of her complexity.

Alexie’s writing is witty, funny, heartbreaking, and unflinchingly candid. You feel each emotion, described in different ways: the rage, the sorrow, the hopelessness, and the reverence. There is a lot of repetition, in themes, words, and even whole conversations, but each repetition is purposeful and meaningful, at times resounding like the beating of a drum. “Great pain is repetitive,” Alexie writes, “Grief is repetitive. And, maybe, this repetition can become a chant inside a healing ceremony.” So, Alexie repeats the words and sentences as a form of grieving, and healing. “…I am always compelled to return, return, return to my place of birth, to my reservation, to my unfinished childhood home, and ultimately to my mother, my ultimate salmon. I return to her, my mother, who, in these pages, dies and dies and dies and is continually reborn.”

Alexie's story is often heartrending, but he never lapses into self-pity or misery. He tempers his grief with lightness instead, often using humor and wit, and he goes on with his life. In one section of his book, he describes discovering that he had a brain tumor in 2007, his eventual surgery to remove it in 2015, and his subsequent recovery. “I was in great pain,” Alexie writes about that recovery time period, “but I took the time to write down these very words. This is who I am. This is who I have always been. I am in pain. I am always in pain. But I always find my way to the story. And I always find my way home.”

Powerful, honest and compelling, Sherman Alexie’s memoir of growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington is not a conventional chronological autobiography, but rather goes backwards and forwards in time and includes many of the his own poems. The result is a wonderfully immersive account of an often difficult, often heart-breaking life, one which he conveys brilliantly through his skill with words.