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In “Superman and Me”, Sherman Alexie’s outlook on life changed when he began to read books that his father brought home. He is a Spokane Indian writer from eastern Washington State who is passionate about reading and writing. He found that paragraphs are what breakdown parts of life. Alexie described that “a paragraph was a fence that held words” He would compare each individual paragraph to different parts of his life like his family. Alexie believes that if he wasn’t an Indian then he would be considered a prodigy. His reading was much more advanced than his classmates in school. As Alexie progressed through school it became common for him to be bullied by his classmates. Alexie persevered through the bullying and eventually became an inspiration to the students who have read his books at the school he went to in his youth. He hopes his influence will help the Indian students at the reservation he lived at long ago, become something more than the current stereotype of the Indian literacy.

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In "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me," Sherman Alexie, a Spokane Indian American, chronicles his journey into reading and writing. Alexie’s path started through his father, who he notes was one of the few Indians in their reservation to willingly go to a Catholic School. Alexie’s father’s interest in learning and strong curiosity in reading influenced Alexie to begin reading. Even before learning to read, Alexie recalls picking up his father’s books and understanding the structure and idea of paragraphs. He understood that paragraphs were, in a way, a sort of fence that grouped together common ideas. After understanding the concept of paragraphs, Alexie began to apply the idea of paragraphs to his own life, like the way his reservation was fenced, or the way each family member was its own paragraph. During the same time Alexie applied paragraphs to his own life, he reminisces about a Superman comic being the tool he used to learn how to read. In his transition into heavier reading, Alexie simply calls himself an “oddity”. Alexie notes that because he was Native American, he was not expected to be able to read or be intelligent, and therefore, he opted to resist this negative stigma and push himself to further his knowledge. Alexie closes off by saying that he occasionally visits the reservation to teach kids about reading, and even though he read as much as he could, he did not expect to become a writer in the long run.

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In the article “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, Sherman Alexie shared how his father’s love of reading saved him.  Alexie’s father purchased mountains of books, comics, and [variety] of different literature. Through his father’s love of literature, that he too became passionate about reading. At the tender and malleable age of three, Alexie began to “read” Superman comics; helping him conceptualize life as a series of paragraphs. But as a Spokane Indian boy, not much was expected of him. His destiny and potential, had seemingly been predetermined. He refused to cave into the ideals and expectations that Indians and non-Indians had of him- taking in every possible moment he could find to read. While Alexie had the fortune of being so motivated, the culture surrounding many Indian reservations breeds lack of achievement. He has internalized these experiences, and now visits Indian communities; hoping to cultivate passion for learning, and most of all, reading.

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Sherman Alexie who wrote Superman and Me, grew up poor by most social standards but was considered middle class in his own cultural structure. The idea of Sherman learning to read so young was against all expectations. Sherman's father grew Alexie's curiosity into the world of literature. The household was enveloped in books of all genres. Alexie would read his father's book collection even though the words were mostly foreign. About that time Alexie found a new genre of literature in the form of comic books. The pictures helped him formulate sentences through the ideas incapsulated by the pictures. Alexie felt overlooked as a child prodigy because of the stigma about Indians and the place they could hold in the world. Indians were expected to be mediocre and only venture into fields of manual labor. Alexie refused to follow that path that was laid out for all Indians. Although Alexie was such an avid reader, he never saw himself becoming a writer. Alexie chooses to spend time teaching children on reservations. A way for Alexie to encourage the students who still come up against the same stigma Alexie experienced as a child. Through literature Alexie hopes to show his students the bigger world that is possible.

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In The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me, Sherman Alexie is very forthcoming about his journey. He tells of the poverty from which he and his family lived with growing up, but this did not stop him from creating a love of reading and writing. His childhood home was stuffed full of books that his father would continually come home with. He learned about paragraphs through books and compares them to the confinement of his home’s walls. This goes even further in comparison with Sherman comparing paragraphs even to his own reservation. Though he could not read fully at a young age, he read through the pictures. More in particular, a Superman comic was where he would imagine the words. Sherman continuously says what he could have been but actually what he was, “an oddity”. This generalization of Indian children was dubbed upon him by the non Indians stereotype of Indian children at the time. He notes how a large majority of children/classmates would not apply themselves in school but would do a complete 180 outside of school. Sherman would not accept failure as an option and views himself as a fortunate one, claiming this to be due to the fact he would read anything he could get his hands on in any presented opportunity. He uses his knowledge and love of books by revisiting his childhood school giving back to those that say where he once did. Though some listen to him, others don’t and all he wants to do is save lives.