JUNE 2017 - AudioFile
Sherman Alexie narrates his powerful memoir with acute emotion and vulnerability. His story of his grief after the death of his mother is rooted in the brutal experiences of Native Americans in the United States. He has composed a repeating patchwork of stories inspired by his family, life on and off the reservation, and poems born of his visceral reaction to his loss. Alexie’s mother, Lillian, was among the last four speakers of their tribal language, and he mourns the loss of her and her knowledge while simultaneously struggling with their shared history of abuse, neglect, and resentment. Alexie’s narration is extremely personal. He will make you cry, yes, and then make you laugh hard enough to wake your sleeping children; be warned. E.E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/03/2017
Intense but unspoken feeling suffuses the bittersweet relationship between a mother and her son in this poignant, conflicted, raucous memoir of a Native American family. Novelist and poet Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) remembers his complicated mother, Lillian, who kept the family together despite dire poverty on the Spokane Reservation but had a contentious relationship with her son featuring bitter fights and years-long silent treatments. He sets their story against a rich account of their close-knit but floridly dysfunctional family and a reservation community rife with joblessness, alcoholism and drug abuse, fatal car crashes, violence, rape and child molestation, murder, and a general sense of being excluded from and besieged by white society. Alexie treats this sometimes bleak material with a graceful touch, never shying away from deep emotions but also sharing wry humor and a warm regard for Native culture and spirituality. The text is rambling, digressive, and sometimes baggy, with dozens of his poems sprinkled in; it wanders among limpid, conversational prose, bawdy comic turns, and lyrical, incantatory verse. This is a fine homage to the vexed process of growing up that vividly conveys how family roots continue to bind even after they seem to have been severed. (June)
From the Publisher
Praise for YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME:
An Amazon editors' Top 20 books of the year
A Washington Post Best Book of the year
An LA Times Best Book of of the year
An NPR Best Book of the Year
Also named a Best Book Of the Year by Library Journal, The Milwaukee Sentinel Journal, Bookpage and The Millions
"With brazen honesty and humor throughout, Alexie writes about the many facets of his mother and her addiction's effect on his family and childhood."
—Jarry Lee, BuzzFeed, "22 Exciting New Books You Need to Read This Summer"
"Blends poetry and prose, and varies widely in tone as he explores old memories and new grief."—Entertainment Weekly, Summer's 20 Must Read Books
"He specifically focuses on his late mother, showing the many sides of her multifaceted character through dozens of poignant poems and essays. Their relationship is as complicated as Alexie's stories are enthralling."—Stephanie Topacio Long, Bustle, 14 Best Nonfiction Books Coming Out in June 2017
"Sherman Alexie makes poetry out of the darkest parts of his (and his mother's) life... It's all a mighty attempt to understand who his mother was, who she is to him, and how to make peace with her."—Jaime Green, Google Play, Summer Reading
"There's straight personal history here, as well as fable, poetry, and raw and mordant accounts of life....Unexpected revelations are a constant throughout this memoir"—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air", 6 Books That Will Carry You Away
"Resonant and occasionally gut-wrenching."
—Entertainment Weekly
"Evident throughout are humor and rage, respect and loving irreverence."
—Oprah Magazine
"The overwhelming takeaway from Mr. Alexie's memoir is triumph, that of one writer's ability to overcome hardscrabble roots, medical bad luck and generations of systemic racism—all through an uncommon command of language and metaphor."
—James Yeh, New York Times
"If candor is Alexie's superpower, accuracy might be his nemesis.... Throughout, Alexie is courageous and unflinching, delivering a worthy and honest eulogy by showing us his mother and himself in full, everything spectacular and everything scarred."—Michael Kleber-Diggs, The Minneapolis Star Tribune
"You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a marvel of emotional transparency."
—Beth Kephart, The Chicago Tribune
"These pages are scored by resentment, hurt, guilt, anger, fear, but they are also full of gratitude, admiration, and tenderness."
—Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe
"Alexie is so aware of his own fallible memory and his own imperfections that this one won't make you bristle...It's readable, unpretentious, funny and deeply compassionate."
—Erin Kodicek, Amazon's Omnivoracious Blog
"He's compulsively readable, a literary writer with the guts of a stand-up comedian."
—Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"This is an essay, a memoir, a history, a cry from the heart, a challenge to other Indians and a baring of his soul."
—Michael Giltz, Huffington Post
"Sardonic, raw and moving...powerful."
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com
"Tough material, shot through with lyricism, insight and wit."—Mary Ann Gwinn, The Seattle Times
"Full of compassion and wonder, pain and beauty and is a searing testament to the ways in which our parents and our pasts fully make us who we are as adults."
—Kristin Iversen, Nylon
"Alexie's writing is raw, funny, smart and unapologetic. His use of metaphor expertly crafts a visual to accompany his stories that leave them unforgettable."
—Catherine Rubino, Book Reporter
"Everything you love about Alexie's writing is here: he still manages to find honest human comedy in the darkness of America's genocidal past, and our deeply racist present" and also raves "His personality is large and, as he survives each passing trial, it's only getting larger; from his adoring audience's vantage point, Alexie is now a giant."
—Paul Constant, The Seattle Review of Books
"A master class in memoir."—Sarah Murdoch, Toronto Star
"Written in his familiar breezy, conversational, and aphoristic style, the book makes even the darkest personal experiences uplifting and bearable with the author's wit, sarcasm, and humor...a powerful, brutally honest memoir about a mother and the son who loved her."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Alexie is a consummate, unnerving and funny storyteller...pouring himself into every molten word. Courageous, anguished, grateful, and hilarious, this is an enlightening and resounding eulogy and self-portrait...all will be reaching for this confiding and concussive memoir."
—Booklist (Starred Review)
"[A] poignant, conflicted, raucous memoir of a Native American family...a fine homage to the vexed process of growing up that vividly conveys how family roots continue to bind even after they seem to have been severed."—Publishers Weekly
"Honest, wrenching, and incredibly moving....Highly recommended for all readers. Alexie's portrayals of family relationships, identity, and grief have the universality of great literature."—Library Journal (Starred Review)
Bookseller Praise for YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME:
"'How does one deliver an honest eulogy?' Alexie asks. And 'how does one commemorate/ the ordinary?' The answer is to remember, confess, pray, rant, and ask more questions. Alexie does all these and more in this powerful, poignant memoir of his mother, a woman so complex she's an entire tribe of contradictions. Did she love him? Did he love her? He answers yes, but worries the questions through stories by turns angry, funny, and raw, and through a dazzling range of poems that include everything from ballads to rhymed couplets to a tour de force sequence of 52 haiku, each as perfect as the squares in the quilts his mother sewed to support the family. While his father steadily drank himself to death, Alexie's mother was a recovering alcoholic who kept her family alive, if often hungry, in an unfinished HUD house on the Spokane Indian Reservation. She was honored by her tribe for her strength and generosity, yet she was often cruel to her children. With this jarring inconsistency at the heart of his brave, compassionate, book, Alexie traces a lineage of violence so powerful it causes victims to become perpetrators."—Laurie Greer, Politics & Prose (Washington, D.C.)
Library Journal
★ 04/15/2017
When Alexie's mother passed away in 2015, his grief was complicated by memories of a difficult childhood. His family struggled with poverty, mental illness, and alcoholism, and his mother was both protector and antagonist. This latest account is an honest, wrenching, and incredibly moving story about all aspects of life. The story is deeply personal—as if National Book Award winner Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) needed to write it in order to untangle and understand his feelings about his mother and the lasting pain of her death. Presented as a series of vignettes, some in prose, others in poetry, about Alexie's life and family, the narrative transitions between styles, which feels natural as Alexie searches for the best way to present complex memories and stories. Readers familiar with the author's other works, such as Reservation Blues, will recognize many details about his childhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation. VERDICT Highly recommended for all readers. Alexie's portrayals of family relationships, identity, and grief have the universality of great literature.—Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
JUNE 2017 - AudioFile
Sherman Alexie narrates his powerful memoir with acute emotion and vulnerability. His story of his grief after the death of his mother is rooted in the brutal experiences of Native Americans in the United States. He has composed a repeating patchwork of stories inspired by his family, life on and off the reservation, and poems born of his visceral reaction to his loss. Alexie’s mother, Lillian, was among the last four speakers of their tribal language, and he mourns the loss of her and her knowledge while simultaneously struggling with their shared history of abuse, neglect, and resentment. Alexie’s narration is extremely personal. He will make you cry, yes, and then make you laugh hard enough to wake your sleeping children; be warned. E.E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
