You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

by Sherman Alexie

Overview

One of the most anticipated books of 2017—Entertainment Weekly and Bustle

A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, and loss from the critically acclaimed, bestselling National Book Award winner.

When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is this stunning memoir. Featuring 78 poems, 78 essays and intimate family photographs, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine—growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated woman. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME is a powerful account of a complicated relationship, an unflinching and unforgettable remembrance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316270755
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	06/13/2017
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist and performer. A Spokane/Couer d'Alene Indian, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Alexie has been an urban Indian since 1994 and lives in Seattle with his family.

Editorial Reviews

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)

Publishers Weekly

On Reservation Blues:
"His talent is immense and genuine.... Sherman Alexie is one of the best writers we have."
- The Nation"

Hilarious but poignant...dead-on accurate with regard to modern Indian life."
—Publisher's Weekly

On Indian Killer:
"A haunting, challenging articulation of the plight and the pride of contemporary Native Americans."
- Kirkus Reviews, starred review"

Characters in Mr. Alexie's work are not the usual kind of Indians...They are not tragic victims or noble savages...they listen to Jimi Hendrix and Hank Williams; they dream of being basketball stars...And unlike most Indians in fiction, they are sometimes funny."
--The New York Times

On The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian:"

A Native American equivalent of Angela's Ashes."
— (starred review), Publishers Weekly "

Sure to resonate and lift spirits of all ages for years to come."
—USA Today

From the Publisher

★ 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

Library Journal

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

JUNE 2017 - AudioFile