The following story is an excerpt from Sherman Alexie’s recent collection of short stories, Blasphemy.
Blankets
Published by Grove Atlantic Press, Oct. 2012
After the surgeon cut off my father’s right foot — no, half of my father’s right foot — and three toes from the left, I sat with him in the recovery room. It was more like a recovery hallway. There was no privacy, not even a thin curtain. I guessed it made it easier for the nurses to monitor the postsurgical patients, but still, my father was exposed — his decades of poor health and worse decisions were illuminated — on white sheets in a white hallway under white lights.
“Are you okay?” I asked. It was a stupid question. Who could be okay after such a thing? Yesterday, my father had walked into the hospital. Okay, he’d shuffled while balanced on two canes, but that was still called walking. A few hours ago, my father still had both of his feet. Yes, his feet and toes had been black with rot and disease but they’d still been, technically speaking, feet and toes. And, most important, those feet and toes had belonged to my father. But now they were gone, sliced off. Where were they? What did they do with the right foot and the toes from the left foot? Did they throw them in the incinerator? Were their ashes floating over the city?
“Doctor, I’m cold,” my father said.
“Dad, it’s me,” I said.
“I know who are you. You’re my son.” But considering the blankness in my father’s eyes, I assumed he was just guessing at my identity.
“Dad, you’re in the hospital. You just had surgery.” MORE
Poet and writer Sherman Alexie joined us for a live chat on April 16, 2013, to answer readers’ questions about his poetry and books, his creative process and being Native American. You can replay the chat below.
Sherman Alexie (Credit: Alton Christensen)
Born on a reservation in Washington state, Alexie has been navigating the boundaries in American and Native American culture for two decades. He is the author of 22 books, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, winner of the 2007 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, War Dances, winner of the 2010 PEN Faulkner Award, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a PEN Hemingway Special Citation winner. Smoke Signals, the film he wrote and co-produced, won the Audience Award and Filmmakers’ Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. MORE
Many Moyers & Company guests are writers of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, graphic novels, and everything in between. Put together, they represent an unparalleled collection of smart ideas and breathtaking artistry — so, for your pleasure, we put many of them together.
Selected writers include Rita Dove, Jonathan Haidt, Karl Marlantes, Bruce Bartlett, Eric Alterman, Matt Taibbi, Ross Douthat, Yves Smith, Sheila Bair, Chris Hedges, Chrystia Freeland, and Naomi Klein.
Browse selections from the Moyers & Company Guest Book List below, and let us know which ones moved and inspired you. MORE
Read the introduction from Nick Turse’s book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
Hardcover, 370 pages, Metropolitan Books, List Price: $18.40
On January 21, 1971, a Vietnam veteran named Charles McDuff wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon to voice his disgust with the American war in Southeast Asia. McDuff had witnessed multiple cases of Vietnamese civilians being abused and killed by American soldiers and their allies, and he had found the U.S. military justice system to be woefully ineffective in punishing wrongdoers. “Maybe your advisors have not clued you in,” he told the president, “but the atrocities that were committed in Mylai are eclipsed by similar American actions throughout the country.” His three-page handwritten missive concluded with an impassioned plea to Nixon to end American participation in the war.
The White House forwarded the note to the Department of Defense for a reply, and within a few weeks Major General Franklin Davis Jr., the army’s director of military personnel policies, wrote back to McDuff. It was “indeed unfortunate,” said Davis, “that some incidents occur within combat zones.” He then shifted the burden of responsibility for what had happened firmly back onto the veteran. “I presume,” he wrote, “that you promptly reported such actions to the proper authorities.” Other than a paragraph of information on how to contact the U.S. Army criminal investigators, the reply was only four sentences long and included a matter- of-fact reassurance: United States Army has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.”
This was, and remains, the American military’s official position. In many ways, it remains the popular understanding in the United States as a whole. Today, histories of the Vietnam War regularly discuss war crimes or civilian suffering only in the context of a single incident: the My Lai massacre cited by McDuff. Even as that one event has become the subject of numerous books and articles, all the other atrocities perpetrated by U.S. soldiers have essentially vanished from popular memory. The visceral horror of what happened at My Lai is undeniable.
On the evening of March 15, 1968, members of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, were briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, on a planned operation the next day in an area they knew as “Pinkville.” As unit member Harry Stanley recalled, Medina “ordered us to ‘kill everything in the village.’” Infantryman Salvatore LaMartina remembered Medina’s words only slightly differently: they were to “kill everything that breathed.” What stuck in artillery forward observer James Flynn’s mind was a question one of the other soldiers asked: “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” And Medina’s reply: “Kill everything that moves.” MORE
Excerpted from the chapter entitled: “THE BLACK MAN AT THE WHITE HOUSE”
Portrait of Frederick Douglass; University of Texas
My efforts to secure just and fair treatment for the colored soldiers did not stop at letters and speeches. At the suggestion of my friend, Major Stearns …I was induced to go to Washington and lay the complaints of my people before President Lincoln and the Secretary of War and to urge upon them such action as should secure to the colored troops then fighting for the country a reasonable degree of fair play. I need not say that at the time I undertook this mission it required much more nerve than a similar one would require now. The distance then between the black man and the white American citizen was immeasurable. I was an ex-slave, identified with a despised race, and yet I was to meet the most exalted person in this great republic.
It was altogether an unwelcome duty, and one from which I would gladly have been excused. I could not know what kind of a reception would be accorded me. I might be told to go home and mind my business, and leave such questions as I had come to discuss to be managed by the men wisely chosen by the American people to deal with them. Or I might be refused an interview altogether. Nevertheless, I felt bound to go, and my acquaintance with Senators Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Samuel Pomeroy, Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Secretary William H. Seward and Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana encouraged me to hope at least for a civil reception. My confidence was fully justified in the result.
I shall never forget my first interview with this great man. I was accompanied to the executive mansion and introduced to President Lincoln by Senator Pomeroy. The room in which he received visitors was the one now used by the President’s secretaries. I entered it with a moderate estimate of my own consequence, and yet there I was to talk with, and even to advise, the head man of a great nation. Happily for me, there was no vain pomp and ceremony about him. I was never more quickly or more completely put at ease in the presence of a great man than in that of Abraham Lincoln. He was seated, when I entered, in a low armchair with his feet extended on the floor, surrounded by a large number of documents and several busy secretaries. MORE
Before the holidays, Bill asked you what book you’d recommend President Obama read as he embarks on his second term. Your suggestions ran the gambit, with authors ranging from John Steinbeck to civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander to A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh. In the slideshow below, we included 25 of your recommendations that came out during Obama’s first term that he may not have had the chance to read yet. We also included five classics you recommended that the president may want to revisit. MORE
I am pregnant when the next letter finally arrives. Sent from Ramón’s old place to our new home. I pull it from the stack of mail and stare at it. My heart is beating like it’s lonely, like there’s nothing else inside of me. I want to open it but I call Ana Iris instead; we haven’t spoken in a long time. I stare out at the bird- filled hedges while the phone rings.
I want to go for a walk, I tell her.
The buds are breaking through the tips of the branches. When I step into the old place she kisses me and sits me down at the kitchen table. Only two of the housemates I know; the rest have moved on or gone home. There are new girls from the Island. They shuffle in and out, barely look at me, exhausted by the promises they’ve made. I want to advise them: no promises can survive that sea. I am showing, and Ana Iris is thin and worn. Her hair has not been cut in months; the split ends rise out of her thick strands like a second head of hair. She can still smile, though, so brightly it is a wonder that she doesn’t set something alight. A woman is singing a bachata somewhere upstairs, and her voice in the air reminds me of the size of this house, how high the ceilings are. MORE
On January 3, 2013, we hosted a live chat with Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction author Junot Díaz. He answered questions from BillMoyers.com readers about his short stories and novel, the literature classes he teaches at MIT and the art of writing fiction.
Junot Díaz won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. His most recent book, This Is How You Lose Her, a collection of short stories, was released last fall. MORE
Books Viewers Recommended President Obama Read Before His First Term in 2008
Four years ago on Bill Moyers Journal, Bill asked viewers to send in book recommendations for President-Elect Barack Obama. Thousands of you sent in suggestions and Bill enjoyed reading the many thoughtful e-mails about novels, poetry, biographies and books about history, politics, and other subjects. He dedicated air time on a subsequent Journal episode to excerpt the best emails, which included recommendations for Naomi Klein‘s The Shock Doctrine, Howard Zinn‘s The People’s History of the United States, Barbara Ehrenreich‘s Nickel and Dimed, Al Gore’s Assault on Reason (The Inconvenient Truth) and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. (You can view the entire list at the Journal archive website.)
We know President Obama took you up on at least one of them. Some of you may recall that he was inspired by Goodwin’s book that described Lincoln’s selection of a presidential cabinet as he was putting together his own, choosing former presidential rivals Joe Biden as vice president and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
So we’re asking again: what book would you like to see President Obama read before he takes the oath of office for the second time? Share your nominations below or on Facebook, and Bill will share his with you by the end of the year.
