Overcoming Essay

956 Words4 Pages
Overcoming The essay “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie is about how he taught himself how to read at a very young age. Being an Indian he was expected to fail. However, he was lucky. He overcame the obstacles and barriers that society put on him. To me his essay is about more than just learning how to read; it is about refusing to fail and overcoming the obstacles in life, no matter how old you are. I relate to Sherman Alexie's attitude about not failing. “I [also] refused to fail” (Alexie 209) and because of our attitudes of not failing, we have accomplished what others thought we couldn’t. I remember when I was four years old, going to the hospital for many surgeries on my left eye. One day I woke up and I couldn’t see out of my left side. I didn’t know what was going on and what happened. My mother and my father came into the hospital room and explained to me that I had cancer in the eye and the doctors had to remove it. Being so young, I didn’t understand at first, but I had to adjust. I had no choice. No one thought I would be able to read at the age I did. I proved everyone wrong. I learned how to read by the age of five. “I refused to fail. I was smart. I was lucky.” (209) My parents had me at a young age and dropped out of high school to take care of me. However, they were still very smart. They loved to read and eventually got their GED and went and got college degrees. As I grew up, we did not have television because we couldn’t afford it. But there were plenty of books around the house to read. We had an entire room full of different genres of books. My parents would sit me on their laps and read to me. I would pretend to follow along in another book. I would point to the words and pretend I was reading. Even when my parents were not reading to me, I had a book in my hand. I loved books and loved to pretend to read. My
Open Document