A Dividing Paragraph

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Ni Tran J. Ryan Spillman ENG 100-A82 14 October 2013 A Dividing Paragraph The reading “superman and me” by Sherman Alexie is about how he, a Spokane Indian boy living on a reservation educated himself to read at 3, a very early age, with a Superman comic book. His family was poor by most standard. Alexie’s father was a book lover, his house was filled with books. Alexie decided to take reading as his passion because of his inspirational father. He remembered the moment when he first understood the purpose of a paragraph, and he began seeing everything in terms of paragraphs. He sees his reservation as a small paragraph with in the United States. He sees his family’s house, his family members and the world in paragraphs. He picked up superman comic book, look at the narrative and pretend to read what he assumed the book tells. He taught himself to read and advanced quickly when other children struggled. At school Indian children were expected to be stupid in the non-Indian world. Most lived up to the expectation but Alexie refused to that expectation because he was smart. He read books anywhere anytime with only one purpose that he was trying to save his life. He became a writer, and taught creative writing to Indian kids as he grew up. He helped other kids in his community to save their lives. A paragraph is one of several distinct subdivisions of a text intended to separate ideas but in “superman and me” Alexie compares a paragraph to a fence that separates his community from others. Compare to today, America is certainly a melting pot of individuals, including immigrants from all over the world. One of those groups is Asians. Asians have been moving to the U.S. for centuries, and similar to what Alexie writes “they had some specific reason for being inside the same fence” (89). Different culture, different language and different religion somehow woven them

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