The first time I read Mr. Sherman’s1 writing was in my junior year of college and the moment I opened his book, I couldn’t believe my thirteen year old self made it without him. One of my very favorite professors assigned The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian in our Native American Literature course. The title was printed in the syllabus right between Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House. An unbelievable roster of contemporary fiction.

I vividly remember the professor, an avid fan of Mr. Sherman, holding the book up in the air and saying - roughly, it’s been a minute - “Do you think this work of middle grade or young adult fiction belongs in a collegiate course? If I teach this course again, do you think I should include this book?”

There was a beat of silence as my fellow classmates and I looked around in shock and horror that he would even dare to ask such a question. He just smiled, knowing what our answers would be. The next ten minutes (at least) were filled with fervent, passionate pleas to never remove Mr. Sherman’s work from the syllabus. It would be a shame to deprive future students from his story.

Many of us had finished it before the first lecture because we enjoyed it so much and I had shown up to that class without my copy because I’d already loaned it to my brother who also fell in love with 14 year old Arnold Spirit jr.’s story.

So now, having consistently read Sherman Alexi for a couple of years, I will try and convince you of my thesis that, despite the many awards, accolades, and public acknowledgements Mr. Sherman has received, this man’s writing is wildly underrated and you need to read it right now, for multiple reasons.

If you need reassurance that there are still good writers in the post modern age, read Mr. Sherman.

There’s a lot of frustrated readers our there who often lament that the age of the great writer died with Shakespeare or Fitzgerald or whomever their favorite writer is but I disagree. I think the much larger issue is the sheer amount of writers and content that it is too intimidating to know where to begin. So, we sit at the trunk of the literary fig tree, watching the piles upon piles of figs fall and rot, reading nothing instead of something. Well, I’ve chosen a fig for us.

Mr. Sherman, I believe, is one of the greatest examples we have of post modern literary creativity. He’s written fiction, non fiction, and poetry, all of which are extremely contemplative and will inevitably reveal some truth or beauty about the world. He successfully acknowledges darkness without discrediting light. All of his stories and poems are full of raw, broken, beautiful authenticity but absolutely dripping with hope, even if it is not always spelled out for the reader.

And on a more concrete note, Mr. Sherman’s work is enjoyable because he writes well. His poetry is beautiful, his prose is magnetic. He writes like he is an old friend speaking with you over coffee, sitting on the beat up, wooden, front steps of your childhood home. He’s somehow familiar and refreshingly different at the same time.

His stories will remind you that yours are important.

Many - if not all - of Mr. Sherman’s stories have a seemingly unimportant, notably average or below average character at the forefront. His stories are about Native American people and their heritage, traumas, humor, and traditions. But it’s also about humanity as a whole. It’s heritage, traumas, humor, and traditions or personhood.

A good creative writer can ground their work in something so specific and real that, somehow, it becomes familiar to everyone in the audience, not just the ones who had a similar experience. So, if you are a Native American, you will relate to the stories in a different way than a reader who did not have that experience or point of reference.2 But, even if you are not Native, there are still so many things from Mr. Sherman’s work that will be familiar to you. Whether that be the awkwardness of puberty, the ripple effect of familial traumas and wrong doings, or the countless ways that the place you grew up will inevitable affect who you become.

Mr. Sherman’s tendency to tell the stories of characters who would otherwise be looked over should be a point of hope for his readers. That no matter who you are, what you’ve done, or where you came from, your history, your work, and your life are the stuff of stories.

Read his work because it will change you.

There is a lot of fear in the modern age that transcendence has lost its place because of technology or the general darkness of the world or humanity. There is a thirst for real people and stories and authenticity. There is a frustration with the seemingly flawless lives of those on social media and there is a boredom with the way a real life looks.

But Mr. Sherman’s work does not bow to the hopeless, meaningless narrative that modernity tries to sell. Not once. And it is the furthest thing from inauthentic. His stories are rich and raw and bound to give you hope. Not because there are no stakes or trials. But because there are trials that mean something. The characters don’t always know what that something is, but they know it’s real.

His stories will remind you what people are. They will set you in the reality that we need one another. We need nature and fun and art and friends. He will teach simple truths of living while also tackling some of the most difficult challenges that people must face in the contemporary world. And he does so in an incredibly thought provoking, funny, charming, incredibly transcendent way.

So, as you stare at the mound of books that I know you have and plan to read this summer, don’t be intimidated by the overwhelming amount of options. Do what I did and read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and fall in love with Junior and, in turn, Mr. Sherman. And, if you’re anything like me - that is, a human with a brain - you will find yourself in awe and desperate to talk about this writing with other people.