In “Lawyer’s League” by Sherman Alexie and “Notes of a Native Speaker” by Eric Liu, both authors bring to the table their opinions on being a different race and ethnicity in modern America. Alexie is an African American/Indian trying to make a name for himself in the world of politics. Liu is an Asian American tackling the challenge of being a “banana” head on. Although these men are of different skin tones and heritage and have a different way of coping with the pressures of living in the United States while their ancestors were born elsewhere, I think they could both agree that sometimes, for those without “white privilege”, the American Dream isn’t all that it cracked up to be.
Sherman Alexie introduces his character as a “graceful monster.” He was the product of a football player and a ballerina which led to a “biracial revolutionary leftist magician with a twenty-foot jumper encoded in [his] DNA.” Alexie describes a character that strives to be the first politician who is truly trusted by the Indian tribes, but it is clear in this story the insecurities that exist being a mixed man in white America. In story format, the author takes us through a series of events letting us into the thoughts of the politician such as his inability to ever be with a white woman even if he loved her because of what people might think. It becomes apparent after the character punches a racist man in the nose during a basketball game that Alexie’s character still hasn’t fully figured out how to an Indian man in a white society. Unlike in Liu’s text, Sherman writes of a man that is aggressive, forceful, and, in my opinion, less effective in his tactics to get other people to see his worth despite his darkened skin tone.
“Notes of a Native Speaker” began as a list and then transitioned into Liu’s characters specific thoughts instead of fast forwarding through time while telling a story. The Asian American man in the text discusses what the process of assimilating into a white man is like. The character reveals that at first this “whitening” development was almost his guilty pleasure as he felt himself lose touch with his long life of Chinese heritage. However, in a confident tone he discloses that he no longer feels ashamed and he is proud of where is in life and pleased with the white family he just recently married into. In contrary to “Lawyer’s League”, Liu creates a character who is conformable enough in his own skin to allow whites to call him an “honorary white” and Asians to call him a “banana” and simply say that he has “moved away from the periphery and toward the center of American life.”
Both works of literature share with the reader the ins and outs of being a man of color in America’s white society. One text shows a point of view where the man is angry about racism and takes a hawkish approach against the white man who belittles him. The second text depicts a colored man embracing the opportunities the United States has for him. Both themes can relate back to one common parable: life gets hard, but it’s what you do with it that matters.