The Answering Machine

essay

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Years ago, in Seattle, when my wife and I still had an answering machine, we arrived home to find two messages.

The first was from my editor at The New Yorker. They were soon to publish me for the first time. It felt like a miracle. A reservation-raised Indian boy writer would soon be included in The New Yorker, the pinnacle of American short fiction.

“Sherman,” my editor said on the answering machine. “We’re wondering about that comma on page six, paragraph four, sentence three. Perhaps it should be a semi-colon? Call us back at your earliest convenience and we can discuss.”

Yes, that’s the kind of precise editing that you’ll get at The New Yorker. It’s glorious.

The second message was from my cousin who was serving ten years in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. We’d grown up on the reservation together. I vividly remember the day when I got out of the car and walked home while that cousin and two other cousins drove to burglarize a rez smoke shack and began their criminal lives. All three of them have spent significant time in jail and prison. I don’t like the other two cousins but I liked this one well enough for him to know my home phone number.

“Hello,” the automated voice said on our answering machine. “You have a collect call from Washington State Penitentiary. Do you accept?”

I hadn’t been there to say yes, as I would’ve, so all my cousin could do was say his name twice before the line went dead.

I’ve told this story about these two answering machine messages many times. But I’ve never know how to finish it. Usually, I just end by mimicking that dial tone noise—that tinny hum—that buzz of wry existentialism.

But, today, as I write this, I’m thinking about the literary world’s current obsession with “lived experience” and “cultural appropriation.”

When we talk about lived experience, it’s almost always in reference to the lives of brown and black people. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody pontificate about the lived experience of a white Republican farmer in Iowa. And when we speak of cultural appropriation, it’s almost always in reference to white people stealing from black and brown people.

But what happens if I tell you that the lived experiences of Native Americans are vastly different? To be more specific, there are vast differences between Natives who grew up on reservations and those who didn’t. But there are so many stories and poems written about reservation life by Indians who’ve never lived in any tribal community. I’d say at least 3/4s of Native American literature is written about reservation life. So why do readers assume that an urban-only Indian possesses any cultural expertise in reservation life? Wouldn’t a white schoolteacher who’s taught on a reservation for 20 years be far more of an expert on rez life than an urban-only Indian? And, yet, we’d accuse that white teacher of cultural appropriation if they wrote stories about life on the rez.

So here’s a question that has a simple answer: How many Native American writers have received back-to-back messages from The New Yorker and their imprisoned rez Indian cousin?

The answer is “One.”

But there are many thousands of Indians who could answer “yes” to one half of that question. There are many Indians who have cousins in jail and prison. So what does it mean when an Indian writes about prison life when they have no direct connection to it?

And here’s another question: Is an urban-only Indian guilty of cultural appropriation when they write about reservation life?

What’s my answer? Yes, I think urban-only Indian writers are guilty of cultural appropriation when they write about reservations.

But I also think that all writers are thieves, though their crimes range from shoplifting to bank robbery.

So what’s my final verdict on Indian writers who write about Indian experiences they’ve never lived?

I think most of them shoplift T-shirts from powwow vendors. And I think some of them steal eagle feathers from the powwow dancers.