Sherman Alexie writes in his story, What You Pawn I Will Redeem, about a homeless Salish Indian named Jackson Jackson. Alexie takes readers on Jackson's journey to acquire enough money to buy back his grandmother's stolen powwow regalia. Throughout the story, Jackson's relationships with other charters ultimately define his own character. Alexie, a well-known Native American author, tells an all-too-common story of poverty and drug addiction in the Native American community through his character Jackson. Jackson's main character flaw is his kindness, which ultimately becomes his greatest asset when fate allows him to buy back his grandmother's powwow regalia from a pawnbroker for just five dollars. member of Alene's (Sherman Alexie) tribe. He began his personal battle with drug addiction in 1985, while he was a freshman at Gonzaga Jesuit University. The success of his first work published in 1990 inspired Alexie to overcome his alcohol abuse. “In his collections of short stories and poetry, Alexie highlights the despair, poverty, and alcoholism that often shaped the lives of Native Americans living on reservations” (Sherman Alexie). When developing his characters, Alexie often gives them characterizations of drug addiction, poverty, and criminal behavior in an attempt to evoke sadness in his readers. Alexie uses other art forms, such as cinema, music, cartoons and print media, to bombard the dominant distortion of Indian culture and redefine Indianness. "The term Indian and the stereotypical image are both created through stories of misrepresentation: one is a pretend word with no real tribal and the other is a...... middle of paper... .. the badges of man. “Alexie's protagonists struggle to survive the constant beatings to their minds, bodies, and spirits by white American society, as well as their own self-loathing and feelings of helplessness (Sherman Alexie). While WhileWorks CitéBaxter, Corby. Indian humor, tricksters, and stereotypes in selected works by Gerald Vizenor, Thomas King, and Sherman Alexie. Diss. University of Texas: Arlington, 2012. Np: np, nd Print.Lliu, K. and H. Zhang. “Self- and counter-representations of Native Americans: Stereotypical and new images of Native Americans in popular media.” Ebscohost. University of Arkansas, nd Web. April 19, 2014 “Sherman Alexie”. Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, nd Web. April 19, 2014. “Unit 2: Reading and writing about short fiction.” » ENGL200: Composition and literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Internet. April 19. 2014.