SOURCE: A review of First Indian on the Moon, in Library Journal, Vol. 118, No. 19, November 15, 1993, pp. 77-8.

In the following review, Allen discusses cultural and personal influences on Alexie's verse in First Indian on the Moon.

Outraged pride, broken promises, and the scourge of alcoholism are the burden of [First Indian on the Moon's] sharp-edged, high-impact poems, prose poems, mini-essays, and fragments of stories woven together in a tapestry of pain about death by fire and survival by endurance on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Memories of great Indian chiefs, "fancydancers," powwow campfires, and "some Crazy Horse dreams," set against cruelty toward Native Americans, reveal "what went wrong with our love." Caught between alien white and disintegrated Native American cultures, "home-less and hopeful," Alexie uses the "magic and loss" of song and story to forge an "entire identity" out of anger and the nightmare of racism. Despite pain...