good evening from las vegas. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with sherman alexie. over the last years he garnered high praise. he joins us tonight to discuss his first work of nonfiction, a very personal and moving memoir titled "you don't have to say you love me." we are glad you joined us. the conversation with sherman alexie coming up in just a moment. ♪

-- and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ pleased to welcome novelist and poet sherman alexie back to this program. he is out with a memoir titled "you don't have to say you love me." it is a collage of essays and poems about his childhood on the reservation and complicated relationship with his mother. i want to go right back. put this cover back up. when i saw -- i'm curious as to how you felt when you saw the

cover art. when i saw it broken frame photo in the center and the title "you don't have to say you love me." before i got in it hit me. >> it made me cry the first time i saw the cover art and exactly the first draft it was so perfect and made me cry. that is not me on the cover with my mother. that is my big sister. and the broken frame and two women who died, my big sister died in a house fire and my mother died of cancer. so it is a photo of a mother and daughter who are gone and the loss, "you don't have to say you love me," one of the sadder songs ever recorded. the entire just incapsulates my grief in one image. >> why did you go with that title? >> you know, i searched and searched and searched and then i

looked up the top ten hits of my birth year in 1966. and "you don't have to say you love me" was number two. as soon as i read it i remember hearing it from my youth and my mom saying it a lot. my mom was singing the top 40 songs. i remember her singing "you don't have to say you love me." as soon as i titled that i started remembering other songs she used to sing. she sang "i'm not lisa." she sang dolly parton. the idea of naming the book after a pop song just seemed perfect. >> there is a piece on page 113, a piece that i want you to read. i think it probably incapsulates what this story is that you tell in the book. it's called utensil. >> utensil. feasting on venison stu after we

buried my mother i recognized my spoon and realized my family had been using it for at least 42 years. how does one commemorate the ordinary? i thanked the spoon for being a spoon and finished my stew. how does one get through a difficult time? how does the sun properly mourn his mother? it helps to run the errands to get done. i washed that spoon, dried it and put it back in the drawer, but i did it consciously, paying attention to my hands, my wrists and the feel of steel against my finger tips. then my wife drove us back home to seattle where i wrote this poem about ordinary grief. thank you poem for being a poem. thank you paper and ink for being paper and ink. thank you desk for being a desk.

thank you mother for being my mother. thank you for your imperfect love that almost worked. it mostly worked or partly worked. it was almost enough. >> okay. let me get myself together here. why was your mother's love imperfect? >> like many native american women now and in the past she was a target for all sorts of violence and oppression and racism and misogyny. i think the pain she endured growing up prevented her from being able to fully express her love and being able to fully trust the world. so i think in some ways she was not built to be a mother.

it was more like blue collared labor for her. i think she had to concentrate. and the thing she ended up being, the thing she could do was she was dependable. she was a worker. my father was a random alcoholic. my mother sobered up and became the bread winner and paid the bills and kept electricity on. so in a lot of ways she ended up being my mother and my father. she ended up fulfilling every gender role inside of our family. and she did it without being very affectiont. i can remember her hugging me twice in my life. it's interesting to talk about a mother that way of not having an affectionate lover. i get jealous when i meet people who have or have had affectionate mothers. i did not. >> this is sensitive territory for you because you wrote it and

for me for different reasons. but i wonder whether or not you think your mother was -- why do you think your mother was not affectionate? >> i think because of the abuse, because she was sexually abused, because she was raped. i think it cut off a part of her emotional life. i think it prevented her from fully expressing herself emotionally. i think her scar tissue was very deep. >> did your siblings feel the same way? >> it's interesting. in writing the memoir and as i was writing it i was calling my sisters a lot to fact check myself, to test our memories against each other. and in writing the memoir i came to realize that my siblings were much better children than i was

and that my mother was a much better mother to them. and what i come to realize is that my siblings are far more like my father who is a passive, gentle person and my mother was this arrogant, opinionated, domineering, aggressive, ambitious person and i am very much like her. also, i think she was undiagnosed bipolar. i am diagnosed bipolar. i think because i say in the group that we live our life on parallel roller coaster tracks. i think we were built to fight each other. >> when you say that your siblings were better children you mean what? >> they were more affectionate. they were there for her. they were far more dependable and far more every day presence in her life than i was. >> is that an indictment against yourself? >> i would call it that, yes.

one of the things in writing a memoir i didn't want to come off as heroic. i wanted the memoir to be the ways in which i failed my mother as well as ways i think she failed me. i did fail her. at some point no matter how bad a mother she was to me as a child at some point as an adult i chose to be a bad son. i chose not to pursue forgiveness. i chose to keep my anger precious. so in that way i failed her. >> by keeping your anger precious you mean? >> holding on to it, valuing it, making my anger toward her such a part of the way i lived in the world that i couldn't see any other alternative. i couldn't forgive. i couldn't forget. i couldn't let it go. >> the obvious question as you well know that every viewer has watching this is what happened. what happened? if you indicted yourself into your adulthood what happened to

make you even want to much less sit down to write it to want to dig into your past? >> well, my mother died in july of 2015 and poems just roared out of me. about 75 poems in about a month. i had never written about her. this is my first nonfiction. i had never written about her even in fictional form. she was always absent from my work. i was scared of her magic and power and rage and love. when she died it gave me permission to start thinking about her. one of the amazing things i realized is that i spent my whole career thinking my father was the engine behind the story telling. he talked and told me stories about his childhood and gave me autobiography. my mom didn't. in writing the memoir i realized she was the artistic force, one

of the last speakers of the language. she was a powwow dancer. she was a powwow person. she was traditional, one of the elders in the tribe, all of this knowledge. she was the one who most directly connected to thousands and thousands of years of tribal tradition, story telling traditions. i never thought of her that way until after she was gone. >> how much of your relationship or lack thereof w with your motr had to do with what you referenced a moment ago and that is your fear of her? >> her judgment, her judgment, not being good enough, not being loved enough, not loving her enough. i never felt like i measured up to her. and the thing is because of her bipolar disorder she was completely emotionally unpredictable. she could rage at you for no reason. she could be tender and work all night on quilts to make money.

she was incredibly dedicated to one thing at a time or everything at a time. you can never get a handle on her. and it was just easier to run away from her than it was to be in her presence. >> i don't know that i discovered this going through the text, going through the book. but how much of the difference -- you mentioned your sisters and brothers. how much of a difference in the relationship have you with your -- your sisters have a different repore with your mother. >> and my brothers did. i had a really tough time being honest about my mother. i was worried that i would come off as being misogynistic or a son being mad at a woman or a man being mad at a woman. i was concerned about that.

but i think it was less about gender and more about that we shared a mental illness. i think it ends up being that she and i were the most alike. and i think that is why we fought so often. i have always thought of myself as being my father's son. one of the working titles of this memoir was my mother's son. ooir i think that is what i discovered that i am. she is my primary parent. >> if your mother was undiagnosed bipolar as you believe she was and you are acknowledging you diagnosed bipolar i don't know if there is an answer to this question. if you can go back and change anything about that relationship, do you know what that would be? >> i write about it in the book. you know, the thing that i really realize i don't think my mother was ever adored.

you know. and being a woman from her generation, nobody adored her. i think if somebody had adored her, if there had been people there to adore her that she could have been somebody incredible, amazing. she had all of these gifts and talents and ambitions. i think if somebody had been there to protect her, if somebody had been there to protect her dreams, to protect her soul and her heart i think she would have been magnificent. >> i say this respectfully. that's a lot of baggage to carry through life as if you didn't already know that. that is a lot of luggage, sherman. wh when, where, how did you come to believe, accept or become courageous enough to know that

with all that baggage you can be a worthy partner in a relationship? >> i am still working on that. you'll have to ask my wife. i have been married for 24 years. i have been married for life. i think i'm doing okay. >> was that intimidating? >> i married a native american woman. we have two sons. my wife is an incredibly powerful, magnetic, charismatic person. at times she scares me and intimidates me in similar ways. but in writing this book and writing about my relationship with my wife and meeting her and sharing this journey with her with my mother's death and with examining my mother's death i think we have become closer. i didn't let her read the book

until i was done. she read it. and the thing she said is i feel cherished. and i said good because you are. >> maybe you said more than that because this is television. you don't have to say more if that is all you want to say. it seems to me if your wife given all you described about your mother what she did not feel, if your wife reads your manuscript and says nothing else other than i feel cherished, that has to feel like -- that is powerful. that is arresting. >> my most important audience, my most important reader, the most important person in my life. she feels honored. >> one less native woman who was made to feel the way your mother

felt. >> i hope so. and i think my sisters, as well. my little sisters, the twins. i am loving the reviews of people talking about how funny and smart and witty they are in the book and challenge me and mock me. i think their power comes through in the book, as well. my amazing sisters. shelly boyd who was the wife of one of my best friends who died. she is learning a language and became close to my mother. her power and her efforts to speak again and establish a school to teach younger people to speak our tribal languages again. i think the power of women is in the book. >> speaking of the power of women. we talked about your mother. tell me about the other. >> my big sister. my half sister who is this -- as i say in the book my memories of her are as of this romantic figure. she ran away in the '70s and got

pregnant. she is beautiful like my mother and smart and charming. and i didn't know then that romantic heroes are often endless nomads in disguise. my sister died in a house fire with her husband when i was 14. so it was one of the major deaths in my life, one of the major grieves. she was the first person who ever told me i could be a writer. i had written a short story in fourth grade, a halloween story. she read it and it scared her she said. as a reservation indian kid the idea of becoming anything seemed like going to the moon or going to mars. so the fact that my sister said that to me all those years ago resonated. and she died the year i left the

reservation to go to the high school on the border. i lost eight people in two years. so it felt like a curse like me leaving had caused it to happen. of course, that is a narcissistic way of looking at it, but it's hard not to look at it that way when you are 14 or 15 years old. >> i am reminded of the late great maya angelo. you know her story that she went quiet because she thought her voice had killed the moon who had raped her. i don't see that as narcissism anymore than i see this as narcissism. speaking of you're leaving to go to the white house outside the reservation. for those of us who are fans know the trouble you had gotten into. some schools won't let your book be read. you have been in hot water here and there. but i wonder how much of this

relationship with your mom or lack thereof, the stories you tell in this book, how much of that influenced your decision to get off the reservation and whether or not revisited that childhood has made you rethink the decision that you can't change at this point. >> my mom always said i was born with a suitcase in my hand, that i was always leaving. my sisters during the course of writing this book said that to me in various ways that they always knew i was leaving. so i think i was born to leave. and i lived in the city now for 25 years and i realized that a lot of my sadness as a kid certainly had a lot to do with povertiy and alcohol addiction

and mental illnesses. i think a lot of it had to do with the fact that i was born to live in the city. we have to think of native americans as being born to live in the wilderness and the forest and deserts closely connected to nature. but i think i was born to live in crowds. i'm happiest in crowds. >> can you leave your people without leaving your people? and when you leave your people can they accept that you are not leaving your people? >> when you come from a very specific tribe like i do i think you do leave your people. i think you spend the rest of your life reclaiming pieces of what you left behind. i think everyone of my books is an effort to reclaim something i left behind. i think this book is an effort to reclaim my mother. >> as you reclaim your mother, what do you intend to do with

her? >> i'm just starting that ceremony. i realize writing the book was the first half of this. now going out into the world with it talking to you, talking to audiences, having people read it, responding and thinking and hearing other people's stories about their relationship with their mothers i think that is where i will be carrying her into these other stories i am going to hear. >> we talked a little bit, sherman, about how your life has impacted your relationship with your wife. talk a bit about that. i'm curious to know how it has impacted your choices as a parent based upon your back story what kind of parent did you want to be and have you become that or are you becoming the kind of parent you wanted to be? >> we have two sons. you can't predict who you are going to have. we have two sons so i certainly wanted to raise them to be very

respectful of women, to be very respectful of native women in particular. i think we have done that. i wanted kindness above all else. i wanted to have kind men. i think my wife and i have done a good job. >> that's not in the running. >> exactly. kindness over all. >> all these years later i spent time on reservations here and there for interviews and other even events, what's your sense of how much better, worse, the same women today are treated on the reservation? >> you know, native american women socially speaking deal with more violence and more poverty, more social problems than any other group of people

in the united states and canada. they are the primary targets of so much hatred and so much animosity within and from inside and outside the communities. and that has gotten better somewhat at least there is more voices talking about it, but it still persists. back in canada there are dozens and dozens and dozens of indigenous women who have gone missing. every day i see on the internet somebody else has gone missing. it continues to be an epic problem for indigenous women. we need to continue to speak about it to use our voices to promote the voices of indigenous women and their story and their power and to celebrate and honor them and to listen to indigenous women. >> can i have the book back, please? >> you can. it is a powerful book.

i suspect this conversation at least to some degree has convinced you of that so much so that you might want to read it. it's called you don't have to say you love me. sherman, great conversation. >> thank you. >> that's our show tonight. thanks for watching and as always keep the faith. for more information on today's show visit tavis smiley as pbs.org. i'm tavis smiley join me conversations with activist susan burkeman and actress felicity huffman. that's next time. see you then.

and by contributions from viewers like you. thank you.

good evening from las vegas. i'm tavis smiley. more than 50 years ago now baldwin's rich, raw and prose is reprinted in a letter press edition with photographs from steve shapiro. tonight the photographer known from iconic images from the civil movement. then actress here to talk about david lynch, "star wars" and much more. conversation with steve shapiro and laura durham in just a moment.