Sherman Alexie: An Ode to the White Urban Working Class

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Blue City Blues, a podcast featuring smart guests talking about the problems facing blue cities and how to fix them. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik and Sandeep in recent episodes, you and I have talked a lot about the working class and blue cities, including the white working class.

[00:00:30] Yeah, it's been a, I think, really a recurring theme of the podcast. I mean, we did an episode way back last year with David Rolfe, right, a labor leader here in Seattle talking about, you know, whether labor unions and their leadership have lost touch with the working class, right?

[00:00:51] We talked to David Paul Kuhn, a historian and writer and journalist who wrote a great book about the hard hat riot in 1970, which he sees the beginning of the defection of the white working class from the Democratic to the Republican parties, right? And then more recently, you and I have just been on a bit of a nostalgia trip, really. We kind of were talking about our youth in Portland, Oregon with Helena Bennett from Slow Boring and the Solid B Cities episode.

[00:01:21] And with John Roderick, too, a kind of Seattle musician, right? We talked. It seems like there was an era when the working class was sort of integral to the culture and the ethos of blue cities like Portland and Seattle and maybe not so much anymore.

[00:01:43] Yeah. And today's guest who inspired us to want to focus and sort of zero in on that is Sherman Alexie. And I really enjoyed this conversation. Of course, people know Sherman Alexie, novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, filmmaker. And for us, really, this is the second time we've had it on kind of a commentator on urban America and blue city America and American culture. And I thought this was a really good episode.

[00:02:13] Yeah, well, Sherman's Sherman's great. I mean, obviously, we're both fans of his. And yes, he's one of the smartest, funniest and most insightful, I think, commentators on culture. And you see it through his literary output. He's very prolific on Substack. And really what I think caught our attention and motivated us to do this episode, as you'll hear when we get to it, is he republished a poem he wrote in 2021 recently called Ode to Tonya Harding.

[00:02:43] And given that we've been talking about old Portland and what it was like back then and the grittiness of American cities back in our youth, that really sort of triggered some associations for us. And we asked Sherman to come back on to talk about it. Well, you did. But I have to say it was a great idea. We spent, I think, like the first 20 minutes or something circling around the poem.

[00:03:07] And some of his answers in that section and throughout really just made me remember just what an exceptional talker he is, in addition to being a poet and a writer. Just like when he's talking, sometimes I'm like, wow, that that's poetry right there, you know? Yeah, that's right. Which is probably why we should just shut up now. And here's our interview with Sherman Alexie. All right, Sherman Alexie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It's good to be here again.

[00:03:38] Sherman, it's a real thrill to have you on again. And one of my favorite episodes from last year was when we had you on to talk about, you know, I think the title of that one was Monsters, Colonizers and the Minor League Maoism of the urban left. Yeah, I caught some email grief for the minor league Maoism. That was a good line. We put it in the title.

[00:04:05] And I responded to one person who hammered on me and I said, so you're aspiring to the Major League of Maoism? And I didn't hear from them again. Yeah, yeah. Well, that episode got great feedback. And so thank you for doing that one. And thank you for coming back on with us.

[00:04:25] And for today, I think I was inspired by you posted, I guess this is a poem you wrote back in 2021, but you had reposted it a few weeks ago called Ode to Tonya Harding. Yeah. And that really caught my attention because it seems like it's been a theme recently on Blue City Blues for David and I, where we've been kind of going back and looking at kind of the days of our youth in the 80s and 90s.

[00:04:53] And kind of what, how much, how different, like the world we lived in was back then. And the cities we lived in were different. And they were different, not just culturally and stuff, but the people who lived there was differently. There was still very much in these spaces that I grew up in.

[00:05:11] And I grew up around what we might call kind of the white working class, like non-college educated white folks in cities like Portland and Seattle and Spokane, you know, where you were born and went to college. And, you know, it was like, it's like a world we have lost, right? This world where Tonya Harding, as I've said before, she was not a freak, right? She was a type.

[00:05:39] She was somebody we all knew in a way that I think now in the kind of world of Seattle I live in in 2026, which is like I hang out with all these educated, affluent, upscale people. And we're all cosmopolitan and we're all very, you know, happy with ourselves and the world we made for ourselves.

[00:06:04] And yet, you know, when I think back to the kind of world that has disappeared. So anyway, that's sort of what really prompted me to say to David, let's get Sherman back on and kind of talk about this and let's talk about that and kind of those sort of experiences and sort of what's changed about the world. And so let me just start with a question. Talk to us a little bit about that poem and what got you writing it and what was your thought process and all of that.

[00:06:34] Well, even in her heyday, I felt empathy. I felt a connection with Tonya Harding because she was poor white. And I grew up in eastern Washington, rural eastern Washington. And I had plenty of friends who were poor white. And, you know, being a reservation Indian, a poor reservation Indian, in many ways, that's our dating pool. Yeah. Poor white people. Plenty of my relatives have married poor white people.

[00:07:03] I have a number of poor white in-laws. So that was part of it. But the punishment she got very quickly that she had invaded an elite space and she didn't have an elite personality. She didn't have an elite education, but she had elite physical skill. She had found her way into international renown and they didn't want her.

[00:07:28] In a sense, she was Gatsby and doomed for that same tragic ending to where she put on a mask, sometimes literally with her makeup, she'd be wearing a garish mask. And they expelled her. And, you know, whether or not she was part of the conspiracy to, you know, to assault Nancy Kerrigan, you know, probably, allegedly, who knows for sure.

[00:07:52] But, you know, that was the end result of class resentment, poverty resentment, the fact that she was never accepted and she never would be accepted. And it was interesting to me that the latest Olympic gold winner, I can't remember her name, is sort of garish. Right. Her hair was two colors. Her personality was kind of confrontive. She didn't really fit the world. I don't know her background.

[00:08:22] You know, I doubt she was poor like Tonya, but it got me. Brassy in that way. Brassy. And it got me a little frustrated to think, well, now this is acceptable. But as I'm saying that now, it's acceptable because of the Internet. At some level, I mean, you get punished even more for being an asshole or for the perception that you're an asshole, but you also get celebrated for it. So her she had the right kind of rashness.

[00:08:52] And it made me feel bad about Tanya Harding. She never could. Tanya Harding had to go through the gatekeepers, right, of journalism, who created a narrative about Nancy Kerrigan being the good girl and, you know, well-heeled. And, you know, Tanya was the kind of girl that, you know, made a sex tape with her husband on their wedding night. Well, I mean, who hasn't made a sex tape?

[00:09:20] Yeah, yeah, right, right. You know, I never watched it. I was never interested in watching it. It just seemed like another invasion of her life. I mean, making a sex tape on your wedding night? I, of course, who I know. I mean, I've never made one, but I mean, it's completely standard. And the fact that it was released is the horrible part. Not that she made it. I know.

[00:09:50] But the portrayal of Nancy Kerrigan, who was pretty middle class herself, but who was very pretty, very conventionally attractive and conducted herself with sort of a grace. She understood the pressure of presenting herself in a certain way. So she did. And that was more acceptable. And her athletic skill was far more graceful. Tanya skated like she was skating for her life.

[00:10:20] Yeah, they did. They had that. They had a different style. My mom was a huge fan of figure skating. And, of course, like she she loved Nancy Kerrigan. It's like I mean, she preferred her style because she saw it as more middle class and more refined, probably, you know, than the sort of athleticism. And I mean, the judges at that time, too, for figure skating, I'm embarrassed to admit that I watched I've watched some of it. You know, they celebrated that, too. Like the sort of more athletic style in those days didn't always cut it.

[00:10:51] Well, Nancy Kerrigan got treated like she was like Jackie Kennedy or something. You're right. She was kind of kind of middle class in her in her origins. But like she was sort of treated as this as this kind of kind of, yeah, a royal of, you know, somebody with a refined sort of taste and sensibility who, you know, as opposed to the kind of, you know. Yeah. I mean, Tanya skated in a shopping mall. That was her practice. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

[00:11:20] Lloyd Center, where we used to go to Lloyd Center. Was it Lloyd Center or was it Clackamas? I thought she was out in Lloyd Center. Oh, was it? OK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. She lived in Clackamas, but her skating was the Lloyd Center Mall. Oh, was it Lloyd Center? OK. OK.

[00:11:49] So I was in there and it felt even more like Tanya now. Her legacy, which is like a boarded up, you know, a boarded up KB's toys or something. The first ever shopping center ice rink in the United States, it says here on the Internet. Huh? Lloyd Center. Yeah. And a world class athlete was forced to train there because she had no other option.

[00:12:15] You, in that poem, there's a kind of ambivalence about your relationship to white working class people. Is that the right way to describe it? If you're enjoying this podcast, can you please do us a favor? Spread the word. Tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, anyone who's interested in the future of Blue Cities and better governance.

[00:12:41] It's basically anyone who thinks that the conversation in Blue Cities is kind of stagnated and thinks we need to be hearing from more smart people, even people that we might disagree with about many things. And one more favor to ask. If you want this podcast to continue, can you take a minute right now to give us a five-star review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts? Because the way the algorithm works, it's the five-star reviews that give other folks a chance to discover the podcast.

[00:13:10] And finally, we want your feedback, positive, critical, whatever. Please send that to us directly. You can email us, bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. That's bluecitypodcast at gmail.com. And send along show ideas, guest ideas. Sandeep and I would really appreciate that as well. Okay, back to the show. I don't know that it's ambivalence.

[00:13:38] I think it's a connection, and maybe that can be tenuous. It's the thought that just hit me. Now, I grew up with a lot of Tonya Hardings, not world-class athletes, but a lot of poor white young women. And I was familiar with their dysfunctions as well. And one of the things that really stands out for me in the poem, and I can't remember if I wrote about it. Maybe I did. But no, I changed it because the real thing was too distressing.

[00:14:08] Where I came out of a Safeway when I was in college a summer in Spokane between semesters, and I walked out. And this little kid, and you could tell they were poor. There's six or seven kids, and they were dressed pretty haphazardly. And one of the kids dropped his ice cream, and the mom just wailed on him. And I was, what do I do? What do I do? And I forever regret I didn't intercede.

[00:14:37] But then what would that have looked like? What would that have been? What could I have changed about their lives? I could have saved the kid maybe from getting smacked around then, but that didn't prevent him from getting smacked around later. So I froze in the moment, and I regret that I froze. But I think if it's ambivalent, it's about the dysfunctions.

[00:15:00] In some ways, in the way they mirrored Native American dysfunctions, the dysfunctions born and bred out of poverty and desperation. And ambivalence about the lack of hope I sometimes saw. Or the beauty I saw destroyed in some way or another. You know, the poem is a lot about this particular young woman I met at a drive-in theater who reminded me of Tanya Harding. Not necessarily then, but does now.

[00:15:29] A really attractive, smart, athletic young woman who just didn't fit any mold of what a young woman is supposed to be. She was brash again. She was sexual. She was confrontive. She was flirted with everybody. She was just sort of this walking id. And I was not familiar with it.

[00:15:56] I grew up in a Native culture that's pretty physically modest. And she was just not modest at all. So her modesty was incredibly attractive, but also really made me uncomfortable. I mean, this thing she would do, she would run up on men, jump up on them, and wrap her legs around their waist with just her legs. And then do sit-ups on their body. I mean, she was incredibly strong.

[00:16:23] And watching that happen, and part of me was like, I wish she would do that to me. And the other part was, don't do that to me. And she didn't know me. So she didn't. She didn't do that. But that strength of hers, that physical strength is what made me think about Tonya Harding and comparing them, too. So I don't know that I feel uncomfortable.

[00:16:46] It's just that they were so much like me and so much like the parts of me I don't necessarily like. And then I feel like an elitist because of that. And you said at the top of the show, you talked about how elite we are. The three of us run in elite circles. But I'm a Venn diagram that certainly I'm in the elite middle.

[00:17:15] But on the outside of that, I'm still a res Indian boy. And I still am crass and jockish and interested in low culture, so to speak. So all of that revolves around this poem. There's a divergence in the poem, which is interesting, right? Because you talk about this girl, Sissy, you call her in the poem. And she didn't wrap her legs around you and jump on you, but she did kiss you, right? And then you're too scared to kiss her again.

[00:17:46] But it's this moment where you talk about just her kind of vitality and that she's kind of alive in this way. And that's incredibly appealing. And that's something you saw in this less affected and mannered sort of these kind of blue-collar girls, these girls of that era. But there's a divergence because then you imagine, like, what if our lives had stayed together? What if I'd married her? What would our life be like?

[00:18:15] You kind of talk about that in the poem. But that's not what happens. And you're like, but I see her in a grocery store 20 years later. And she's got three kids. And maybe she's a little overweight. And you've gone on to become, you know, to kind of enter different worlds and stuff like that. And so, you know, you talk about that, right, in the poem. That's sort of like you're looking back at the world you were part of once, right?

[00:18:40] Yeah, I mean, I imagine what it would have been like now if I'd married her and whether the dichotomy, would we have continued to be poor? Yeah. Would we have lived in a trailer house? Would we have had too many kids? Would that have all happened to us? Or would our ambitions lead us into a solid middle-class life? Would her obvious talent and personality lend itself to some sort of ambition?

[00:19:09] Would her ambition have led her into a more secure life? And would my ambitions and intelligence, would we have joined forces in that way and turned from a poor white girl and a poor Indian boy into something middle-class? And what's wrong with that, right? That's what the poem is talking about. What did I say? You know, the all-stars of the bowling league. And, you know, I know people who are perfectly happy being all-stars in their bowling league.

[00:19:39] So would that life have been good? I think so. I often think about other lives. My relative fame has been distressing in all sorts of ways as well as rewarding. So I often think about the non-famous life I could have had where I probably would have been happier overall.

[00:20:05] You know, not in terms of my wife or my sons, but just that idea of being a high school English teacher and basketball coach when I'm feeling my worst about this life. I think about that life. I think about that life. And I think, oh, man, just being on the bus, traveling to other schools, farm towns, and caring that much about that life. I miss that life.

[00:20:29] I miss being the kid on those school buses, driving to basketball games to play against poor white kids, middle-class white kids, ranchers and farmers and miners and loggers. And so there's some part of me that gets very nostalgic about the time I spent among poor white people. And I don't think people understand that.

[00:20:52] Many people understand that, how I could be nostalgic for the poor white kids of eastern Washington. But I am. I know Sandeep wants to talk more about the urban white working class. But just since this theme of the rural white working class is such a big part of your work and has shaped how you think about yourself, and it's in a lot of your books. I'm reading a blog post. Nothing very literary here.

[00:21:22] Just a blog post from 2024. Yes, there is certainly such a thing as white privilege, but not all white people enjoy it. In a capitalist society, poverty forms its own identity group. And that group is ethnically, racially and culturally diverse. You know, this is obviously bringing up contemporary politics in that post. And not everybody likes it. You get a response here from a sub-stacker named Annie.

[00:21:46] But what white privilege doesn't refer to, or she's basically arguing white privilege doesn't talk about economic privilege. This is when a poor white kid and a poor native kid are driving in equally busted cars, but the Indian kid gets pulled over and searched and the white kid gets home without incident. So I wonder if you can take it to some of our contemporary kind of culture war issues where you come down more on the side of class. All sorts of white kids don't get out of those situations.

[00:22:14] You know, we can talk about the disparities of who's in prison, the racial disparities, but the class disparities are even larger. And actually, a majority of prisoners in the United States are white. And part of that is simply because whites are a majority in the country. But there are all sorts of white people who go to prison. You know, on Instagram, you know, I get obsessed with all sorts of weird stuff like African safari hunts.

[00:22:44] So I end up watching lions chasing giraffes. But I also end up in a very similar way. I end up watching police videos because you watch one and then they send them at you. And in those videos, of course, which are a very small slice of what life is like for police officers and law enforcement and criminals and possibly criminals, is I see a lot of white guys get shot, too.

[00:23:14] And certainly whenever they do questions, they ask people how many unarmed black men were shot last shot and killed last year. And people will say a thousand. And I don't know the numbers for last year, but I'm going to guess it's less than 30. It might be less than 20. So whoever that is responding to that, Annie, I'm going to assume she's white. It feels that way.

[00:23:42] But what that is, is guilt over her own white privilege, whatever she enjoys, or that she doesn't know any poor white people. And I'm going to guess if you're on Substack, if you're commenting on my Substack, chances are that you don't know poor white people. Or you were once a poor white person who now is not and still has resentment. And that's insulting my Substack audience. But I think most of them would recognize them.

[00:24:11] If they're following me, then they know I'm going to be – they know I have a different liberal attitude toward all of this. And I'm an old-school Democrat, which I never realized until the Democrat Party went screaming to the left, is that I'm economic-based.

[00:24:32] I believe the Democratic Party is about the working class, but we've become the party of the elite college graduate, which I am that, but I don't like us. I vote with people I detest. I support the same politicians of people I really dislike. And that creates a conflict in me that – and now I'm not one of those people.

[00:24:57] There are some Substackers who did it who went from the left to the right in about two and a half weeks. I have no interest in being a conservative and less interest in being a right-winger. But I would love to pull the Democratic Party back to working class interests, which means back to poor white concerns. So I'm originally from Canada. I spent a lot of time on Vancouver Island with my cousins.

[00:25:25] My dad grew up on a farm in Alberta. And so these were working class folks living on Vancouver Island. And when we were kids, even though my dad was pretty successful, like class wasn't something at least I was that familiar with or aware of. We were all sitting in the backseat of the car driving around, you know, and partying and listening to like Cheap Trick and drinking beer in the woods or whatever it was.

[00:25:52] And then at a certain point, you know, high school, college, as I start going to a fancy liberal arts college, I start becoming aware of what tremendous privilege I've enjoyed and I'm about to enjoy in my life as a result of that difference. But then I get to sort of KUOW as a reporter in the, you know, last decade or so, the local NPR station.

[00:26:23] And I'm being told we should stop thinking about class, basically. And I had no objection to the idea we should still focus on, we should focus more on race and racism, but just stop talking or thinking about class. And I'm kind of like, wow, how do we, how do we do that? How do we understand the world as reporters or writers or artists or anybody without looking at the material conditions that gives rise to so much of inequality and our life?

[00:26:52] It's just such an astonishing thing to say. And a lot of your work is pointing to this, the value of basically cross class solidarity, right? Like that's what you're getting at in a lot of this stuff. So I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about that. Well, your question, class resentment.

[00:27:11] I mean, a lot of that is what filled Trump's rise, which is one of the great ironies of all time, since he's one of those rich people who are so crass and awful and don't care about the working class or the poor. It's astonishing to me that this guy became God to the working class, the white working class. I'm just baffled, continue to be baffled. But I grew up with kids like that.

[00:27:38] One of the most distressing things for me of the last 10 years is there are quite a few white kids I grew up with who were decent and kind and funny and generous, who have now become total Trumpers, who are now MAGA pouring out of their ears and who have become on social media. I'm not on Facebook, who have become actively and loudly racist.

[00:28:07] And I know that's what the left sees of what of what the Trump people have become. But I see back to their childhoods and I start thinking about, well, what's the process by which these kids became this? Can we understand that process? Can we as Democrats understand that process and do something to change it, to intercede earlier?

[00:28:36] We talk about early childhood education. We talk about the value of fourth grade. Well, a Trumper was formed in fourth grade. So we've got to go back to that idea of, well, let's intercede. And I mean, free breakfast for everybody. I mean, it's a small thing. It's more job training. The celebration of vocational education would be a great thing.

[00:29:05] You know, I've done Zoom visits. I did a recent Zoom visits with a lower middle class school that was a majority white. And one of the young women said she likes to fix cars. And another young man said that his uncle's a plumber and that they're conflicted about going to college or taking those jobs. And I said, we're always going to need auto mechanics and plumbers.

[00:29:30] You can go to college part time, but get with your uncle, join the union, and you're going to make tons of money as a plumber. And to celebrate that, to be a part of that, to encourage that, it's really easy to be a cheerleader for the disadvantaged for me. And I don't know why the Democratic Party has stopped being a cheerleader for the poor working class whites. I don't understand it. It's foolish.

[00:30:01] So, I mean, it reminds me of my life trajectory, just to take a minute here to kind of tell the story. My parents emigrated to the United States in the late 1960s. I was two years old. And they were educated, but they came over with almost nothing. And my childhood is really the story of them rising up the class ladder. And my earliest memories, we lived outside of Washington, D.C.

[00:30:30] And I was too young to understand that we were poor, but we lived in this little house right across the street from a shopping center. And our next door neighbor was a middle-aged white woman named Snooki who worked in the laundromat across at the shopping center across. And I remember I loved her. She had a kind of older teenage son. I forget his name. And for whatever reason, my four-year-old self loved him.

[00:30:56] And then he disappeared for a while and came back later. And it turned out he went to jail because he robbed a gas station, right? Oh, wow. And so some of my earliest memories are kind of like that kind of white working class sort of world. And even through my teenage years, my first job was in a Ponderosa steakhouse where I worked with a bunch of white working class kids.

[00:31:26] And in some ways, they were more accepting of me as this Indian immigrant kid. Like we were all outsiders in some sense to society. We were all sort of outcasts. They were outcasts in their own ways, right? And that there was something to, you know, find common grounds. The other place I found that kind of commonality is out of 70s head culture, right? Like it was this world where we're all freaks.

[00:31:56] You know, we all got a bandana, you know, hanging out the back pocket of our jeans. And we get, you know, we all live in the world where all the heads get together to smoke weed. You know, that's how I found my purchase in being an American, right? Was through those relationships, which is why I have such a nostalgia for that world. Because there was opportunities for solidarity across lines of race.

[00:32:21] And, you know, that was just available to us in a way that I don't think. I mean, that world is just gone, right? Those people are. David, you brought up the kind of I want to bring up the urban working class and how they're different from the rural working class. But they weren't different back then. There was an urban working class that were just like rural white people, right? You know, they were kind of like they weren't culturally different, right?

[00:32:48] We've changed so much and we've divided so much culturally and we've gone into these bubbles and stuff. Anyway, it just makes me think of when you think about the sort of class and race dynamics of our society now. Was there racism back then? Of course, there was tons of it. But there was also an opportunity to kind of bond across lines of race that I don't think exists now. Right, Sherman? I think that's kind of what you get at in some of your writing. Well, I delivered pizzas. I made sandwiches.

[00:33:15] You know, I had plenty of minimum wage service jobs. Even when I worked in an office, my only office job, I was a secretary. So I was a minimum wage office worker and I was the only male secretary. So I was surrounded by we'd go to the secretary's lunch and I'd be the only dude, which was great fun. But as you were saying that, I was thinking about some of the people I worked with.

[00:33:40] And when I was delivering pizzas especially, it was a bunch of poor white kids. I was the only person of color. I was the only person with more melanin than average. And race wasn't a part of it. Now, certainly when I went out into the world delivering pizzas, I would run into racism.

[00:34:06] You know, I got called chief any number of times, which is what happens to Indians. But inside the place, we were all working. We all smelled like pepperoni. We all hated the boss. We all had a crush on that one young woman who had no interest in any of us. So, you know. This is like you're recounting my Ponderosa Steakhouse experience. That's what I literally there was this girl and this white girl, working class white girl. And we all thought she was hot. And like, yeah.

[00:34:37] And we'd all sit at a table after work. And we're all tired. And we'd sit there and like, you know, I don't know. Like, just shoot the shit about like. I mean, vivid memories. You know, I could only afford one polo shirt when I was delivering pizzas. So, after shifts, I would have. And I couldn't afford a laundromat. You know, and I didn't have a washer and dryer in my apartment. And they had a washer and dryer in the basement. But it didn't always work.

[00:35:05] And I didn't always have the quarters to use it. So, sometimes I would get back from the shift. And I would wash my shirt in the sink with soap. And rinse it out and hang it up. And hope it dried enough for me to wear it for the next day work. And it didn't always. I would show up to work in a 20% damp shirt that at least smelled better than it had the day before. Uh, that's vivid to me. Uh, well, another thing people don't know.

[00:35:35] The trick of this, if your polo shirt, if your work shirt stinks and you haven't had a chance to wash it and your underarms smell from the day before. Uh, you know, you would use toothpaste. You would, uh, chew up toothpaste until it was a film. And then you would dab it on your underarm shirt. You know, on the inside. So that at least that minty smell might combat the body odor. And that's a good trick. Yeah. Left in the shirt.

[00:36:04] Uh, working class tricks. Or, or the, the, the young woman we are all in love with, Carolyn. I vividly remember she was obsessed with Billy Joel. She was always singing Billy Joel. She had a good voice. Always singing Billy Joel. So whenever I hear Billy Joel now, I think about her. You know, piano man starts up and I'm like, oh, Carolyn. Uh, and, and she once ordered, she was off work and she once ordered pizza and I was a delivery guy.

[00:36:32] So I delivered pizza to my coworkers house and it was a shack. Uh, it was, it was, it was in the center, the East Sprague neighborhood of Spokane is where we delivered pizza, which is where poor people and street sex workers were. I delivered pizza to street sex workers. The first time I did that, uh, the, the, the phone guy said, Sherman, we got a delivery for you. And I said, where?

[00:36:59] And he said, uh, on Sprague and Roy, I think it was on Sprague and Roy. And I said, well, what's the house number, apartment number? He said, no, Sprague and Roy intersection. So I went there and, and, you know, I was looking around for what I was supposed to do. And she waved me over the street sex worker and I pulled up and I rolled down my window, rolled it down. Literally, it's been a long time. And she said, do you have my calzone? And I said, yes. And I said, pepperoni and a large Coke.

[00:37:28] And she goes, yep, that's it, honey. And so I gave her the calzone and, and the pop. And I think it was like $9 or something total. It may be even less than that. Probably less than that because she gave me a $10 bill. And she said, keep the change. So I got like a 15% tip delivering to this woman. And I delivered to her a number of times to where I actually knew her name and her, it was a street name. I'm absolutely sure, but it was Turquoise. So she called herself Turquoise.

[00:37:58] So I became her delivery person when I was working. So the phone guy would say, Sherman Turquoise. And I would know to get the calzone going and the pop and drive onto Sprague and give the pizza to Turquoise. Now, how many people have experienced things like that? I've never met another person who's delivered pizza to a street sex worker. But if I had, I assure you they were somebody poor.

[00:38:27] I did deliver pizzas, but my stories aren't as good as yours. I remember we all thought that like you'd get bigger tips the worse the neighborhood was. That rich people just didn't tip nearly as well. And we all hated the store manager who was also the owner. This was a Domino's. And he used all these awkward kind of scientific management techniques. Like you'd walk in and you were supposed to announce your times. And so we would all try to say it as quietly as possible to sort of enrage him.

[00:38:53] He would also stand next to you and make a pizza to try to, you know, up the work rate of putting pepperoni on the pizzas. And so, you know, we would sort of go as slowly as possible because you couldn't get fired really from a Domino's pizza delivery job. In those days, it was the worst possible job that you could have anyway. And so there was really nothing you could do other than just feel sad about it. But it was fun just in terms of the kind of solidarity that I had with my coworkers.

[00:39:21] I was in college, but most of them, I mean, this was a life that they'd made for themselves. They were pizza delivery guys for life, for a living at least. That was their main source of living. And that's not an easy life, man. That is not a it's not an easy existence to be doing that as as fun as it is driving around like a maniac to try to get them in 30 minutes or less, which was the which was the deal back then. And was killing people. That's why they stop. That's right. That's right.

[00:39:49] We didn't have the 30 minutes or less. But, you know, I think there was a guy named Brian who came in one day and he said he got accepted into Spokane Community College. And I forget which kind of blue collar education it was, but he was so happy and we were so happy for him because then his pizza job, he was still going to have it while he went to college and he kept it. But he had this other better job waiting for him.

[00:40:19] And and it was a vocational job and then it was repairing. So I think it was electrical now that I think about it, electrical work and and the glory of that moment and us celebrating him. And now I'm remembering more. And what we did was we purposely burned the pizza so that we couldn't deliver it.

[00:40:41] And then we were all out in the back alley eating this pizza we had burned so we could celebrate with Brian, our little rebellion against, you know, the oppressive system of a pizza joint. The man. You fought the man, man. So when I was reading, you know, your ode to Tanya Harding, one of the first things that jumped leap to mind as I was reading it. And, you know, this kind of evocative story you're telling about, again, this kind of world we have lost, it seems to me.

[00:41:11] And I went back and actually rewatched this right after I read your poem. It's there's a short documentary from 1986 called it's kind of a cult classic called Heavy Metal Parking Lot. And it's it's just these guys driving out in a car in a parking lot outside the Capitol Center in Landover, Maryland, which is right around where I grew up as a kid. Be right before a Judas Priest concert that night at the Capitol and just talking to the kids partying.

[00:41:40] And it's this incredible cultural document now about it's so it reminds me so much of the world in which I grew. I grew up with those kids. Right. And they're all young, white, loud, drunk, stone into like head. You know, they want to bang heads.

[00:42:05] They were like, you know, pasty face boys with mullets and faux leather jackets over there. Judas Priest and Iron Maiden T-shirts. You know, and and that was. That was like culture in, you know, mid 1980s America. That was kind of normal. Right. That was that was all mainstream. It's you know, I don't think my kids ever encounter anybody like that now. And those are the kids I grew up with. I'm just curious.

[00:42:35] Sherman, I know you know the movie. We'll put a link to Heavy Metal Parking Lots on YouTube in the show notes if people haven't seen it. It's 16 minutes long. It's totally worth the time to watch. But anyway, it's amazing. And I mean, it was shot in 86, I believe. So that was my freshman year of college. So I had begun my journey away from that crowd. Right. But I was a part of that kind of crowd in high school. I was friends with a lot of different cliques. I sort of fit in everywhere.

[00:43:05] So that Heavy Metal Hair Metal crowd I did hang out with. I can think of the Norris brothers who were into that stuff. Tom Lane, who I later was roommates for a little while, was into that genre of music. And Tom and the Norris boys would have fit in there completely with their attitude toward the whole thing. And the documentary, what struck me this time, I watched it again. I haven't seen it in a while. But you had talked it. We were going to talk about it on the show.

[00:43:34] So I watched it. And what struck me is how unafraid they are of being socially punished later for anything they're saying in the moment. They are not aware of the Internet. They are not aware of how they might be judged for what they're doing and how they might be destroyed. I mean, there's a moment when an older guy is talking about his girlfriend and she's 14 and he's 19 or something. But they made it up. I looked it up.

[00:44:02] It was just his little sister's friend. They weren't dating. They just did it for the camera. They were just messing around. But can you imagine what would have happened to somebody playing around like that now? They would have been destroyed. So the lack of social censorship, the lack of social punishment was so vivid to me this time that they got to be kids on their way to becoming adults.

[00:44:28] And it struck me that this younger generation, I have two sons in their 20s, but I think I've talked to a lot of high school classes and a lot of high school kids because of my young adult novel. And I pay attention. Every person under the age of 30 is terrified of their friends. I'm getting called out or we're getting. Yeah. Yeah. Getting judged and getting destroyed.

[00:44:55] So they live with so much fear. And that has led directly into all the emotional and mental problems this younger generation has. You know, our children, the children of college educated liberal elites are the most privileged group of human beings that have ever existed. And yet they're the most miserable. And it doesn't make sense on one level. But then you watch heavy metal parking lot and you think, well, now I know why.

[00:45:25] You know, that guy in the mullet is happy. Now, of course, I'm sure there are problems at home, but you can see his joy at being at a Judas Priest, the joy, the absolute joy. And I was jealous of it because when do we have absolute joy in this world? The Internet has destroyed the concept of absolute joy.

[00:45:48] John Roderick was recently on this podcast and he said that he's hopeful, though, that this next generation of kids will finally just tell the millennials to fuck off and stop talking. Just stop talking was his line that just stuck with me from that interview. You also had this Substack post about Billy Elliot, the musical, just to change the subject to a whole nother country that I really loved. This is a musical, I think, based on a book that was then made into a movie, right?

[00:46:15] About Billy Elliot, who's this working class Irish boy. And without getting too much into the film, or you can spoiler alert, say whatever you want. But you wrote, there are far too many people out there, my leftist compatriots, who'd argue that my identity as a Spokane Indian raised on a reservation is radically different from that of a British kid from a mining town. Well, I say, fuck that. And then you have a Spartacus sort of reference. How about all us poor kid writers and artists stand up and say, I am Billy Elliot.

[00:46:45] And what I liked about this one was it wasn't just about the fact that as a working class kid, this is also about the arts, too, right? In some ways, because, I mean, I'm giving stuff away, but he's a ballet dancer in a working class household. So why do you like the movie Billy Elliot? And what are you getting at in that post? I'm sorry, the musical, which I have not seen. Yeah, it's a movie and a musical. So Tom Holland, actually, the actor who plays Spider-Man, played Billy Elliot on stage.

[00:47:13] He was, yeah, he was an original Billy Elliot, maybe second generation Billy Elliot. But, I mean, I'm getting tears in my eyes whenever I watch it or think about Billy Elliot. I mean, my voice is going to start breaking. Yeah, I mean, this poor kid from a poor town dreaming of a bigger life. And he discovers he has this incredible natural dancing ability.

[00:47:38] And how is he going to subvert and challenge his entire culture of race and culture and economics and job and religion? How is he going to escape that to become the star he wants to be, to pursue the life he wants to have? And he doesn't even know what that means yet. But he knows there's something bigger out there.

[00:48:02] And my mom always told me, she would say numerous times during my childhood, junior, she'd say, you were born with a suitcase in your hand. So Billy Elliot was born with a suitcase in his hand. And I don't want to spoil the movie, but it's so old we can spoil it. I mean, he finds he finds who he's supposed to be. And and he gets to ballet school and he becomes a star.

[00:48:30] But the one scene that kills me and I'm going to start breaking. Is when his dad, who'd been resisting his son's dancing, had been resisting the big change of his son going on to an urban life. There's a scene where his father had put together the money to pay for his son's ballet school education. And he's saying goodbye to him. And they're sitting on a log talking about the future.

[00:48:58] And, you know, their love is so apparent and they fall off the log laughing and hugging each other. And I mean, it's going to be their last moment, really, as child and father. That that child is going to leave home and his father is not going to be a part of the next few years journey. Their lives are going to radically diverge. And it's that divergence that kills me because that's what happened with me.

[00:49:26] I left the res in pursuit of something bigger. I didn't know it yet, but I had this extraordinary writing ability that was going to separate me from almost everybody in the world. And coming from such an incredible tribal background with at least 15,000 years of culture elevating me and weighing me down to challenge that, to subvert that, to leave that. It's incredibly painful in the moment. And it still hurts.

[00:49:55] But it's what I had to do. Sometimes you have to leave and it's going to hurt. And Billy Elliot is all about that. The pain of becoming who you are. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, right? And so, you know, we've spent a lot of 45 minutes kind of waxing nostalgic about, you know, this world. And yet there were, you know, we've mentioned it had its dark side and its bad side. You had a recent poem you wrote.

[00:50:25] The one, I'm forgetting the name of it off the top of my head, but it's the one where you talk about the fact that there was this guy who kept calling you chief over and over. Yeah, it was at the downtown Y. Yeah, until you punch him in the face. And you say you're both embarrassed that you punched him, but also proud of yourself that you, like, popped that guy who kept. So talk a little bit about that. Yeah, this was at the downtown Y in Spokane in 91.

[00:50:56] You know, I had just left college. I hadn't quite graduated, but my then girlfriend had graduated and left Pullman. And I wasn't about to stay in Pullman all by myself. And we broke up. But I moved back to Spokane with no idea what I was going to do. There was a big pause in my college education. But I was playing basketball at the Y in noon game.

[00:51:19] And this guy who had never been confrontational before, who was pretty quiet and just played ball, started calling me chief. And I don't know why. And my hair was really long then. I was in. I was looking way Indian. And he was calling me chief. Chief. And at least 10 times, 12 times. I'm not sure. And finally, I said, you call me chief one more time. I'm punching you. And I thought he took it seriously because he didn't say it for a while.

[00:51:49] And then at some point, he called me chief again. And I dropped him. And I was ready to fight. And I'm not a whole much. I threw the punch, but I'm not much of a fighter. So I thought, OK, I got one punch in and now I'm going to get my ass kicked. But I'm ready to get my ass kicked. But he just he just wiped blood from his mouth, stood up and left. And I never saw him again. But that moment, right? Fighting back against racism, fighting back against that. And I threw the punch.

[00:52:19] But I'm not a violent guy. I had to do it. I promised I would do it. I had to fight that way. But maybe I didn't. I could have just left. I could have just walked out of the Y. But but then what does that mean? You know, I love the Y. Would I never return? Was I going to let that guy, you know, colonize the space to use the current terminology? Or was I going to decolonize the space with that punch?

[00:52:49] And and so I still feel guilty about it. I don't want to hurt anybody physically ever, ever. I don't want to. I'm not going to join anybody's army. I'm not going to attack anybody. Maybe I'll I'll practice self-defense if I have to. And in some ways that was self-defense. But it's also not. He was I mean, I look, he was calling me a name. It was a racial slur. But but at what point?

[00:53:19] I mean, yes, see, I'm conflicted. I am proud of punching him. It was a good punch. He was a bigger guy. And I dropped him. And I can remember the blood and being happy. I saw his mouth bleeding. Now, if you're if you feel happiness at seeing somebody's mouth bleed, there's something wrong with you. So in that moment, there was also something wrong with me that I was delighting and felt any satisfaction in seeing another human being bleed. And and but he deserved it.

[00:53:49] Right. So it's raw. It's raw. It's not very liberal. It's not very modern. Right. But there was kind of when I read that poem that you wrote, it made me think it reminded me that there used to be this kind of more front and center, just a kind of code of personal honor that we said. Like he violated your personal honor. You called him a name. And, you know, the the code of conduct back then was you don't really turn the other cheek. You stand up for yourself and you you you fight the guy. Right.

[00:54:19] You know, and don't don't don't do that to me. You're not allowed. Right. I mean, that that again seems like our sort of cultural codes have it reminded me of how much our cultural codes have shifted over the last 30 or 40 years. Right. What you did in 1990 is kind of what I think most people back then would have been like, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. Guy called you a name. You stand up for yourself and you pop in one. Right.

[00:54:46] You know, and nowadays, you know, we'd be wagging your fingers at you, Sherman. And what what are you doing? And why are you being such an animal? And I mean, it was fascinating to read the sub stack comments. Now, of course, you know, there's going to be a sociological thing. Somebody who's going to comment on that poem comes from a particular viewpoint. And it was it was it was it was surprising to me the number of people who didn't question the punch.

[00:55:15] Who celebrated the punch. You know, who didn't understand the concept of shame and pride mixing all in together or or maybe maybe understood it, but didn't feel like it applied to that situation that that I should only feel triumphant in that moment. And there were people who got it, who understood that you can feel both ways. But what it reminds me, I use the word dichotomy, you know, in the last line of the poem, who uses the word dichotomy in a poem?

[00:55:45] I do, damn it. But, you know, you think about Keats's negative capability or what Fitzgerald wrote about the sign of a superior mind is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. And I feel that's been lost. There is no negative capability on the Internet. There was no Fitzgerald roaming through the Internet with the idea that you can hold two opposing ideas at the same time.

[00:56:11] And I'm watching it with my political allies and I watch it with my political enemies. The inability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time that there are people in the comments who couldn't understand or didn't catch the idea that you can feel pride and shame at the same exact time because of the same exact action. Yeah, I'm just thinking about it.

[00:56:33] It's like in liberal spaces, I'm slightly amending maybe what you were saying, Sandeep, and perhaps what you were saying just to raise. Recently, right, we've said two things like, you know, it's OK to punch a Nazi. Like, remember, that was a thing. There was actually a guy wandering around Seattle with a Nazi armband a few years ago and somebody punched him. And certainly that person was celebrated for that that punch.

[00:56:58] But on the other hand, I remember when my kid was in elementary school in Seattle, if you pushed in line, you jostled with another boy. That got you like a yellow card and one more of those and you faced disciplinary action from the school. And I was like, these are little boys. Like, my God, you know, it's hardly violent. But, you know, that's the that's the world that we're now living in.

[00:57:22] And just the other thing that occurred to me is that, sure, you have free speech, but getting punched, it's sort of a what was kind of nice about that world was then your punishment was kind of over for having said what he said or whatever. And nowadays, you're you're you know, you're in trouble permanently. And I think that guy got off lucky in some ways compared to the consequences on social media now for for saying something like that. There should be consequences, in other words.

[00:57:50] And isn't a punch actually in some ways more humane than what permanently canceling somebody for for that for that using that word, using that language? Just very quickly, I'll just throw out. I think that's I think there are different things like the punch a Nazi thing of the mid 2010s that you saw in kind of social media spaces on the left. That was like this this ideological thing, right? These people are ideologically bad. Therefore, it's OK for us to punch it.

[00:58:15] Whereas what what Sherman that the moment that Sherman talks about in that poem, I just read it differently. It is different. But you were saying we we we no longer have any tolerance for punching. And I'm not sure. No, you're right. You're you're right about that. But but yeah, but but it was more like it was that the guy was fucking with Sherman, right? He was calling you Sherman chief, like, you know, in this way that was like, like I said, it was like a violation of your your your your your personal honor. Right.

[00:58:46] That and the code of our private morality or whatever that existed back then was like, yeah, you got to, you know, maybe it's not supposedly the right thing to do. But it kind of is the right thing to do to stand up for yourself and and whack that guy. Well, well, the contradiction, the weirdness of the moment I'm thinking of is Mangione. Is that how you pronounce his name? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who shot the pharmacy executive? Yeah. I wrote a poem about it.

[00:59:15] The Timothee Chalamet of murderers. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. I wrote a poem about that moment and the incredible hypocrisy and contradictions that, you know, all these leftists in favor of gun control are fine with that lack of gun control who are opposed to capital punishment are fine with that capital punishment who believe in justice and fair trials who are OK with that non trial punishment.

[00:59:43] And, you know, it disgusted me and it still continues to disgust me. I saw a thing yesterday. These three journalists in heavy quotes and quotes so heavy they dropped. I saw that clip. They dropped that onto the floor of the room and kerrang because of the quotes that they're celebrating that murder.

[01:00:11] And I'm no fan of pharmacy executives. No fan whatsoever. I've been on the various ends of their punishments and their nose and their negativity. But. To condone a murder in the streets, who gets to decide that? Does somebody get to shoot me in the head because of some perception that I've done wrong?

[01:00:39] Am I to be punished that way or any of us to be punished that way? And it's it's not even anarchy because anarchy describes a system. This this is this is I you know, the only word I can think of, it's evil. It's evil and it's it's hidden inside. This is not even hidden. And it's put in this pretty package of a good looking young man.

[01:01:09] Like you said, the Timothee Chalamet of public executioners. And I think this this moment and I wrote I published a poem on on rattle a site and people unsubscribed because of that poem. And people have been furious with me for writing the poem. Because I mean, can you imagine a poet? A poet agreeing with a public execution.

[01:01:36] I mean, talk about being the opposite of Lorca. You know, poets used to get publicly executed, not support it. And and to call yourself a member of the left, to call yourself a liberal and support that to me is symptomatic of this entire era. It feels like January 6th. It it it's the ultimate resort to violence.

[01:02:03] And I'm afraid of I wrote another poem about that. But I'm afraid of everyone. I'm afraid of everyone across the political spectrum. Yeah. And yes, all of them. Everyone. Yeah. Yeah. This idea that the potential for violence is only lurking on the right is just it's just so historically ill informed. It's just it's such a crazy idea. But there we are. I do have I do have another question, sort of a topic, Sandeep, unless you want to keep. No, no. Go ahead. Yeah.

[01:02:33] I was trying to think about different depictions of the white working class in movies and kind of how that might have changed over time. And I wasn't really doing much good research on this. I was trying to, you know, think of what I'd seen. And so I'm thinking of like Martin Scorsese movies. And I'm like, well, those are gangster movies. I don't know.

[01:02:54] But then I the one I wanted to ask about is a is a series that you may or may not like, which is the Fast and Furious series, which isn't about the white working class, but it's about the urban working class and kind of a cross raced cross race. I should say cross class group of guys. I don't know how anybody in the world at this point isn't at least somewhat familiar with what these movies are like. Like we watch them because we didn't like the Marvel Marvel movies and we both like car chases.

[01:03:21] But there is this really hopeful assertion of cross class cross race solidarity in those movies, because these aren't real families. Like some of these characters in the films are family members, but they all act like they're in one big family and have that kind of loyalty and commitment to one another as if it's a real family. And so it's there's this really kind of hopeful, you know, saccharine almost message in those films, despite all the other stuff that's going on.

[01:03:51] I just wondered if you had seen any of them and had any thoughts. Yeah, I've seen all of them. I mean, of course, they're big and dumb and fun. Yeah. The Marvel movies are also big and dumb and fun. Yeah. And the Marvel movies are also racially diverse, which people don't pick up on, which they don't realize that comic books have always been diverse. There are no car chases, though. So it's not my thing. They're flying chases.

[01:04:19] But, you know, Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, the gang were creating black superheroes in the 60s, in the 1960s. So way ahead of everybody. Marvel Comics was as a pop culture way ahead. But I love the cross racial family that is presented in Fast and the Furious. I love it.

[01:04:44] And I love the ethnic ambiguity, I think, represented by Vin Diesel. You never know quite what he is. And now he's black, but his features are ethnically ambiguous enough to where you're like, I don't know. You don't know what he's playing in the moment. In Fast and because his sister is Latina, Michelle Rodriguez. So is he Latino? Is he black? Is he both? Is he Puerto Rican? Is he Dominican?

[01:05:13] Is he, you know, is he Bronx? Is he Brooklyn? Is he L.A.? What is he? And it's really fun to have the ethnically ambiguous because I am. So it's always fun to watch the ethnically ambiguous be heroes because I get confused for everything. Last time I was in New York, my driver, my Uber driver was Middle Eastern. And he spoke Farsi to me.

[01:05:41] And I said, I'm Native American. American. And, you know, it used to be when you had to explain who you were to international folks in the past, you'd have to be racist on yourself and do bows and arrows. You have to mine bows and arrows, you know. Oh, you'd have to do the TV war room. But it's different now to explain to an international people who don't necessarily know any Native Americans.

[01:06:10] All you have to say is casinos. And they'll go, oh, yes, you know, casinos. But on that same trip, I like it. And I go to airports very early, like three hours early because I'm a terrified flyer and I need that ceremony to relax. But I went and I go looking for unoccupied gates to where I can really relax and sit back, fall asleep, set my phone for an alarm so I wake up.

[01:06:39] But I fell into a deep sleep and somebody was shaking me awake. And it was the flight attendant from Air China. I mean, the desk clerk, not a flight attendant, the desk person. And she was shaking me. She goes, sir, we're boarding. And she spoke to me. And, you know, I don't know if it was Mandarin or not. I don't know the language. But she spoke to me in that language and made me laugh. I said, no, I'm Native American.

[01:07:02] And then she spoke to me with perfect English because I'm sure she was an American working for Air China or the reverse. I don't know. But she goes, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I said, no, I'm just sleeping. And this is what people think I'm half of whatever they are. And when you go into certain countries where the folks are smaller in general, I'm a big guy. I'm 6'2 and 220 pounds.

[01:07:28] And they'll usually use a word in their language that means giant version of myself. You know, there's words in every culture that mean that giant version of myself. So I hear that all the time, which is very fun. And so Fast and the Furious represents all that to me. The joy of being ambiguously ethnic. Just, you know, because as we were talking just over this last hour,

[01:07:54] I started thinking about movies, too, and how much depictions of kind of the white working class has changed. And, yes, there's this sort of cross-ethnic thing in Fast and Furious. But when you think back to the 70s, the movies I think of are things like Breaking Away, right? 1979, four kids, white working class kids in Bloomington, Indiana. And one of them dreams of being an Italian, you know, bicycle racer.

[01:08:21] And, you know, and it's a story of these kind of coming-of-age story of these kids, you know, dealing with their lack of, you know, their class, their lack of class privilege. And, but it was a celebration of that kind of working class ethos. Saturday Night Fever, right? A working class guy living in kind of Queens or Brooklyn who goes out, you know, Travolta, who goes out to, like, dance at the disco.

[01:08:49] And that's how he finds meaning in his life with this young, you know, woman. And there's just a lot of movies like that, for example. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is, in some sense, a kind of, like, you know, the McMurdy Nicholson character is sort of, he's your classic 70s anti-hero, right?

[01:09:10] But he's this working class guy who, like, knows how to live and teaches the people in the mental institution around him how to, like, stand up for themselves and live a life. And he gets a young kid laid and all of, you know, there was that kind of ethos. The cultural stories we told ourselves back then were often very centered in a positive way on kind of the contributions or the culture of the white-working class. And that's sort of gone now, right?

[01:09:39] We don't see it in that. Yeah. Those movies mean a lot to me. Breaking Away. Yeah. And as you were talking about it, I was remembering it. The poor kids are called cutters. Yes. Because their fathers worked in the... The mill or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, cutters. So they were called cutters. And I remember one of the sons saying, we're cutters. And the dad's saying, no, you're not a cutter. I'm a cutter.

[01:10:07] I love that moment in Breaking Away, which is about this incredible kid who has this... He's Billy Elliot. He has this extraordinary bike racing ability, natural ability, combined with his discipline. And he ends up in the... I don't know if this still happens, but it was the Indiana 400 or whatever they called it. It was a four-guy bicycle race. And he ends up with all these frat guys who are the total villains, as they should be. And it's such a class-based movie.

[01:10:35] It's these working-class kids against these elite college kids. And I love it. I still love it. I have the DVD around here somewhere. And it's such a forgotten movie that it's not on Blu-ray or 4K. That's how you know the movie has been forgotten. It's just a regular DVD. And as you were saying, and the plot was coming back to me, it's another Gatsby. Because he puts on this identity. He pretends to be this Italian international student.

[01:11:05] And gets this young woman to fall in love with him because she thinks he's an Italian international student. So, like Gatsby, he puts on the mask in pursuit of love. And, yeah, and those were here. And I identified with them because my father was a cutter. He wasn't. But there was that same situation where I felt like a cutter. And so, yeah, I'm thinking, has there ever been a Breaking Away? Has there been a Breaking Away since Breaking Away?

[01:11:33] I don't think they make those movies now. And, yeah, and I tried to remake it, actually, during the late, early 2000s. I pitched a version of Breaking Away that was young black women in inner city Los Angeles who discovered, no, was it Los Angeles? No, I moved it to Seattle because there's an amazing velodrome here in the suburbs.

[01:11:54] So, I had these young black women, high school-aged young black women, with one of them having an incredible bike racing ability, just like the white kid. And they end up competing against rich young women, college women. So, these working class inner city black women, young women, go to battle against these elite. And I didn't want it to be total race.

[01:12:20] So, I made the best racer among the college elite another young black woman. So, it was direct black competition between white and black, but also between elite black and not elite black. And so, I love that movie so much, I tried to remake it. That's how much I love Breaking Away. I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to actually get it made. Yeah.

[01:12:43] And I thought of it in the era of Bring It On, if you remember that, with Kristen Dunst playing the rich suburban cheerleader team against the inner city black cheerleader team. And they steal their routine sort of inadvertently. And it's a great movie. It's very fun. And that's, yeah. And that's what I, and where Gabriel Union was 37 years old and playing a high school girl. And, and it's a great movie.

[01:13:13] And that was the feeling I had of wanting to make this movie, of having these class. But I've always been fascinated in the literary world. Now, I'm poor from not even working class. To say working class would imply that they were working. My parents. So, yeah. My mom did eventually. It's very euphemistic. Yeah. Yeah, my mom did eventually. But my dad never kept a job for more than three days.

[01:13:43] But I'm blanking on my thought there as I made the joke about working. Let me go back. Let me reverse. Hello, edit. Yeah. You know, I made that movie in the spirit of the working class. But what, what I was feeling. Oh, God. What was the thought? I was enjoying the thought. And I totally blasted out of my head with a joke. That's what I do. Yeah. I tell the joke and then lose the train of thought. That's what happens to me all the time.

[01:14:13] I remember now. One of the strangest things for me to experience was being a poor, rural brown dude who was going into the literary world and meeting so many other brown and black folks who were from the same elite backgrounds as the white writers. The same schools. The same MFAs. Some of them even private high schools.

[01:14:37] There's one very famous black writer who went to a private school where presidents, future presidents go. And so I don't fit in that world, in the writing world, in so many ways, not just because I'm Indian, but also because I come from a rural poor background. I don't fit. You know, I never had brie until I got to college, right? Yeah.

[01:15:03] There's writers who had brie before they were 18 and writers who didn't have brie until after 18. That's how you can divide the literary world. I'm the after college brie writer. So, so that, you know, and in the politics in Seattle, here in Seattle, it's the same way. I'm not a political activist. I'm a writer. People think activism and writer is the same thing.

[01:15:29] But I know some of the most heavily involved melanin people in the U.S. Some of the white people who act as if they grew up poor. And they did not. They've always been elite. So I get frustrated with the elite. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? You got the education. You got the ambition. You got the talents that an elite background can give you. Use them.

[01:15:58] Be proud of them. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to be the reverse Gatsby in order to be somebody valuable, politically valuable and important. Don't reverse Gatsby it. Dear brown and black people, don't reverse Gatsby it. And Sandeep brought up the word nostalgia earlier. And I was thinking about that because we've been talking about nostalgia on this podcast for more than one podcast. I'm trying to think with Roderick and with others.

[01:16:24] So what I worry about when we bring up the word nostalgia is nostalgic resignation. What we're saying is, oh, this white working class that used to be in these urban spaces is no longer here. It's no longer powerful. It's mostly gone. And, geez, you know, that's really we're that's a terrible thing. We're kind of sad about that happening. I mean, is that kind of, you know, what we're saying?

[01:16:50] And if so, I've always had this this joke that in Seattle, what we ought to do is take those light manufacturing facilities and the maritime manufacturing facilities and remove the metal and replace it with plexiglass. So that when we're riding our electric bikes by on, you know, to get to our Amazon jobs, we can look in there and see all those burly working men, you know, at work doing their thing and sort of revel in it. But that's not what we're saying, right?

[01:17:19] Like that there's there's if there is a political content to this and you're saying it's not about political activism. Isn't it that like we should have policies that actually protect blue collar jobs or, you know, there's there. What's the alternative to kind of nostalgia in a bad sense of the word? You can use nostalgia as a motivating factor to change contemporary life into something better.

[01:17:50] Nostalgia can be the fuel, but the engine is contemporary politics. And and I mean, I think by definition, Native Americans are nostalgic. I mean, our culture is constantly nostalgic. So I sort of come by it naturally that our lives are all about loss, what we don't have, what we didn't have, what is gone, what has been taken from us. So in some sense, Native American culture is always about absence.

[01:18:19] And that's how I grew up. So I always have a sense of absence, not just for the working class whites, but for my own childhood, for Native American life. So I think I want to be motivated by that sense of absence. For other people, not to have it. I mean, to try to deal with the absence in the world and try to fill it with something positive. And I think we on the left have created a class absence.

[01:18:47] We've abandoned the white working class. And because of a lack of nostalgia, because of a lack of remembering or even having experienced the way that we shared concerns. Growing up, I could look at a union guy talking on TV and identify with him. You know, I could identify with my pizza delivering comrades. I could identify with Gatsby.

[01:19:16] I could identify with Breaking Away. I could identify with Billy Elliot. I could identify with people across racial boundaries, real and imagined, in order to think about a better future. So I'm not nostalgic about racism. I'm not nostalgic about sexism or homophobia. I'm nostalgic about the good we created. And I think the good we've forgotten. So, Sherman, thank you so much for coming on again. It's been a real pleasure.

[01:19:43] It's so much fun to get a chance to talk with you about stuff. And, you know, take a little walk down memory lane. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That's it for another edition of Blue City Blues. I'm David Hyde with Sandeep Kaushik. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And thanks, everybody, so much for listening. Thank you.