Jess Walter hostsha panelJess walter hosts Tommy Orange andjos early February, a group of students from Activists for Change and the new journalism class, led by Ms. Agnew and Mr. Eggleston respectively, attended an event hosted by Seattle  Arts and Lectures. The event, called “Sherman Alexie Loves”, was to be hosted by Alexie himself and would showcase up and coming Native American poets.

I was thrilled to be in the same room as an author I had grown to love in my AP Literature class. We arrived over an hour before the show was to start, but we were nonetheless delighted to have the opportunity to listen to Sherman Alexie and the poets and authors he had hand picked to perform their work.

But, when the show began, Sherman Alexie was not on the stage. This new, unfamiliar host apologized that Alexie could not attend, but assured us the night would be wonderful nevertheless. We listened to poetry, and the most beautiful, heart wrenching violin, but by the end, there was still a feeling of being left unfulfilled. We said things like “He’s probably a really busy guy”.

Little did we know, knowledge of Sherman Alexie’s extramarital affair and allegations of sexual misconduct were beginning to surface. Three women have now gone on the record to detail Alexie’s misconduct and ten others have spoken anonymously.

This came as a shock to me. Reading the testimonies of female authors detailing how he had shown interest in their work only in hopes of being done sexual favors made me think back on the class periods I loved so much analyzing his short stories. However, the shock left me as soon as it came. So many men have been outed as sexual harassers and rapists that I thought “Well, why not him, too?”

The moral of this story? Never even get excited to possibly meet your heroes. Then, when they don’t show up say, “It’s probably for the best.”

Now, I believe there is a moral dilemma we all must confront. School districts have begun to pull Alexie from their curriculum to stand in solidarity. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald treated his wife Zelda terribly. Yet we still call Zelda “crazy” and we still read The Great Gatsby in school. Many famous, usually white authors are still read in our classrooms and praised for their accomplishments though they were predators themselves. Is this a double standard?

What I do know is that there have never been enough female authors discussed and analyzed in our English classes. If no one can give up The Great Gatsby, perhaps we should read some of Zelda’s writing as well. We could even discuss how Fitzgerald plagiarized directly from Zelda’s personal journal. Didn’t know that, did you?

There are an abundance of women writers whose books have never seen the inside of a classroom, have never had writing in their margins or sticky notes placed on their pages.

Shame on Sherman Alexie and every man who has ever used their power to take and coerce. Time is up for sexual assault. Let’s use this momentum to also say that time is up for underrepresenting women in our classrooms. It’s time to demand that women authors make the cut in Tahoma’s English curriculum, AP or not, and at every grade level.