The new image of Indian girl in Sherman Alexie’s The Search Engine

Rahayu, Mundi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1089-2551 (2022) The new image of Indian girl in Sherman Alexie’s The Search Engine. Journal of Language and Literature, 22 (2). pp. 422-434. ISSN 25805878

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Abstract

The current paper examines the Native American people's identity, especially the main female character's cultural identity in the short story entitled The Search Engine. Sherman Alexie, the author of the story, is a Native American writer who harnesses the Indian identity as one of the main topics. The identity presented in the main character, Corliss, shows the challenges of the stereotypes of Native American girls. For that reason, the paper aims at exploring the new Indian woman’s cultural identity represented in the main character, Corliss, in the short story The Search Engine. The study applies postcolonial feminist literary criticism by Gayatri Spivak that highlighted the importance of the women in the third world or she called the subaltern’s voice. Spivak’s ideas denied the universalities in women movement, and she advocates the women in postcolonial countries who are marginalized and silenced. Spivak’s concept applied in this study enables the writer to deeply explore the issue of woman's identity among the American native people, as the native people are also in the position of postcolonial. The study shows that the main character, Corliss is represented as the new female image identity, in which she can challenge traditional stereotypes of Native American women. Corliss is described as a highly literate woman, with a lot of reading on English literary works, and has concern on her Indian-ness, which is often incommensurable to her big family’s views. Her excellent literacy and attitude toward Indian and White people enable her build new consciousness in seeing the Indian men and women and their relation to White people.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Keywords:	female image; Indian girl; literary image; native American literature
Subjects:	20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2005 Literary Studies > 200520 Indian Literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities > Department of English Language and Letters
Depositing User:	Dr Mundi Rahayu
Date Deposited:	03 Oct 2022 08:42

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