I'd rather see myself played by a Puerto Rican or an Italian with a tan than have them ruin the basketballness of me.
-- Sherman Alexie (right), author of works this IntLawGrrl much admires, on why, according to this article in The New York Times, "[h]e turned down offers to sell the movie rights to" his young-adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), "a book he calls an extremely faithful recounting of his experience growing up poor on the Spokane tribal reservation in eastern Washington State." In the few words of the quoted sentence, Alexie speaks volumes about the complexities of assigned and self-perceived identities.
