Sherman Alexie
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50 free Sherman Alexie trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sherman Alexie turned a childhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation into some of the most widely read, and most argued over, American writing of the last thirty years. His stories are funny, angry and blunt about poverty, basketball, family and what it costs to leave home. This quiz covers the books students meet first, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and the short story "Indian Education" from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, along with Reservation Blues, Flight, his poetry and the film Smoke Signals. It also asks about his life: his health as a baby, his schools, his family, and the prizes and controversies that followed. It suits students preparing for a class test, book clubs, and anyone looking for trivia facts about Sherman Alexie, with a short explanation after every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From 2010 to 2019, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian topped which American Library Association list?
Most challenged books
Most challenged books was the list it led for the whole decade, drawing objections to how it treats alcohol, poverty, bullying and sexuality.
Q 02Which major US prize did The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian win for Young People's Literature?
National Book Award
National Book Award judges chose it in 2007, and Alexie has guessed that the novel is about seventy-eight percent true to his own teenage years.
Q 03A story title in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven claims a father saw which guitarist play at Woodstock?
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem is the father's boast, and the story has Victor recalling his few good memories of the man who left.
Q 04Which horror novelist did Sherman Alexie credit as an influence for always writing about underdogs and bullied kids?
Stephen King
Stephen King wrote about kids fighting back against overwhelming forces, Alexie said, which spoke to a boy who was constantly teased at his reservation school.
Q 05Sherman Alexie joined The Colbert Report in 2014 to urge a boycott of which retailer during its dispute with Hachette?
Amazon
Amazon had delayed or blocked orders of Hachette titles, so the show sent viewers to an Oregon bookshop to buy a debut novelist's book instead.
Q 06Smoke Signals, written by Sherman Alexie, won the Audience Award and Filmmaker's Trophy at which 1998 film festival?
Sundance
Sundance audiences voted it their favorite, and Miramax released the film in American cinemas that summer.
Q 07On the farm-town high school basketball team where Sherman Alexie starred, who was the only other Indian?
The mascot
The mascot was his only company because the school's teams were nicknamed the Indians, though Alexie was its sole Native student.
Q 08In Smoke Signals, which Hollywood western has Victor's storytelling friend watched countless times?
Dances with Wolves
Dances with Wolves, winner of seven Academy Awards, marks the friend out as the film's romantic, in contrast to the stoic Victor.
Q 09The nine stories of Sherman Alexie's Ten Little Indians follow Spokane Indians living in and around which city?
Seattle
Seattle is where Alexie himself settled after leaving the reservation, and much of his later fiction follows Native characters into the city.
Q 10The Lone Ranger and Tonto, borrowed for the title of Sherman Alexie's 1993 story collection, debuted in which medium?
Radio
Radio introduced the masked hero and his sidekick in 1933, sixteen years before television did, and Alexie uses the pair as symbols of white and Native identity.
Q 11In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which best friend feels betrayed when Junior changes schools?
Rowdy
Rowdy knocks Junior unconscious when their schools meet on the basketball court, yet the two reconcile over a game at the novel's end.
Q 12In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which teacher gets a broken nose from Junior's flying textbook?
Mr. P
Mr. P visits Junior at home afterwards and convinces him to leave the reservation school for a better one.
Q 13In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, what discovery inside a textbook makes Junior hurl it in fury?
His mother's name
His mother's name shows the book is some thirty years old, and Alexie took the scene from his own schooldays, though he only hit a wall.
Q 21Sherman Alexie had brain surgery as a baby, at high risk of dying, to treat which condition he was born with?
Hydrocephalus
Hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid in the brain, left him with seizures until he was seven, and he gave the same condition to his hero Junior.
Q 22Sherman Alexie grew up in which small town on the Spokane Indian Reservation, also the home of his fictional Junior?
Wellpinit
Wellpinit is an unincorporated community whose ZIP code area counted just 930 people in the 2000 census.
Q 23Sherman Alexie left the reservation to attend high school in which farm town 22 miles away?
Reardan
Reardan elected him class president and put him on the debate team, and its high school reappears under its real name in his fiction.
Q 14In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, what is the name of the sick family dog Junior's father shoots?
Oscar
Oscar falls badly ill and the family cannot afford a vet, an early lesson for Junior in what poverty takes away.
Q 15In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which volleyball player becomes Junior's crush at his new school?
Penelope
Penelope longs to leave her small town and see the world, which is part of what draws her to the new boy from the reservation.
Q 16In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which bookish boy becomes Junior's first friend at his new school?
Gordy
Gordy does everything in the name of science, helps Junior with schoolwork and teaches him to take reading seriously.
Q 17Which Marbles cartoonist drew Junior's cartoons in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian?
Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney drew the 65 illustrations, which stand in for Junior's own cartoons and help move the plot along.
Q 18In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, how does Junior's grandmother die after attending a powwow?
By a drunk driver
By a drunk driver, though she never touched alcohol herself, and her dying wish is for the family to forgive him.
Q 19Who narrates the audiobook of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, winner of the 2009 Odyssey Award?
The author himself
The author himself reads it, and his delivery has to carry the jokes of the cartoons that a listener cannot see.
Q 20What nickname did fellow students give the young Sherman Alexie because of his unusually large head?
The Globe
The Globe was one taunt among many: classmates also mocked his government-issued, horn-rimmed glasses.
Q 24Which Jesuit school in Spokane gave Sherman Alexie a college scholarship in 1985, though he left two years later?
Gonzaga
Gonzaga proved an unhappy fit: under pressure to succeed he drank heavily, and found comfort only in literature classes.
Q 25Where did Sherman Alexie take the creative writing class, taught by poet Alex Kuo, that set him writing?
Washington State University
Washington State University is where Kuo handed him an anthology of Native American poetry, the book that inspired him to write his own.
Q 26Sherman Alexie began college training for which career, until classroom dissections made him squeamish?
Medicine
Medicine lost him in anatomy class; he switched to law, found that unsuitable too, and only settled once he reached literature courses.
Q 27Sherman Alexie is a citizen of the Spokane Tribe, but his father belonged to which tribe based in Idaho?
Coeur d'Alene
Coeur d'Alene country reached the screen in 1998, when the film of his stories was set and shot on the tribe's reservation.
Q 28Lillian Alexie helped support Sherman Alexie and his five siblings by sewing which handmade items?
Quilts
Quilts brought in money alongside her job as a clerk at the reservation trading post, with six children to feed.
Q 29As a bookish reservation child, Sherman Alexie read everything available, even manuals on which subject?
Auto repair
Auto repair guides counted as reading matter for a boy whose health problems kept him out of many boyhood activities.
Q 30A law banning a Mexican American studies program saw Sherman Alexie's books pulled from classrooms in which state?
Arizona
Arizona's HB 2281 took his books out of the curriculum in 2012, and Alexie answered that the ban had only given them enormous power.