"My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures"
About this Quote
Sherman Alexie’s line lands like a dare, and the provocation is the point. “My only purpose” is an obvious exaggeration, a writerly flex that dares you to mistake literature for something polite. By framing rebellion as pedagogy, he flips the usual moral contract adults offer kids: obey and you’ll be safe, comply and you’ll be good. Alexie’s speaker isn’t recruiting little anarchists so much as insisting that survival for marginalized children often begins with refusing the stories authority tells about them.
The phrase “authority figures” is deliberately broad. It can mean teachers, parents, police, principals, publishers, priests - the whole architecture that decides which voices are “appropriate,” which histories are “real,” which bodies are “threatening.” In Alexie’s work, especially around Native identity, that architecture is not abstract. It’s the boarding-school legacy, the curriculum that erases, the stereotypes that flatten, the gatekeeping that demands gratitude instead of truth. Rebellion becomes less a teenage mood than a literacy skill: reading power, spotting coercion, naming the lie.
The subtext is also self-protective. Alexie was frequently taught in schools while simultaneously being challenged and banned; “teaching rebellion” doubles as a defense of why uncomfortable art belongs in classrooms. If institutions claim books should “build character,” Alexie replies that character-building sometimes looks like dissent. The line works because it refuses the sentimental fantasy of the obedient child and replaces it with a sharper hope: a young reader who can’t be easily managed.
The phrase “authority figures” is deliberately broad. It can mean teachers, parents, police, principals, publishers, priests - the whole architecture that decides which voices are “appropriate,” which histories are “real,” which bodies are “threatening.” In Alexie’s work, especially around Native identity, that architecture is not abstract. It’s the boarding-school legacy, the curriculum that erases, the stereotypes that flatten, the gatekeeping that demands gratitude instead of truth. Rebellion becomes less a teenage mood than a literacy skill: reading power, spotting coercion, naming the lie.
The subtext is also self-protective. Alexie was frequently taught in schools while simultaneously being challenged and banned; “teaching rebellion” doubles as a defense of why uncomfortable art belongs in classrooms. If institutions claim books should “build character,” Alexie replies that character-building sometimes looks like dissent. The line works because it refuses the sentimental fantasy of the obedient child and replaces it with a sharper hope: a young reader who can’t be easily managed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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