Sherman Alexie’s massive memoir YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME is a book I will not soon forget. I also find it difficult to describe. If I had to sum the book up in two words, I would say it is brutally honest. At the center of the memoir is Mr. Alexie’s mother Lillian. Although they loved each other, it seemed never enough. (The author went for almost three years without speaking to his mother, but he cannot remember why.) He was not with his mother when she died and didn’t want to be although he had said his farewell to her earlier and told her he loved her. Mr. Alexie’s mother could at times be cruel to him and his sister and brother. She, however, may have been more sinned against than sinning. (Toward the end of the memoir he reveals two horrible events in both Lillian’s life as well as her mother’s that may have explained some of her cruelty.) In sharp contrast is Alexie’s feelings toward his alcoholic father who would be gone for days at a time but always love his son unconditionally.The author’s childhood living conditions were stark. In the first chapter of his sprawling memoir he describes the HUD house his family moved into in the early 1970’s. His comments later in the book: “I tend to believe in government because it was the U. S. government that. . . built the HUD home that kept us warm. . . Of course the government only gave me all that good s—t because they completely f---d over my great grandparents and grandparents but, you know, at least some official white folks keep some of their promises.”Mr. Alexie was also plagued by childhood illnesses. He was a hydrocephalic kid who had epileptic seizures until he was seven and had brain surgery twice by the time he was two. He also suffers from bipolar disorder. When the author was twelve, he asked his parents for permission to leave the Spokane Indian Reservation and go to school in Reardan, Washington because he wanted to go to college and become a pediatrician. His parents agreed to his leaving. “I think they knew I would never return, not in body or spirit, but they loved me too much to make me stay.” Mr. Alexie describes Indian reservations as being created “by white men to serve as rural concentration camps” and thinks “that’s still their primary purpose.”While the author is quick to call our whites for the injustices they have perpetrated on his people, he also points out all the problems in the reservations as well: the rapes, the bullying (he was a victim), and the alcoholism. Mr. Alexie also condemns the “strange Indian racism of my Native Americans” who over his twenty-five year literary career have fought to destroy his career and cannot believe that a reservation-raised boy could become the man he is.Mr. Alexie bloomed in his new school surroundings. The only Indian in school, he was elected class president. Now he wonders how many of his friends from high school voted for Trump since in the county where the school is located , he got 72% of the vote. He asks if his Reardan school friends remember how much they loved him and if they know how much they may have placed him “a public figure brown-skinned liberal, in danger.” Mr. Alexie concludes that in order to survive, he had to leave the tribe of his birth but also had to flee his other place of birth, “from all those white folks” at Reardan who became another tribe for him. And Mr. Alexie reminds the reader that his books are not taught in his high school because they are ”’inappropriate for the targeted audience.’”For the long and winding road the author takes his reader down—his successful literary career, his love for his wife and sons-- he returns again and again to his mother who often fed her family by making and selling quilts and who often cared for other people but unfortunately not enough for her children. In a strange way Mr. Alexie honors his mother by writing this memoir. He has made her still live. When I finished this often troubling but always intense book, I wished I had known Lillian. But I have the next best thing—Mr. Alexie’s memories of her.