APA Citation: Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York, NY: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Impressions: My family is very proud of our Native American heritage but we are very... well, white. No one in my immediate family has ever lived on a reservation and our heritage is considered more of a badge of honor than something that we honor and practice. Reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian gave me a new appreciation, respect and understanding of what life for many Native Americans is like.
I loved reading from Junior's point of view. He's funny, smart, and has a quick wit. He cares deeply for the people around him and grows into being a person that is strong and to be respected. This is a very realistic book at what living life as both a minority and poor can be like. I was raised by a single mother with just a high school degree and we struggled to make ends meet. I could relate to Junior a lot in that way and I loved how he turned to school and his family (when he could) because I was a lot like him in that regard. In other ways, I found that I was learning a lot about a different perspective that is very important to have readers read about.
There were several moments that were hard to read. The deaths of characters had my heart breaking for Junior and respecting him more as a character. Alexie did an amazing job of bring a powerful character that is flawed to life.
This book easily made my top favorites and it saddens me to see that it continues to be at the top of banned books list. I think it's an incredibly important book for all ages to read. Any story that shows a different perspective or worldview should be shared, read, and discussed.
Professional Review:
The title tells it like it is. Sherman Alexie was born a Spokane Indian. He grew up where the book is set, on a reservation - the "rez" - in Wellpinit, Washington state. He was, like his central character, hydrocephalic at birth, "with too much grease inside my skull". And in his teens he attended Reardan High School, off the reservation, near the rich farm town, where all the other students were white. Many authors hum and ha when asked if their fiction is in any way autobiographical. This one makes no bones about it and yet skilfully manages to transform his actual experience into a novel. True fiction. Absolutely.Arnold Spirit Jnr, known simply as Junior on the rez, speaks directly to the reader and is both narrator and illustrator, a cartoonist. He feels like rubbish, gets beaten up as a matter of course because he lisps, stutters and looks like a freak, but with a pen in his hand he finds a sense of being "important". He can at least express what it's like living his life. For example, he describes on one page how it "sucks to be poor", and on the next sketches portraits of his parents as they might have been if someone had paid attention to their dreams. His could-have-been mother is smart in her suit, a community college teacher. His another-life father is hip, a professional saxophonist. He doesn't draw what they actually are. He just uses a couple of words for that. She is an ex-drunk. He is a drunk. In fact Junior only knows five Indians who have never drunk alcohol, one of them being his bandana-wearing grandmother: "Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling."Samuels, D. (2008). A brave life [Review of the book The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian by S. Alexie]. The guardian. Retrieved May 8, 2015 from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/04/teenage.sherman.alexie.
Junior might have brain damage from surgery and seizures but he is following in grandmother's footsteps, engaged with the world, full of anger and energy. Too full. When he sees his mother's name in a geometry textbook in class, he just cannot bear that his generation are still studying from the same books as the last. There is a graphic illustration of boy throwing a book at his white teacher and breaking his nose. Suspension follows. But then the wounded teacher comes to visit. He isn't happy about Junior's assault but he's also brimful of guilt, as his job has been to educate their culture out of his Indian students. And he has some advice for Junior: "You have to take your hope and go somewhere where other people have hope." And the most hope belongs to white people. So Junior makes the bold decision to leave his home turf and go to Reardan. No matter that he has to walk more than 20 miles to get there each day because there isn't enough money for gas.He finds friendship with a geek, Rowdy, who teaches him the art of reading. He gets to be the semi-boyfriend of the beautiful, milky Penelope, who wears her bulimia like a badge of honour. Even the jocks learn to respect him, especially when he emerges as a whizz on the basketball court. The only problem is that the league schedule inevitably includes on-court battles against the team from his old school, whose star player used to be his best friend, who sees him as a traitor. And so he must be warrior enough to face his people and defeat them. In his own words, this is "really weird".Advertisement
Some books are like living organisms. They seem to breathe, laugh, weep, joke, confront, meet you eye to eye. Maybe it's the combination of drawings, pithy turns of phrase, candour, tragedy, despair and hope that makes this more than an entertaining read, more than an engaging story about a North American Indian kid who makes it out of a poor, dead-end background without losing his connection with who he is and where he's from. The writing occasionally relies too heavily on the cartoonesque quip, but mostly it is muscular and snappy with a knack for capturing the detail and overview with wrenching spareness. One chapter is a gem of love and heartbreak. "And a Partridge in a Pear Tree" covers barely two pages and yet it evokes so much as it describes Junior's dad's return from a drunken binge over the holiday period, then the offer to his son of a five-dollar bill scrunched in his boot: "Man that thing smelled like booze and fear and failure." Opening this book is like meeting a friend you'd never make in your actual life and being given a piece of his world, inner and outer. It's humane, authentic and, most of all, it speaks.
Library Use: I would love to do a readalike for this book. I'd also like to use it for a book club choice with young adult readers as it leads to a lot of great discussion points. One book that did come to mind as a readalike is Winger by Andrew Smith as both are written by male characters who want to be cartoonists and write in diary/letter format. The two characters are funny and realistic but also very different.
