CI 5441: Alexie Response

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

Arnold Spirit Jr., or Junior as he is known on the “rez,” is a Spokane Indian who realizes he is being suffocated and trapped by the limited opportunities available to him. Junior’s realization leads him to a difficult decision; he must leave the reservation in order to reach his full potential by attending a white school twenty miles away. The novels follows Junior on his journey of discovery among the white students at his new school—Penelope, his anorexic girlfriend; Gordy, his genius friend and ally; Roger, the star-athlete and Junior’s teammate; and Coach, who has unswerving faith in Junior. While Junior is adjusting to his new relationships he also struggles with the existing ones, the troubled lives of his family and the loss of his friend turned enemy—Rowdy—on the reservation. The book explores general themes of class, race, and power as well as more defined themes such as resilience, death, and success. The book forces us to question hoe we think about these important themes by creating contradictory feelings of hope and dejection. As we follow Junior we learn that things are not as clear-cut as we imagine them to be and that for every up there is also a down, sideways, and every-which-way in between. In the end, Junior learns this for himself and comes to terms with his identity as white, Indian, basketball player, loser, winner, boyfriend, friend, enemy—he is what he is; a part-time Indian, full-time human.

The book is a well-written account of a fourteen-year-old boy who tells his life as it happens, how it happens. The use of a diary and the comical cartoon illustrations help readers identify Junior’s part in creating the text—it’s his story and he is going to tell it how it is. Because Junior’s character comes through the text and medium of the text it is easy for readers to identify his characteristics as a teenager. Junior’s voice also shines through with the breadth of teenage topics he is more than willing to present to the reader; he is not afraid to talk about kissing, masturbation, fighting, swearing, or boners. The major themes of the text themselves are important and Alexie creates a character who faces these difficult themes in his day-to-day life. The variety of issues assures that readers will be able to identify with some aspect of Junior’s life and make a relevant connection with him. I loved this book for its humor and ability to broach difficult subjects in an effective, meaningful way. Alexie invites readers into Junior’s world and doesn’t hold anything back and I appreciated that. I liked going through everything with Junior and reading his thoughts as he faced many things far beyond what any young man should.

I think this book is teachable because it is a captivating and humorous text that deals with many important and relevant issues students will face today: prejudice, classism, racism, power struggles, and self-identity issues. The book places these topics in a modern context that is accessible to students and allows them to see themselves and their own experiences mirrored in a text that they can relate to more easily then canonical texts. I think this text would be a great choice for teaching in a classroom. I think this book would be well-received in literature circles and could be looked at through reader-response, postcolonial, and privilege and social class lenses. Something I think you could really focus on throughout the text is identity; this text would be a great way to have students explore their own identities and discover how many different “tribes” they belong to themselves.