Module 15: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Alexie, S., & Forney, E. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown.

Summary: Arnold, known as Junior, is an outcast on the Spokane Indian reservation, but finds solace in drawing cartoons. He comes to understand that to make more of his life beyond the reservation, that he must be active in his choices and chooses to attend a school more than 20 miles away. He goes through his first year in high school making sense of his identity and the identity of others against the backdrops of his Native American reservation home and his All-White high school.

Response: I found this piece to be an excellent representation of a coming of age tale told in a fluid and cohesive manner. The illustrations depicting glimpses into Junior’s understanding of the world around him accent the happenings in his difficult, real and uplifting life. While it centers on the cultural divisions in Junior’s life, I think that it is a piece that speaks to the outcast nature of young readers who are looking to understand themselves and their role in the larger world.

Reviews:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

SHERMAN ALEXIE, ILLUS. BY ELLEN FORNEY.

Screenwriter, novelist and poet, Alexie bounds into YA with what might be a Native American equivalent of Angela's Ashes, a coming-of-age story so well observed that its very rootedness in one specific culture is also what lends it universality, and so emotionally honest that the humor almost always proves painful. Presented as the diary of hydrocephalic 14-year-old cartoonist and Spokane Indian Arnold Spirit Jr., the novel revolves around Junior's desperate hope of escaping the reservation. As he says of his drawings, "I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats." He transfers to a public school 22 miles away in a rich farm town where the only other Indian is the team mascot. Although his parents support his decision, everyone else on the rez sees him as a traitor, an apple ("red on the outside and white on the inside"), while at school most teachers and students project stereotypes onto him: "I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other." Readers begin to understand Junior's determination as, over the course of the school year, alcoholism and self-destructive behaviors lead to the deaths of close relatives. Unlike protagonists in many YA novels who reclaim or retain ethnic ties in order to find their true selves, Junior must separate from his tribe in order to preserve his identity. Jazzy syntax and Forney's witty cartoons examining Indian versus White attire and behavior transmute despair into dark humor; Alexie's no-holds-barred jokes have the effect of throwing the seriousness of his themes into high relief.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. (2007). Publishers Weekly, 254(33), 70-71.

Program: During banned books week, create a discussion panel of authors, educators and librarians to discuss the importance of specific Young Adult banned novels that deal with cultural identity. Discuss issues taken with these books and why dealing with truthful and mature content is necessary for teen audiences who may be facing these issues themselves.