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Booklog: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. YA novel.
Junior has spent his whole life in the town of Wellpint on the Spokane Indian Reservation, as has his whole family back as long as there's been a rez. When time comes for him to enter high school, he decides to go to the local (all-white) non-reservation high school, twenty miles away, in what is quite literally a search for hope. He grapples with personal problems -- the fact that he is kind of a goofy-looking dork, joining the basketball team and what goes with it -- and broader ones, such as the problems of community, identity, and where he belongs, which ties together with the high-school issues when his basketball team plays against the reservation high school's basketball team. "It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part- time job. And it didn't pay well at all."
...I don't like that summary much at all, because it makes this sound like a pretty cliche caught-between-two-worlds novel, and it's really not, at least not to me. For one thing, it's very specific. I don't know much about the Spokane tribe and reservation (shamefully little, considering I grew up right there), but I do know the landscape the book is set in, and I've walked a hundred times through schools exactly like the little non-reservation high school he describes. It's not a book about some kid in some culture clash; it's very much about this kid, this culture clash, this environment, this place. Also, Junior's voice is sharp and funny and very real, as are his comics (as drawn by Ellen Forney). He's intelligent (in a sarcastic kind of way) but also basically a teenage boy, and I believed both things about him. I liked him, which always helps. Even though his experiences and mine are radically different, and he as a character is radically different from me, he was very familiar -- the 'being a goofy-looking dork' thing, the sarcasm and wit, were things I recognized.
The one thing about this book is that, despite being very funny, it's also got points of being very depressing -- Alexie doesn't sugarcoat problems on the reservation, and the alcohol and poverty and racism is pretty grinding, both to Junior and to me as a reader, even though the novel doesn't set up shop in angstville and live there. The complexity of the issues involved, and Junior's approach to them, his wit and his stubbornness, keep it from being a downer book, but there are surely downer moments; it's most definitely not fluffy-comfort-reading YA (though it's also not really a lynchings-and-dog-shootings YA either).
I liked it a lot. In general I love Sherman Alexie's work -- have ever since I saw Smoke Signals, the movie based on some of his short stories in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which prompted me to read that book and Reservation Blues and some of his poetry. (It always seems a little ironic to me that I didn't find Alexie's work until I'd left my hometown -- which is maybe two hours from the Spokane Indian reservation that he is from and writes so much about.) And by the way, I love Smoke Signals, especially the character Thomas; if you like independent movies and haven't seen this one, do, and especially if you're in the Northwest and like regional works.
Recommended.
Junior has spent his whole life in the town of Wellpint on the Spokane Indian Reservation, as has his whole family back as long as there's been a rez. When time comes for him to enter high school, he decides to go to the local (all-white) non-reservation high school, twenty miles away, in what is quite literally a search for hope. He grapples with personal problems -- the fact that he is kind of a goofy-looking dork, joining the basketball team and what goes with it -- and broader ones, such as the problems of community, identity, and where he belongs, which ties together with the high-school issues when his basketball team plays against the reservation high school's basketball team. "It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part- time job. And it didn't pay well at all."
...I don't like that summary much at all, because it makes this sound like a pretty cliche caught-between-two-worlds novel, and it's really not, at least not to me. For one thing, it's very specific. I don't know much about the Spokane tribe and reservation (shamefully little, considering I grew up right there), but I do know the landscape the book is set in, and I've walked a hundred times through schools exactly like the little non-reservation high school he describes. It's not a book about some kid in some culture clash; it's very much about this kid, this culture clash, this environment, this place. Also, Junior's voice is sharp and funny and very real, as are his comics (as drawn by Ellen Forney). He's intelligent (in a sarcastic kind of way) but also basically a teenage boy, and I believed both things about him. I liked him, which always helps. Even though his experiences and mine are radically different, and he as a character is radically different from me, he was very familiar -- the 'being a goofy-looking dork' thing, the sarcasm and wit, were things I recognized.
The one thing about this book is that, despite being very funny, it's also got points of being very depressing -- Alexie doesn't sugarcoat problems on the reservation, and the alcohol and poverty and racism is pretty grinding, both to Junior and to me as a reader, even though the novel doesn't set up shop in angstville and live there. The complexity of the issues involved, and Junior's approach to them, his wit and his stubbornness, keep it from being a downer book, but there are surely downer moments; it's most definitely not fluffy-comfort-reading YA (though it's also not really a lynchings-and-dog-shootings YA either).
I liked it a lot. In general I love Sherman Alexie's work -- have ever since I saw Smoke Signals, the movie based on some of his short stories in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which prompted me to read that book and Reservation Blues and some of his poetry. (It always seems a little ironic to me that I didn't find Alexie's work until I'd left my hometown -- which is maybe two hours from the Spokane Indian reservation that he is from and writes so much about.) And by the way, I love Smoke Signals, especially the character Thomas; if you like independent movies and haven't seen this one, do, and especially if you're in the Northwest and like regional works.
Recommended.