The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: 2011

Awards & Honors

Sherman Alexie has won over fifty awards, honors, and certificates over the course of his career. Some of his most notable include:

1992: National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship
The New York Times Book Review Notable book of the Year for The Business of Fancydancing
Granta Magazine: Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40
New York Times Notable Book for Indian Killer
1999: The New Yorker: 20 Writers for the 21st Century
2007: National Book Award prize for Young People's literature for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
2010: Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award

Writing Style

First-person past tense
Narrator is satirical, emotional, determined, honest, witty.
Illustrations every few pages, which compliment Arnold’s narration. Adds a visual component (often humorous) to the book which greatly helps the tone in achieving its lightheartedness, when dealing with tough issues of alcoholism, loneliness, and death.
Narrator is very critical of himself, which helps the reader empathize with him and allows some leeway to poke fun at others without sounding condescending. With that said, he also takes pride in his accomplishments which is empowering to readers.
Chapters are arranged in often-short sections that focus more on the significance of an event over chronology- a trait typical of nonfiction works.
Some chapters are no more than a few pages, and lots of white space and illustrations makes reading a breeze and even more accessible for younger/less dedicated readers.
Considerable amounts of dialogue over scene, but easy to read and always humorous.
The language is occasionally crude, as the narrator explains Indians “love talking dirty.”
Text is often set in large caps for emphasis, as well as italics.
Easygoing prose is accessible to young audiences and adults alike.

The transparent image of Arnold on the front cover is taken from one of the cartoons from the book. Cartoons play an important role in the novel as graphic representation, but cartoons and drawings also play an important role in Arnold's life. He often discusses how important drawing is to him, "I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me." We thought that it was appropriate to bring this vital part of Arnold to the front cover. He is split down the middle to represent the two different Arnolds: Native American Arnold and White Arnold. The white Arnold is wearing a watch, a Ralph Lauren shirt, a backpack with a cell phone pocket, khakis, and the latest Air Jordans. The Native American Arnold is wearing thick glasses, a K-Mart T-shirt, Sears blue jeans, canvas tennis shoes, and a Glad garbage bag for a back-pack. For Arnold, white represents hope, positive role models, and a bright future. Indians signify a bone-crushing reality, alcoholism and poverty, and a vanishing past. Although his perspectives on the two different cultures seem black and white, solely positive or negative, there are many moments in the text that Arnold contemplates both positives and negatives of both cultures.

We included the road behind Arnold to portray the passage between his Native American life at the Rez and his white life at Reardon High School. Everyday, Arnold would have to travel 22 miles down the road to get to 'white' Reardon High School; often he would have to walk or hitchhike because his family couldn't afford gas or his dad was too drunk to drive. This road transported Arnold between the two different aspects of himself.

In the Classroom

Alexie’s young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an excellent choice for the high school English classroom. The book addresses many issues that are common to the young adult genre and are of interest to adolescents of any culture. Some of these issues include: cultural differences and perspectives, bullying, maturation, friendships, identity formation, isolation, alienation, hopelessness, independence, family issues, loss, death, depression, addiction, sex, poverty, class distinctions, discrimination and racism, white power, questions of education on Indian Reservations, and more.

The way the book is written makes it an excellent read for students. The book is comical, ironic, entertaining and non-stop fun. As a National Book Award winner, this book provides students with a glimpse of the life of a teenage Indian and his struggles as a teenager. Arnold experiences struggles that most teenagers would be able to relate to such as bullying, identity formation, alienation, and troubles with friends and family. The use of cartoons and drawings throughout the text adds to the appeal to young adult readers as well. Through them, readers are able to really get into the mind of Arnold, see what he is thinking that he doesn’t say out loud. The cartoons also make the subject matter, which can be graphic and serious at times, easier to absorb.

The serious issues such as addiction, death, loss, cultural divides, and poverty have led to some controversy with the text. It was banned in a few schools for reasons such as sexual language, “off-color” jokes, and discussion of racism, alcoholism and violence. Although these issues are raised and discussed in the book, I think that those are beneficial issues to discuss in the classroom. They are real occurances that are prevalent everywhere. Teachers can introduce students to different cultures, how people represent their culture, and also the idea of taking pride in one’s own background. The book also lets the reader, especially with young adults, build self-esteem, believe in their dreams and pursue their goals. All in all, I think this is an appropriate and excellent book to introduce in the classroom.

Assignments: draw your own cartoons/drawings of your favorite part or character from the novel. How does this mode of expression help or change the way you’re able to express yourself, how have you put yourself into your drawing?

Students will produce a diagram, drawing, or even prose making comparisons to Wellpinit and Reardon. Comparing aspects such as the school, the students, the general population, social services, health care, problems, culture, house, geography, anything!

What’s going on today with schools and education on Indian Reservation? Students will conduct a mini-research project about Indian Reservations (local if applicable) and the schools on and around the reservations. They will also be able to discuss relations and thoughts that both natives and whites living in and around the area feel and think about their place and situation.

Students can keep their own diary or journal, much like Arnold does in the book. They can include activities, events, thoughts, feelings, drawings, comics, whatever they want. They can also journal about how they would respond to similar situations.

Book Covers

Australia

Audiobooks

Relationship to the YA genre

This novel perfectly fits the general mold of what a young adult novel should be. The Absolutley True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of Arnold “Junior” Spirit and his process of growing up during his freshman year of high school. The story is very realistic since the story is semi-autobiographical. The first person perspective and added cartoons drawn by the main character allow the reader to truly be in Arnold’s head and understand what he is experiencing.

This text deals with so many aspects of adolescence it would be seemingly impossible to categorize this as anything other than YA. Some of the most important themes Alexie addresses in this novel are the realizations of difference in class, defferent ethnic backgrounds, the feeling of being an outcast or an outsider, questioning authority, making one’s own decisions, and understanding relationships with other people. These are all central themes in YA texts, and we have discussed these extensively in our other readings throughout this course.

This novel has a huge appeal to young adult readers, largely because it deals with very tough adolescent issues through humor that allows the book to be hilarious while simultaneously carrying a profound message about growing up and becoming an individual. Any reader can identify with at least a few aspects of what Arnold is going through. This text could be especially appealing to YA readers of minority groups. Alexie stated in one interview “I'm really hoping it reaches a lot of native kids certainly, but also poor kids of any variety who feel trapped by circumstance, by culture, by low expectations, I'm hoping it helps get them out" (source: James Meillis, "Interview with Sherman Alexie," 2007, Conversations with Sherman Alexie, 183).

There is also an underlying discussion of the relationship between Indians and Anglo Americans. A lot of history is alluded to, especially with the discussion of Indians and their obsession with alcohol and their lack of ability to become something from being forced onto reservations. Alexie says he writes “colonial literature,” which tells a story of a group colonized by a dominant power or culture and the consequences of that colonization, immediate or long term.

Reviews

“Arnold’s creator, Sherman Alexie, grew up on the Spokane Reservation in tiny Wellpinit, Wash., and made his name as a poet before expanding into short stories, novels, screenplays, film directing and stand-up comedy. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is Alexie’s first foray into the young adult genre, and it took him only one book to master the form. Recently nominated for a National Book Award, this is a gem of a book. I keep flipping back to re-read the best scenes and linger over Ellen Forney’s cartoons.”

---By Bruce Barcott

Published: November 11, 2007

The New York Times

“There is something in the force of Alexie's description that captures your heart, even while some of his raunchiest statements can turn your stomach. Boys of this age will be boys of this age, regardless of race or economic class. There is much to recommend here, but one word of warning: sex and violence rear their ugly heads as much as deep and unabiding sorrow and great flowering words of encouragement. This is a book that delves into every possible aspect of one boy's adolescent wanderings. The fact that Alexie actually encountered such incidents in real life only serves to make the narrative that much more imposing. Knowing that he fought a successful fight against all the things that oppressed him as a kid gives THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN even greater resonance. Hope is indeed the thing with feathers.”

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

Teenreads.com

“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…Jazzy syntax and [Ellen] Forney’s witty cartoons…transmute despair into dark humor; Alexie’s no-holds-barred jokes have the effect of throwing the seriousness of his themes into high relief.”

---Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“I know Sherman Alexie is on his game when I’m reading his book, laughing my ass off while my heart is breaking. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian captivates absolutely.”

---Chris Crutcher, author of Deadline

Interviews with Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Interview With Sherman Alexie, an Amazing Part-Time Indian [Excerpts]
by Jesse Sposato

Jesse: Where do you get ideas for your characters; are they based on you and your friends?

Sherman: You know, the original influence is always this particular person, but by the time you end up writing ten or twelve drafts, they [the characters] change completely. But the original inspiration is usually a person.

Jesse: Yeah, it seems like a lot of writers do that. In particular, the friendship between Rowdy and Arnold in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a rich and interesting one filled with such pure love. Is this friendship based on one you know or one that you had?

Sherman: Yeah, it’s based on two of my friendships growing up on the reservation with the[se] two guys. True Diary is really a love story between two boys, [it’s about] their friendship. It really interested me to write an emotional book about young males’ friendships. We always think about girls being devoted to each other that way, but boys are too.

Jesse: Do you plan on sticking with young adult novels for a while, or just continuing to do kind of whatever you feel like?

Sherman: I just added another genre! (laughing) Yeah, it’s been so fun to be in the young adult world. I’m gonna stay there definitely, and I’ll keep writing my other stuff too.

Jesse: How did you make the transition in the first place?; what was the motivation behind starting to enter the young adult world?

Sherman: They just kept asking! Well, that was part of it, and also, young people are so excited about books and so anxious and eager. I just looked back to myself as a sixteen-year-old and how much I loved reading and how a book could completely change my life…so I just like the idea of trying to write for all those versions of me out there, wherever they are.

Jesse: Right, totally. That’s sort of the way I explain starting Sadie, like the idea is trying to speak to sixteen-year-old me.

Sherman: There you go, exactly! And that was just confirmed when I went on a book tour and I visited all these high schools. [There are] just all these amazing kids out there, so it’s fun! And it’s fun in a way that…I certainly love my adult audiences, but, I don’t know, I just end up feeling like I matter more to the teenagers.

Sherman Alexie's first YA novel, 'The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian' [Excerpts]

by Rick Margolis

You were born with hydrocephalus (water on the brain), and you grew up poor on the Spokane Indian Reservation with alcoholic parents. How did you learn to read by the time you were three?

Partly it was because my dad was a major genre reader. He read a lot of, like, The Executioner and The Punisher and a lot of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. He was way into the John F. Kennedy assassination; so there were dozens of those books around the house. Even though my dad was a randomly employed, blue-collar alcoholic, he was also very much into reading. And then the other thing was, ironically, because I was so sick and because Indian health service has such great contracts with major health-care providers, I ended up in a lot of therapy—physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. Because they thought I was going to be mentally disabled, they had me in a lot of educational therapies. So my brain disease and my brain surgery got me the kind of early childhood education that I never would have gotten otherwise.

When you were five, you read The Grapes of Wrath, which remains one of your favorites. Back then, what appealed to you about the story?

Fleeing poverty. Getting in the car and going and trying to find a way, and being stopped at nearly every turn—the struggle against poverty.

You understood that concept at such a young age?

One of the things that I’ve always said is that you measure the quality of a person’s life by the age at which they had their first political thought. I was about four, standing in line to get government food on the reservation. And it struck me that all over the news I was watching Russians standing in line to get government food—and they were the enemy.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is the tale of a 14-year-old Native American who transfers to an all-white school in hopes of finding a better life. Essentially, it’s your real-life story. Why not just write a memoir?

The material in True Diary was actually first part of a memoir. I’ve been working on a family memoir about my family’s history with war. So I wrote this entire huge section about the first year I spent at the white high school, and it didn’t fit whatsoever, thematically. So I put it aside. I had 450 manuscript pages that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Then a YA editor called me, as she had been calling me over the years, about every six months: “So where’s that YA novel?” She called me on this day that I had printed out those pages, and as I was talking to her, I was looking at my desktop and there was the manuscript, sitting there, and I thought, “Wow! I think that’s a novel.” So it was really sort of a coincidence. And then partly I made it a novel simply because—this is weird to say—nobody would actually believe it as a memoir.

Summary

In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), Sherman Alexie recounts the trials of a Native American teenager, Arnold “Junior” Spirit, during his first year in high school. Using humor to soften the sometimes difficult and emotional story, Alexie creates a loveable, misfit protagonist whom readers cannot help but root for.

Junior lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation, where he discovers that alcohol is more important to most residents than an education. Junior decides to transfer from his reservation school to Reardan High, a white school that is more than twenty miles away. Once he arrives, Junior finds that he is the only Indian (besides the school’s mascot) there. His best friend on the reservation, Rowdy, stays behind and vows never to speak to Junior—the “traitor”—again. Junior also knows that everyone else on the reservation thinks he is an “apple:” red on the outside but white on the inside. Meanwhile, most of the students at Reardan treat Junior as an outcast as well.

Although he is stimulated by the intellectual challenges of Reardan’s advanced curriculum, Junior must fight to improve his social standing both on and off the reservation. He accomplishes this accidentally when he goes out for Reardan’s basketball team. He surprises himself when, as a freshman, he makes the varsity team and eventually even becomes a starting player. Junior’s biggest challenge comes when he must play against his former basketball team from the reservation, whose star player is none other than Junior’s ex–best friend, Rowdy.

In the course of this young adult, coming-of-age story, Alexie highlights both the spiritual and psychological highs and lows of living on a reservation—a place of stagnation as well as a place of strong family roots and long-lasting love.

Author Bio

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian born and raised in the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. His father held various jobs, including truck driver and logger and his mother was a social worker. Alexie was born hydrocephalic and underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months, but was not expected to survive. When he did live, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Although spared this, he did suffer through seizures and bed-wetting throughout his childhood. Preferring to stay inside, he developed a love for reading, liking Steinbeck as a five-year-old. Alexie faced alcoholism for five years before becoming sober at 23. He graduated with honors from Reardan High, where he was the only Indian. Alexie planned to be a doctor until he "fainted three times in human anatomy class" and stumbled into a poetry workshop at Washington State University. He attended Gonzaga University in Spokane on a scholarship and graduated in American Studies from Washington State. Alexie received two prestigious fellowships and soon after cranked out eleven books, placing the number of his total pieces of work at over 300.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian