The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

I can’t even remember when I first heard about this book by Sherman Alexie. I just remember that, everywhere I looked, people were raving about it. I was going through my to-read list on Goodreads recently, saw this title, and was reminded I had been wanting to read it for a while, so I ordered it from the library.

Living Up To The Hype

It was every bit as good as they all said it was. The title is super long (which always made it hard for me to remember), but it’s an accurate description of the story. As you can probably guess, the main character is Native American, but he’s exploring the possibilities outside the reservation he grew up on hence his status as a “part-time Indian.”

Screwed Over

The story starts as the main character, who goes by Junior, is starting high school. Life on the reservation isn’t great for anyone. Everyone is poor. Everyone is used to going hungry. Everyone’s parents are drunks. And everyone has been to way too many funerals because, between the poverty and the alcohol, people don’t tend to live very long on the reservation.

Junior kind of loses it on his first day of high school. He opens his geometry text book to see his mother’s name inside. He gets so pissed off at the fact that they’re forced to use decades-old textbooks that he throws the book and hits his teacher right in the face.

This results in Junior’s suspension as well as the teacher, Mr. P., coming to talk to him about how he was right to be angry. Mr. P. used to teach Junior’s older sister, Mary, who is now living in their parents’ basement and never goes outside. Mr. P. tells Junior that Mary always loved to write and wanted to be an author of romance novels, but one day she stopped writing. Mr. P.’s theory is that the reservation sucked the life – the hope – out of her and he doesn’t want that to happen to Junior, so he tells Junior to get off the reservation right away.

The Great Escape

Junior responds by telling his parents he wants to go to Reardan, the all-white high school off the reservation. It’s twenty-two miles from where they live, but his parents don’t even question him. So he starts attending Reardan the very next day.

You can imagine how this goes over. Everyone on the reservation, including his best friend, Rowdy, thinks Junior is a traitor. He’s abandoning them to go fraternize with the enemy. But the white kids don’t want to hang out with him either, because he’s the only Indian in the school.

No Guts, No Glory

There are a few people on the reservation who root for Junior and what he’s doing. He’s trying to make a life for himself when the world is against him. Even most of his own tribe is against him, but he knows he has to do this if he doesn’t want to end up like his parents: drunk with all the life and hope sucked out of him. There are a few who recognize how brave Junior is to do this, and I have to say, I don’t think I would have had the guts at his age to do anything like that. I was always the type to just take life as it is and do what I’m told.

Then again, I had just about everything handed to me, and I don’t think anything has made that more clear than this book. Junior has to face two huge obstacles to go to Reardan: poverty and opposition from his tribe. His father owns a car, but there’s not always enough money for gas to take Junior to school. Sometimes there is money, but is dad is too drunk to drive him. In that case, Junior usually hitchhikes to school. He can usually catch a ride, but not always. When he can’t, he misses school.

Junior does the best he can to make it as the only poor Indian in an all-white school while trying (and failing) to hide his poverty from the few white friends he manages to make.

Hope

I always like to say that YA books are about growing up and, to an extent, that’s true here too. But mostly I think this one is about hope. It revolves around a young boy who was handed all the wrong cards in life and decides to beat the odds and make something of himself anyway. The book takes place over the course of a year, and by the end of that year, it looks like Junior’s gamble has paid off. He’s on the varsity basketball team. He’s made a few friends at his new school. And there’s even talk about him playing college in basketball. For someone without any friends or relatives who have ever been to college, that’s a really big deal.

What did you guys read this week? Anything good? I want to hear all about it!