106 of 114 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Worst Thing About Being Poor, October 2, 2007
"Do you know the worst thing about being poor?" asks Junior Spirit at the beginning of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." It's not hunger, he insists. "Sure, sometimes my family misses a meal, and sleep is the only thing we have for dinner, but I know that, sooner or later, my parents will come busting through the door with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken."
Then Junior tells us the worst thing about being poor, and it will break your heart.
"Diary" is a novel for young adults by Sherman Alexie. It tells the story of a 14-year-old Indian who goes off the rez to attend Reardan, an all-white school. A more pedestrian writer would have his protagonist leave the reservation entirely, but Junior continues to live there with his parents, and he comes to fear that he no longer belongs in either world.
Junior aspires to be a cartoonist, and he fills this "diary" with mordant, self-deprecating drawings. The work of Ellen Forney, they are funny and touching, and help to make the narrative credible as the work of a talented 14-year-old.
Junior's best friend is Rowdy, a sometimes violent young man who may suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. It is Rowdy who feels most betrayed by Junior's move to Reardan, and the deep rift in their relationship colors the rest of the story.
Many juvenile novels center on youthful rebellion, but while Junior's parents are deeply flawed, he understands that most of their problems stem from the crushing poverty they have endured on the reservation. The story of his sister, whom the family calls Mary Runs Away, is particularly poignant, and provides a counterpoint to her brother's success.
While most of the characters are vividly drawn, I find Junior's geeky friend Gordy a bit wooden. "Don't you hate PCs?" Gordy says. "They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague." Even geeks don't talk that way.
Junior unexpectedly becomes a basketball star, but his spectacular performance in the "big game" comes at the expense of Rowdy and the reservation team, making him feel more traitor than hero. His struggle to resolve this conflict provides the central thrust of the story. The final scene, a twilight game of one-on-one, is only two paragraphs long, but its impact is stunning.
While billed as a "novel for young adults," "Diary" will richly reward the attention of any adult. Read it now, before Hollywood turns it into an innocuous, feel-good movie with a title like "The Little Injun that Could."
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119 of 135 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richie's Picks: THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, September 5, 2007
"Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a 'Tale of Two Cities' than it is just a 'Shining City on a Hill.' "
-- Mario Cuomo, 1984 National Democratic Convention Keynote Address
"It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you're poor because you're stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you're stupid and ugly because you're Indian. And because you're Indian you start believing you're destined to be poor. It's an ugly circle and there's nothing you can do about it.
So opines high school student and sometime cartoonist Arnold Spirit, aka Junior, who is despondent as his father prepares to shoot Arnold's suffering dog because there is no money to pay for a veterinarian's services. But a math teacher -- whose nose is broken when Arnold, in his frustration, angrily throws his generations-old math book --endeavors to change Arnold's sense of helplessness:
" 'You can't give up. You won't give up. You threw that book in my face because somewhere inside you refuse to give up.'
"I didn't know what he was talking about. Or maybe I just didn't want to know.
"Jeez, it was a lot of pressure to put on a kid. I was carrying the burden of my race, you know? I was going to get a bad back from it.
" 'If you stay on this rez,' Mr. P said, 'they're going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. We're all going to kill you. You can't fight us forever.'
" 'I don't want to fight anybody.' I said.
" 'You've been fighting since you were born,' he said. 'You fought off that brain surgery. You fought off those seizures. You fought off all the drunks and drug addicts. You kept your hope. And now, you have to take your hope and go somewhere where other people have hope.'
"I was starting to understand. He was a math teacher. I had to add my hope to somebody else's hope. I had to multiply hope by hope.
" 'Where is hope?' I asked. 'Who has hope?'
" 'Son,' Mr. P said. 'You're going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad reservation.' "
I'd certainly heard of Sherman Alexie. Back in my bookstore days, a young college student with whom I worked spoke of him as a god. But I'd never read any of Alexie's books since he hadn't yet written anything for children or YAs.
THE ABSOLUTE TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN is a semi-autobiographical tale by Sherman Alexie, written for teen readers, that is in turns wacked-out, funny, heartbreaking, and jubilant. It is the story of an Indian kid who has survived a precarious infancy and is growing up on a reservation outside Spokane. It is a powerful story of friendship between two teenage guys who have grown up together on the reservation. It is the story of Arnold's journey after he is persuaded by the math teacher to escape the rez school and transfer to a high school 22 miles away.
And it is a tale of two cities.
"So what was I doing in Reardan, whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town?"
THE ABSOLUTE TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN portrays Arnold's struggle through that ninth grade school year to succeed at the high school in Reardan, to which he often has to walk and/or hitch. It could be that Arnold's greatest struggle involves the conflict and guilt that comes from living among the Indian kids and grown-ups he's seemingly left behind on the reservation in order to attain that success.
Arnold's humorous and telling drawings (thanks to artist Ellen Forney), which are "taped" into the diary, significantly bolster the book's boy-charm and permit us to see, in a second dimension, Arnold's view of his world.
"My head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it. Some of the kids called me Orbit. And other kids just called me Globe. The bullies would pick me up, spin me in circles, put their finger down on my skull, and say, 'I want to go there'."
I loved hanging out in Arnold World! Sherman Alexie and his quirky, in-your-face, first-person tale of contemporary life on and off the reservation are both important and extremely welcome additions to the world of young adult literature.
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