"'I used to think the world was broken down by tribes . . . By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not.'"
- Arnold "Junior" Spirit
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian follows the story of a young Spokane Indian who lives on a reservation but chooses to attend high school at the all-white Rearden High. On the "rez," he is Junior; at Rearden, he is Arnold. This duality spreads into each part of his life, making him an outcast in both the white world and the Indian one. At its heart, TATDoaPTI is about a kid experiencing what all kids experience: heartbreak, hormones, and a hell of a lot of insecurity. Junior loses his best friend, the approval of his tribe (although he has always been an outcast among them in some ways), and his identity as an Indian as he increasingly turns to the white world to find success and fulfillment. Junior finds comfort in his cartoons (artist Ellen Forney's drawings pop up throughout the book), his relationship with his parents, and in the friendships he starts to form outside of the rez. However, his is still a world full of conflict, guilt and tough decisions.
Sherman Alexie wrote this book for a young adult audience, and I think he's created a character and a storyline that really mirror the teen experience. I laughed at times, like when Junior admits he's good at masturbating (his defense is, "if God hadn't wanted us to masturbate, then God wouldn't have given us thumbs") and I almost cried at others, like when even his best friend, Rowdy, more or less abandons him as a "white lover" (see picture above). Any reader can empathize with the trials that Arnold faces, from being considered a little too "gay" because he's emotionally sensitive and artsy to trying to hide his poverty from his white friends, and his expanding world from his tribemates. White, black, or any shade in between, we've all had to hide our differences from others, either from fear of invoking their jealousy or their ridicule. However, the bonus is that here, rather than just confirming what we already know about adolescence, Alexie also teaches readers about life on the reservation-- the poverty, the overwhelming alcoholism, the limited opportunities for growth. I've never known much about reservations, but this book gave me a feel for what it must be like to grow up in a place where you and everyone you know always seems to have less than the rest of society.
This novel suggests that Indians have become great at coping, but less able to fight back: "'I realized that, sure, Indians were drunk and sad and displaced and crazy and mean, but, dang, we knew how to laugh.'" Unfortunately, the laughing never changes anything, and the drinking seems to outweigh every other action 5 to 1. Alexie doesn't solely criticize life on the rez; he also reminds readers that there is a huge gap in understanding between whites and Indians, and that white people have their share of issues too. Ultimately, what Junior learns and what I took away as well is that we all have a whole slew of problems, but we also have unlimited potential; there is a warrior in each of us that can only be realized if we own up to who we are and refuse to settle for anything less than what we truly desire.
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