The following was contributed by Brenda who led the discussion complete with a YouTube interview with Alexie, Mapquest maps of the location of the reservation, and a film clip from another Alexie novel.1a. What was your overall reaction to the book? Even if this is not your genre of choice, did you find the story fun to read? Would you recommend it?
I loved this comment by a reviewer of the book: Alexie doesn't sugarcoat problems on the reservation, and the alcohol and poverty and racism is pretty grinding, both to Junior and to the reader, even though the novel doesn't set up shop in angstville and live there.1b. What are some themes in the book?
1. Readers of all ages can benefit from the novel’s message: our past need not define us. It is never too late to change your destiny.
2. Forgiveness. Like when his father is absent once again at Christmas. Like when Rowdy gives him a concussion. Like the end of Smoke Signals when Victor scatters his absentee father's ashes in the river and gives a wailing cry. 3. His absolute disgust of alcohol. The scene in Smoke Signals where the kid is throwing beer bottles at his dad's truck left over from the party the night before.
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian shows a different side of American Indian life than do many other books. Did you learn anything new about Indians from it?I failed to realize how pervasive death is in the rez. I know there is rampant trouble with drugs and alcohol and crime, but the notion of attending 42 funerals by the age of 14 was foreign to me. Most of the deaths being alcohol-related. I *may* have been to 30 funerals in my lifetime.
This was Alexie's first attempt at a young adult novel. He says, "My first draft was twice as long as what you see in the book now. My editor cut it up—HARD—and at first I just cursed at her and wouldn’t do it. If you’ve read “Flight,” that whole book is actually me working out my frustration at having to write a young adult novel. But in the end I realized my editor was right all along. So I made the cuts and got all the credit. Funny how that works out.”
3 & 4. Junior/Arnold says “I felt like two different people inside of one body.” Let's discuss his inner conflicts brought about by the experiences of going to school off the rez. Even before Arnold leaves the rez Arnold misses his best friend, Rowdy, after he starts his new school. But Rowdy doesn’t seem to want to join him there. How do Arnold’s and Rowdy’s views of the reservation – and their own lives – differ? What do you think Alexie is trying to show you through those differences?Junior has an undying search for identity and tries to figure out where he belongs. He says, "It was like being Indian was my job, but it was only a part- time job. And it didn't pay well at all."He is stuck between two worlds that don't mesh. Rowdy sees Junior's defection as the ultimate sell-out. Junior/Arnold is coping with tragedy and despair in his home life AND has to reach beyond himself in his new school environment. HE has to prove himself. It's unfair; they should try to make him feel welcome. But life doesn't operate that way for the most part. It's the new kid, the new employee in a job that has to prove themselves while also adjusting to a new environment. ARNOLD has to make the extra effort to fit in– by going out for basketball, dating a popular white girl and befriending a fellow bookworm – while coping with tragedy at home. And if some Indians continue to see him as a traitor for leaving the reservation, Arnold eventually learns that the world has many kinds of tribes and that more than a few of them have a place for him; like the tribes of bookworms, basketball players & writers.
His quest for higher learning is quite literally a search for hope. A search for a way to break this mousewheel of despair he's caught in. Junior writes in his diary:
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.
A quote from one of his stories: "Indians can reside in the city, but they can never live there."
5. Let's discuss the warrior archetype/persona/mentality on the reservation. In real life Alexie's fight record is 5 wins, 115 losses and one when he was 12 years old when a 20-yr old guy said he would beat him up unless Sherman wanted to beat himself up. With fists. There is a deep-seeded anger that is still pervasive among our indigenous people. Remember the scene where the rich guy from Montana comes to return the dress? (I think we all figured out that was Ted Turner). "Not another white guy coming to the rez who loves Indians. Who collects Indian art." He said somewhere that in every Indian's heart of hearts is the spirit of Crazy Horse, rising up to face the white nation head on.
6. What did you think of Ellen Forney’s pictures for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian? What is their purpose in the book? Do they provide a mirror for the text, reflecting back only what you read on the page? Or do they expand it? How?See www.ellenforney.com. Briefly show all of her sites above & end at her Bio... scroll down & you will see a photograph or her.The illustrations are humorous and do not overpower the book; they don't appear too frequently and provide a nice complement to the text. Alexie and Forney balance the use of text and images excellently, sometimes carrying dialogue from the prose into a cartoon and then back to the prose. The comics help us to see the world through Junior’s eyes. I love how most of them appear on crinkled pieces of paper, taped onto the pages, a charming effect. They look like rule paper and even paper bags--whatever he could find to write on.
7. What’s the purpose of the humor in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian? Why does Alexie use it when Arnold is clearly angry about a lot of things?Sherman Alexie epitomizes the notion of laughing in order to keep from crying. He uses humor to illustrate the sadness, hopelessness, and sheer poverty of the people in Junior's world on the rez. There is one line that reads, “When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.”Remember that scene when Junior is laughing when his father comes to pick him up from school after his sister's death? I guess he was just sure his dad would stop at a bar on the way and get drunk and he'd forget him or get into an accident. To this day Alexie is an insomniac, which he claims stems from all the nights he stayed awake until his father got home. And while it was painful for him when his father died, he admits there is also a certain relief of not having to wait up for him any longer. [play audio clip]
Mortality. (handouts) In a clip from his 2nd film The Business of Fancydancing, there is a scene when the family is all home for the night; the parents passed out drunk and "snoring like drums." And one of the kids says, "We were all alive; and that was enough."
Alexie's siblings are surprised when people find him funny. "I was always the depressed guy in the basement," he says. "But I've borrowed their sense of humor and made it darker and more deadly - a weapon of self-defense. Being funny you win hearts quicker; people laughing are more apt to listen."8. Do you agree with Alexie that in order to make his point he had to use language that some people find offensive?
Some thought some of the talk of masturbation could have been left out, and others say this is a real life issue for 14-year old boys and someone reading it may feel more normal about it. Another pointed out that YA readers are becoming exposed much more explicit themes in literature and in everyday life than they were a generation ago.
9. Arnold’s math teacher at Wellpinit High School, Mr. P, tells him that the teachers at the school used to beat the Indians with a stick: “That’s how we were taught to teach you. We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child.” What did he mean?
We didn't get to this one.
10. With so many scholarships available to them, why have American Indians given up on life and turned to drugs & alcohol? Why do they not take pride in their yards and houses and try to keep litter off the streets?It's like everyone has given up on life. This pervasive, defeatist attitude.
In another YouTube interview, Alexie says with conviction, "We seem to have forgotten that reservations were created as death camps; we were supposed to go there, disappear, and/or die."
11. How different is the American Indian experience for women than men?
Brigette Hernandez Elteto says it's not much different for women; being raised on the rez is like being raised in a foreign country. A third world country. Brigette: "We have nothing left but each other and our culture. Sherman Alexie is a quandary to the Indian people because he has broken away from the oral tradition. That is what they know best."
Look for more from Alexie in the coming months. He is currently working on a book with his wife and kids for readers grade 2-6 based on two characters named Thunder and Lightening, which they develop from Indian mythology. He's also working on another YA novel called A Radioactive Love Song about an ipod. Also an adult murder-mystery. AND he's got about 3,000 pages of notes on a family memoir.
Alexie on Casinos: They are creating a class society on the rez that has never existed before. In the past it's been all third world low class all the time. Now you're starting to see some upper and middle class distinctions. All without the advantages of a democracy--no control.
In the book Flight, there is no sense of hope at all, like you find in Absolutely True Diary, even though both are about teenagers of the same age. Flight is also more violent, so it is marketed as an adult novel.
In his short story "the approximate size of my favorite tumor" Alexie concludes the 2 things Indians are good at are frybread and helping people die.
LINKS:
Map of the Reservations:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=Wellpinit,+WA,+USA&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title
USCD YouTube interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWolPAoDk3g
National Book Award Acceptance Speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6AbxJxDoI8
ShermanAlexie.com (reverts to fallsapart.com)
http://www.fallsapart.com/
His Illustrator:
http://www.ellenforney.com
