The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

Never Published book review

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is absolutely the best book I've read in a long time. I read the first chapter, picked it up again the next day and couldn't put it down.  I read up to the last chapter and only stopped then for the selfish reason that I didn't want it to end. 

The character of Junior is smart, insightful, brave, and someone I would have wanted to be friends with.  The story is set in the 90s in a town so close and similar to my own home town that I felt slightly ashamed in the beginning and proud as the story progressed.  Junior is a fourteen-year-old Spokane Indian growing up in the reservation town of Wellpinit.  Encouraged by his "weird old coot" teacher Mr. P, Junior makes the tough decision to transfer to high school in the nearby farm town of Reardan – where the mascot was, ironically, an Indian.

By making the choice to get a better education Junior is viewed by many in his tribal family as a traitor and faces the heartbreak of losing his best friend, Rowdy. 

On his first day at school in Reardan he is made fun of for his name and then accused of lying when it is revealed that his first name is actually Arnold.  As the title of the book infers, it is just the beginning of his identity struggle – he is Junior on the reservation and Arnold in school.  He is ridiculed by Indians for "trying to be white" and discriminated against by the whites for being an Indian.

Along the way Arnold makes friends - Roger, the football star who he punches in the nose, Penelope the beautiful bulimic and Gordy, the smartest person he'd ever meet who he describes as "an eighty-year-old literature professor trapped in the body of a fifteen-year-old farm boy". Eventually Arnold's mad basketball skills and newfound friendships make him more popular than he ever thought possible. 

While reading this book I remembered a time when I was in the Reardan grocery store about ten years ago. I noticed a sign at the check stand that said no movies would be rented to people from Wellpinit.  I was shocked. This book brought home to me (literally) that racism will always exist.  I grew up not far from Reardan, in another small farm town – Wilbur, where our team mascot was the Redskins.  It has since been changed to Wildcats. Our towns were similar in many ways, although having Indians in school was normal in Wilbur. The school in Keller, on the Colville Indian Reservation, only went through 6thgrade and then all of the Keller kids were bused to the Wilbur school. I am sure there was racism but I was never aware of it. My dad was Native American, but I have to admit that what I know about Indians I have learned from reading books by authors like Sherman Alexie and Lawney Reyes.

You should read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  You will love the characters and be entertained and enlightened by the writing of Sherman Alexie. 

Even if you have never spent time on a reservation or in a small farm town you will enjoy Sherman Alexie's honest, heartbreaking, comical account ofArnold's experiences.

I laughed out loud and I cried.

As stated by the character of Gordy in the book – "you have to read a book three times before you know it.  The first time you read it for the story.  The plot. The second time you read it for its history. For its knowledge of history." Gordy never said why you read it for the third time but I think it is just for the joy of reading it.  With The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian I intend to find out.