The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) By Sherman Alexie

My first exposure to author Sherman Alexie was through the Chicago Gay & Lesbian Film Festival many years ago.  I went to see his movie The Business of FancyDancing.  It was multi-cultural at its strongest.  The main character grew-up on a reservation, but “abandoned” the tribe by taking school seriously and winning a scholarship to college.  In college, he comes out as a gay man, and ends up in a relationship with a white man.  The book covers his return to the reservation for the funeral of a friend.  Based on the book, I started being a regular at the annual pow-wows that are held in Chicago – fascinating events when you take them more seriously than as a mere tourist attraction.

Alexie would go on to become quite the independent film director, prominent poet, and novelist.  His credits include the movie SmokeSignals & book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and the autobiographical book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

The Absolutely True Diary tells of his childhood on the Spokane reservation in the northeastern corner of Washington State.  He, as were the other kids on the “rez,” was culturally raised to expect nothing out of life.  When he independently decides that he is going to the high school in Reardon, an entirely white school 22 miles from the reservation, it changes his childhood and life.  He is accused of abandoning his tribe, and becoming a white-lover … an “apple,” red on the outside, but white on the inside.  Yet, at Reardon High School, he’s the Indian kid that shouldn’t be there.  RHS’s school mascot of course is the “Redskins.”  He’s caught in-between two cultures, which will become a running theme in Alexie’s body of work.

The trials and tribulations that he faces as a kid were endless – teenage angst, coupled with unquestioned and often internalized racism.  To tell the story, Alexie uses comedy to make it bearable.  (See my review of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka to see how this formula plays in a different cultural setting).

Arnold, the Alexie character in the novel, turns out to be extremely good at comedy.  Arnold draws cartoons, and they are sad, hilarious and on-target.  The book has enough cartoons to qualify as a comic book, and needs them.

It would be easy for me to relate this book to so many “other” of America’s ills – not the least of which is the subject of what society does to psyche of people raised on the reservation, or in the inner center “ghetto,” or in the “white-trash” trailer park.  Hope is destroyed.  One of my favorite passages in political literature is Harvey Milk’s “Hope Speech.”  The crux of the speech is that you must give people hope, because “without hope, life is not worth living.”  Sociologists point to this need whenever discussing alcoholism or drug abuse, or suicide.  Part-Time Indian puts this in personal terms.

Recommendation:  Absolutely.

Click on the movie trailer for The Business of FancyDancing and watch an interview of Alexie by Bill Moyers.