The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie, Little, Brown and Company, 2007.

Sherman Alexie’s award winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of a fourteen year old boy named Junior and his experience as an early teen on the Spokane reservation. Born with “water on the brain” and several speech impediments, Junior struggles to find his niche on the reservation. Aspiring to achieve more than the typical Spokane tribesman, Junior decides to uproot and attend the more successful (but predominantly white) school, Rearden High School where he is confronted with the tensions of cultural identity.

With an array of witty cartoons, Alexie humors his reader as he delivers his early childhood experiences through his Native American protagonist. With a combination of illustrations, humor, and a somewhat informal delivery, this text flies by making it an appropriate read for young adults. However, with a number of references to alcohol, abuse, and explicit sexuality this book is best ingested by a mature reader. It may not be the appropriate for any class reading,  but it maintains value on the class bookshelf due to its relation to many of the struggles and hardships of adolescence.

Alexie helps his reader see the bright side of some of the issues that middle and high schoolers deal with on a daily basis and introduces the themes of race, identity, poverty, and education. This book is extremely accessible to students in the developmental stages of early adolescents but due to its mature nature I would suggest that this book be taught in high school classes and possibly offered to middle schoolers if deemed mature enough. It has been banned in some schools, so proceed with caution!