Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a semi-autobiographical story that partially channels Alexie's own childhood experiences and views on life through the novel’s main character, Junior Spirit.

Junior’s “diary” offers readers a glimpse at the emotional and often entertaining Native American teen’s outlook on life as he is trying to navigate and survive an “all white” high school. Junior chooses to attend this school because he wants to broaden his educational experiences and step outside of the cultural box and destructive cycles his family and people have been accustomed to on the reservation.
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.” (p. 13)

Junior soon learns that this new school is full of challenges, but through his experiences and eventually with the help of his new friends, he realizes that he possesses the power to break the cycle of destructive reservation life and rise above it.
“We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly.” (p. 112)
Junior has his own unique way of communicating with the world around him. He doesn’t hesitate to use biting sarcasm, foul words, or even exaggerated cartoon depictions of his family and friends in order to express his thoughts.
While attending his new high school, Junior and his friend discuss the idea of extensively analyzing and reading books, as well as Junior’s drawings and their importance in his life.

Junior tells Gordy, “I draw cartoons…. I take them seriously. I use them to understand the world. I use them to make fun of the world. To make fun of people. And sometimes I draw people because they’re my friends and family. And I want to honor them…”
Gordy reassures Junior that this method of expressing thoughts through a different language technique is nothing to be ashamed of, and points out, “…If you’re good at it, and you love it, and it helps you navigate the river of the world, then it can’t be wrong.” (pg. 95)




Discussion Questions:

1. Why is getting off the reservation so imperative for Junior, and not important for other characters (like Rowdy)?

2. Is it important that Alexie’s life could have been very close to Junior Spirit’s? How does the fact that it’s “semi-autobiographical” affect the language and format of the novel?

3. From the Discussion Guide in the back of the novel (pg. 232):

Cultural outsiders who write young adult fiction tend to romanticize the impoverishment of Indians. Junior is having none of this: “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 that you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it. Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”


How does Junior’s direct language address this stereotypical portrayal of Indians? What about his language draws the teen reader into the realities of his life?

Sherman Alexie’s Short Stories


What You Pawn I Will Redeem by Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” is about a homeless Indian who attempts to reclaim his grandmother’s regalia. It is out of the goodness of the people he sees throughout the day the reader spends with the author that Jackson is able to accomplish his goal.

War Dances by Sherman Alexie

A Spokane Indian is told that he has a brain tumor. During his troubling time while adjusting to this shocking news, the narrator regales tales of his time with his dead father and learns more about his grandfather’s time in the war.

Smoke Signals screenplay by Sherman Alexie

The tale of an Indian whose father has recently passed away and he must come to terms with his loss while getting to know the father who was a drunk and an abuser.

1. What do you think about the kindness and generosity of the people in Alexie’s “What You Pawn I Redeem?” Do you think it possible for people today to be that kind to a homeless person or someone in general? Have you ever happened upon a person like the police officer or the pawnbroker?

2. In both of Alexie’s stories there are digressions which tell a tale about a past relative of the narrator. In “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” the tale is of Jackson’s grandmother and her dancing in the regalia; “War Dances” contains many digressions about the narrator’s father and the male members of the family’s war-heavy pasts. Do you think these add to or distract from the story as a whole? Is there one digression in particular that you feel helps or hurts the overall story?

3. In the movie Smoke Signals, Victor says, “like throwing things away when they have no more use.” He is referencing throwing his father’s ashes into a river in Spokane. Do you believe that this is a true statement, that people have no use after they have passed away?

I don’t think that people who are gone have no use as Victor stated near the end of Smoke Signals. If anything people are even more useful after death for the knowledge they have passed on to us and on to others. Abraham Lincoln for example, is still useful many decades after his death because of the influence he had over the change in United States. Our parents, no matter how good or bad will be useful after their deaths because they teach us and have taught us what we should and should not be and do. Without the life and sometimes the specific death of a person, the future can have no chance of being different from the past. Learning from those who have passed away is how we change the future and make it a future and not just a reoccurring event.

To find out more about Native American traditional dress visit: http://www.native-languages.org/clothing.htm

Dream Homes by Joyce Zonana

In Joyce Zonana’s Dream Homes, the author recalls her experiences with literacy and language. Even from an early age Zonana knew that language separated her parents and family from mainstream America. The first example of this occurs on page 8 of her memoir, when her mother recounts their experience with being quarantined shortly after they first immigrated:


“Tu etais tre malade,” my mother tells me. “You were very sick. You had a high fever, and they told us we had to stay in our room.”

“We were quarantined?” The idea is exotic, simultaneously romantic and frightening, evoking scenes of turn-of the-century immigration, the long lines and cold examination rooms at Ellis Island. Where were we? On the boat? In New York Harbour? My mother’s focus drifts.

“Yes, quarantined,” she repeats. “That’s the word. On etai si bite. We were so stupid. I stayed with you in the hotel for three days while Felix went out. No one ever checked.”

Her parents knew so little of the new language that they had a hard time communicating with border officials and people they came in contact with. They settled in a neighborhood where most people spoke their language; they felt comfortable there. Her mother felt most at home in the market, because it reminded her of her old home. This idea reinforces the salad bowl metaphor. In opposition to the melting pot theory, immigrants actually merge together in groups; though they are part of the whole, they function as separate independent communities. Zonana’s family functioned that way: they were part of the community, yet they were isolated by their differences. Their neighbors might have been united in some ways, but her family was Egyptian Jewish, and that set them apart.

Throughout her life Zonana searches for where she belongs. The older generation of her family connects through their old homestead, but Zonana was too young to remember it. She questions adults all the time, and asks them how something made them feel, what they saw, what they remember. She gets short, sharp answers, like the one quoted above. Her family either doesn’t want to speak about their pain or do not have the words to express it. She experiences Diaspora without really remembering the land that she lost. The younger generation of the family conforms better with the American culture because that is all they have known and they don’t miss the difference.

She recalls being at the airport when her mother’s parents were going through customs. Her mother was so excited. She banged on the glass separating the arrivals from the waiting families. Zonana wrote that, “In those days, I hated to be out with my mother in public. There she would be, obviously attached to me, speaking in her awkward, accented English, asking questions that embarrassed me, acting so unmistakably foreign, while I ached to be like everyone else.” When Zonana learns that neither grandparent knows English and sees how they stand helpless and speechless with the customs man ordering them to open bags and answer questions, she wants to help; she “wanted to run down to those old people trapped behind that glass wall, unable to speak the language, lost. I wanted to take their hands, to talk to the customs officer in my perfect, unaccented English, to lead them proudly from the chaos of the airport… (pg. 14).”

Throughout the entire book she searches for where she belongs and what it means to be Jewish. She wanted her dad to teach her Arabic so she can understand the older generation and therefore belong to that group, but he won’t. Her parents want her to connect to the American culture. When she grows up she hires a tutor to teach her the ancient language, and struggles with it because she is not learning it as a first language. She struggles throughout her entire life to belong to one culture or another, eager to fit into at least one.

Written by: Amanda Walker (NOTE: We are still working on how to pull in more than one author.)

Discussion Questions

1. What scene do you think shows Zonana’s desire to belong most? Do you think the desire is stronger to fit in with her family or her new friends?

2. Do you think a difference in language is the strongest divide between those immigrating to America and those born here? Does the scene of Zonana’s grandparents at customs influence your position?

3. Why was her mother ashamed of her ignorance? Do you think Zonana shared her mother’s sense of shame or did she pity her mother for her circumstance?