The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie (Spokane Nation) - Ms. O's American Indian Literature

Penelope finds out and donates money in both her and Junior's names. RELATED LITERARY WORKS Get hundreds more LitCharts at The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian s coming-of-age themes and gritty realism, as well as its diary conceit and autobiographical qualities, make it similar to Jim Carroll s 1978 memoir The Basketball Diaries, which Alexie lists among his most important influences. If you don't have a color printer, you can still use the icons to track themes in black and white. Course Hero member to access this document. Belonging to a broad genre of Bildungsroman and a less broad literary form known as fictional diary, Sherman Alexie's young-adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) explores…. Just as growing up means leaving the safe, known, comforting world of childhood, traveling means leaving home behind to explore unknown places. Roger A star basketball and football player and a popular senior at Reardan High School.

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Diary Of A Part Time Indian Pdf Version

Junior is remembering when his beloved dog died and his grief led him to want to go away from everyone. But I do know that hope for me is like some mythical creature: white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white. Roger, the Reardan student who greets Junior in the schoolyard with a horribly racist joke, becomes a kind friend and role model; Rowdy is both Junior s best friend and his worst enemy, and hates him because he loves him so much. This description applies also to what happens to Junior in Reardan, or at least to what he and other members of his tribe are afraid will happen: if Junior, an Indian, is immersed in an all-white community like a tree under dirt, his Indian identity will gradually deteriorate, replaced by white values and white culture. Whenever he s playing any kind of game. The colonial enterprise of Euro-Americans, since its first contact, flourished on the false notions of Indianness, fixating the image of Native Americans as primitive and savages without any claim to…. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book. Junior tends to make jokes about the things that are most painful to him, so he quips that even as far back as Adam and Eve there were class disparities, since Adam and Eve had fig leaves to cover their privates and the Indians only had their hands. "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title. As Junior explains, I draw because I want to pay attention to the world. Junior ties this poverty in with race, too. The same thing is true for his sister, Mary, who had plans and potential when she was in high school, but gave up and began living in her parents basement a kind of symbolic burial. Together, racism and poverty form a vicious knot that deflates self-esteem and makes it difficult to see a way towards a better life. Leaving the Reservation: Reconstructing Identity in Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Alcohol exposure affects generations on Indian reservations. Bicultural Subjectivity and Modern Native American Identity in Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. Metaphorically, figuring out his own name who he is, what his goals are, the kind of man he will become is the goal of Junior s decision to go to school in Reardan, and one of the driving forces in this coming-of-age novel. Meanwhile, tragic events such as Junior s sister Mary s death have darkly comedic elements, and Junior s ability to address topics like bullying, poverty and racism with humor is a key characteristic of his voice. Realizing that it s possible to be more than one thing part of many different tribes is what enables him to unify his split identity and, as someone destined to travel beyond the reservation, navigate the world both literally and figuratively. 2016. students to select from among four prompts, one of which was The ALAN Review's call for manuscripts about exploration of difference. Speaker), Mary Runs Away Related Themes: Page Number: 26 Explanation and Analysis For Junior, Mary is a sort of cautionary tale for the future.

Mom is an ex-drunk who has become religious since she quit drinking. When he compares his cartoons to lifeboats, he indicates that they have the potential to save him from the despair around him, and even from the fates of his family and peers. When Junior and Rowdy are twelve, Rowdy promises never to tell that Junior cried about loving the unattainable Dawn (who, Rowdy noted at the time, doesn t give a shit about Junior). Dare to Be Different: Celebrating Difference and Redefining Disability in Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Junior's first game is at Wellpinit where everyone turns their backs to him when he walks into the gym. The condition left him with a lisp and stutter and too many teeth to keep all of them in his mouth; he also had seizures when he was young. Book Description Audio Book (CD). Importantly, however, he is the first adult to tell Junior that he deserves better than what he has. Always more to follow is true of Gods gifts so let every 14 The Test of Truth. Because of Mr. P s advice, Junior decides to transfer to the high school in Reardan, a wealthy white farm town twenty-two miles away. Related Characters: Junior (Arnold Spirit, Jr. ) (speaker) Related Themes: Page Number: 2 Explanation and Analysis QUOTES Junior introduces himself to readers as someone who is up against many obstacles to success. Miss Warren The Reardan guidance counselor, who gives Junior the news of Mary s death.

Diary Of A Part-Time Indian Pdf

There's a sense throughout the book that Junior feels that the world is sending him the message that he doesn't have a future to look forward to as he grows up, and Junior is rebelling by having hope and making radically different choices than his community to see if they result in a different outcome. Chapter 3 Quotes It s not like anybody s going to notice if you go away, he said. What s more, between heritage and basketball, basketball would be more important: I d rather see myself played by a Puerto Rican or an Italian with a tan than have them ruin the basketballness of me, he told the New York Times in 2009.

Throughout the semester, I was impressed with Siobhan's…. This also points to the fact that Rowdy seems to have internalized the tough environment of the rez more than Junior. If a family has been stuck in poverty for that many generations, then there is both very little opportunity to escape and, therefore, very little reason for anyone to hope for a better life. And there s the fricking booze: the reason, according to Junior, that all Indian families are unhappy, with too many people dying young. In fact, though, the two boys differences are what make them similar: they are both ostracized for their respective violence and weakness, and Rowdy, with his hot temper, is as fragile emotionally as Junior is physically. Like, if the minerals took all the wood and glue out of a, uh, tree, then the tree would still be a tree, sort of, but it would be a tree made out of minerals. Chapter 23 – Wake... feeling guilty for years about keeping it. An avid reader with an extraordinary memory for information, she would have gone to college if given the chance. James Luna's multimedia performances are largely rooted in his culture and daily experience as a Pooyukitchchum (Luiseño) Indian living on La Jolla reservation north of San Diego, in Southern…. First, his beloved grandmother is killed by a drunk driver. This shows that Rowdy is just trying to do what he can to protect his brother from harm's way. Junior clearly does not believe this, and thinks that such beliefs are both ridiculous and dangerous in that they perpetuate the idea that poverty is anything other than an affliction. Described as an eighty-year-old literature professor trapped in the body of a fifteen-year-old white farm boy from Reardan, Gordy teaches Junior how to take books seriously and also draw joy from them.

By this, Junior refers to the fact that poverty prevents social mobility rather than bolsters it (as 2017 LitCharts LLC v. 006 Page 9. the American dream would have you believe). Related Characters: Rowdy (speaker), Junior (Arnold Spirit, Jr. ) Related Themes: Page Number: 15 Explanation and Analysis This is a moment that encapsulates the dynamic of Rowdy and Junior's friendship. HISTORICAL CONTEXT Although Junior s story takes place in the present day, his experiences particularly the hardships of life on the reservation are very much informed by the historical oppression of Native Americans in the United States, and Junior and other characters make a few specific references to historical events. Basketballness of Me. TRAVEL SYMBOLS In this coming-of-age novel, traveling is a symbol for growing up. Dodge and his classmates, petrified wood is formed when a piece of wood is buried under dirt and minerals kind of melt the wood and the glue that holds the wood together. The detailed unit plan lists 14 supplemental texts students can explore to extend their thinking with regard to the book's thematic preoccupations, such as identity, adolescence, oppression, the marginali. Yet just as his true identity includes both Junior and Arnold, the divided extremes he describes often turn out to be blurred. For Junior, whiteness, both in the sense of skin color and more broadly, symbolizes hopes and dreams: things that are both desirable and seemingly unattainable, or even, perhaps, unreal. Earl Penelope s father, a racist who warns Junior that he will disown Penelope if Junior gets her pregnant.

Diary Of A Part Time Indian Characters

Mary breaks out of her frozen state by moving to Montana to live in a mobile home. 1. question repurpose a nd reconstruct those environments A veritable. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. His new school is called Reardan and it's twenty-two miles from home which makes it difficult for him to get there sometimes because he doesn't have any money for gas or rides. Seller Inventory # NewCamp1478922680. Before even touching on race and poverty, he lets us know that he has a birth defect that affected his brain. Weeks later, his father s best friend Eugene is shot during a drunken argument. Junior misses Rowdy desperately throughout the novel, but it isn t until the final chapter that their friendship is restored. The color white thus symbolizes the complicated nature of dreams in this novel: inspiring and aspirational, but also, like Mary s life of romance, sometimes false, and not always to be trusted.

He is good at seeing and articulating the ridiculous elements of tragic and enraging situations, a trait that allows him to tell his story without sentimentality or melodrama while increasing the impact of sad facts. There s the vicious cycle of poverty, in which you start believing that you re poor because you re stupid and ugly. Late in the novel, Junior also refers to the fact that reservations were first established as prisons: beginning with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U. S. federal government systematically forced tribes off their ancestral lands into designated areas, with many reservations established by executive order throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Bobby Eugene s friend, who mistakenly kills him in a drunken argument. Rowdy always protects Junior, though, and the two boys share a special bond, telling each other their secrets and dreams. They were born within two hours of each other and are each other s only friends. Upload your study docs or become a. But that makes the whole thing sound weirdo and funny, like my brain was a giant French fry, so it seems more serious and poetic and accurate to say, I was born with water on the brain. Meanwhile, the excitement people feel over basketball transcends class and race Junior s dad hugs and kisses the white man next to him like they were brothers after Junior s big three-pointer against Wellpinit and Coach pledges to treat all of his players with dignity and respect, directly counter to forces like poverty and racism that specifically deny people those qualities. Junior sees Oscar as the only living thing that I could depend on and a better person than any human I had ever known. She also doesn t drink, since she believes alcohol would dull her experience of the world.

PLOT SUMMARY Fourteen-year-old Junior, a Spokane Indian boy, was born with water on the brain or hydrocephalus. Importantly, while these obstacles shape Junior s life and circumstances, they aren t treated as opportunities for character-building after all, poverty doesn t give you strength or teach you about perseverance. After that happens, Junior asks Eugene to stitch up his cut on his head before going back onto court because they had just started playing again after halftime. Native Americans & Assimilation.

Junior, on the other hand, is a more openly compassionate friend, and he's prone to more eccentric dreams and impulses, like escaping the rez. But the element of loss in hope is much stronger for Junior, whose decision to leave is seen as a betrayal by his friend Rowdy and many other members of the reservation community. This loss ruins Wellpinit's season, and they lose some more games early in state playoffs as well. Instead, Junior gives a frank assessment of the world around him, saying that he only sees poverty teaching people to be poor. Related Characters: Junior (Arnold Spirit, Jr. ) (speaker) Related Themes: Page Number: 31 Explanation and Analysis This is a pivotal moment in the book because finding the geometry book that once belonged to his mother is a concrete example for Junior of the ways in which he, as a poor Indian, is being denied opportunities that he would 2017 LitCharts LLC v. 006 Page 10. Junior keeps up his hope by drawing cartoons, which to him represent both a chance to leave the reservation and a potential for universal understanding.

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