The Absolutely True Diary & Sherman Alexie

Mid-August was a fun time for me. I was asked by my favoritest, most awesome professor to collaborate on a lecture for The Summit County Library One Book, One Community Program in Park City, Utah. Our topic would be Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-TIme Indian and The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven. It was smashing! I really could talk about literature all day. So…

Sherman Alexie and Native Literature, in general:

Native Authors whose work has created a  renaissance for the genre include M. Scott Mamaday, Joy Harjo, Leslie Marmon  Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. I call them the Furious Five.  Others may call them that too but I called them that first! Sherman Alexie is a pretty cool dude. If you haven’t heard of him, you should look him up. At least follow his twitter feed. It’s hilarious! He is hilarious, irreverent, and creative. Alexie is a poet, screenwriter, teacher, and father. He’s known for his in-your-face rhetoric of contemporary Indian life. Native American/American Indian not Indian from India. Alexie is Spokane Indian born to a very hard-working mother and an absent-tee father. He studied at Gonzaga University and majored in American Studies. Random. Since then he has published a butt-load of novels, collections, and poetry. Most notably is his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto’s Fistfight in Heaven which was adapted by Alexie into the movie, Smoke Signals directed by Cheyenne-Arapaho director, Chris Eyre. (Look him up too!)

Sherman Alexie

This book turned 20 this year!

Here is a clip from Smoke Signals: 

I lectured on Alexie’s YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. If you haven’t read it. Go out to your local bookstore and buy it. DO IT NOW!  

Buy it, or die!

The lecture was quite an experience. My parents, sister, and I made the trek from Kearns to Kimball Junction. It’s about a 45-minute drive up the canyon but it’s like leaving/entering 2 different worlds. A lower-income, diverse community to an affluent, upper-class, hoity-toity, white community. Interesting enough, I was living the book I would be discussing.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,  let’s call it Part-Time Indian, is a coming of age YA novel set in Alexie’s hometown of Wellpinit, Washington. The protagonist is Arnold/Junior Spirit.

My name is Junior,” I said. “And my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold. I’m both. I felt like two different people inside of one body(60).

Junior/Arnold decides to leave his reservation, the physical epicenter of his cultural identity, for the more affluent, white school at Reardan. As Junior/Arnold leaves for school each day he is metaphorically and literally crossing from one world into the other. On the Rez, Junior sees himself as a nerd who can’t play basketball, who loves his family despite living with the trauma of  alcoholism and poverty, and as someone without hope or a future. Off the Rez,  Arnold, identifies himself with the antiquated and racist stereotypes of Indians, a basketball star, and a person who has hope and a future. As Arnold or Junior, the kid is as funny as hell and has the insight of a 55 year old medicine man.

My lecture included the idea of Reservation Realism, ( a literary genre specific to Native American authors who implement literary techniques to create realistic elements of reservation life) that Alexie is known, and often criticized for. In response to the criticism Alexie has said, “I got a lot of criticism because alcoholism is such a loaded topic for Indians. People thought I was writing about stereotypes, but more than anything I was writing about my own life”.  Alexie does have a penchant for deconstructing Native American stereotypes. He wrote a poem, How to Write the Great American Indian Novel about it. Hilarious! 

The themes within the text are pretty deep. I’ve narrowed it down to three: Identity, Poverty, and Hope.

I’ve touched on Arnold’s identity. Half of himself is tied to the Rez, half of it off the Rez. He’s a Part-Time Indian. He comes to realize that he is more than his race and his culture:

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that’s when I knew that I was going to be okay (217).

Poverty is so prevalent.  Reservations across the United States are overwhelmingly impoverished. Why is that? Well, let’s look at the history. The US government was all, We don’t want your kind here so we’re gonna put you on shitty pieces of land, without assistance. EVEN THOUGH WE PROMISED IT TO YOU. and you can live there until you die, or we decide to kill you. And then they were forgotten. Not just for a few months. For decades. For generations. We’re still trying to overcome the problems from 200 years ago. Arnold has a heartbreaking experience with poverty. His dog, Oscar, is sick. No money for the vet. Can’t let him suffer. The dog is shot because “a bullet only costs two cents”. It’s sad because it’s true,  Indian kids learn about life this harshly. Poverty is a vicious cycle and sooner or later it will affect how you perceive yourself:

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 you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it (13).

Hope is the element that ignites Arnold/Junior’s life.  The book takes slow turns, dips and dives, all the while elevating our protagonist to a higher level of hope. Doing well in school, on the basketball team, and with his girlfriend confirm what Arnold/Junior had been so afraid to ask, Am I worth the effort to get out of this place and make something of myself? To convey the hope Arnold/Junior has for his future, Alexie juxtaposes Arnold/Junior’s plight with that of the immigrants who come to America. I know right? Indians and the colonizers in the same boat? But Alexie pulls it off.  Arnold says:

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream (217).

How interesting it is to have the comparison of immigrants and Indians. It drives home the themes of finding oneself in a strange land, and through self-determination create a future that was never before available. This is the plight that so many Native youth are experiencing today. It warms my soul to the core to hear of all of the wonderful and innovative ideas Native youth are creating. We never do find out if Arnold will continue to call himself Arnold or go with Junior.

Part-Time Indian and other Native Literature is pretty cool. Craig S. Womack, Creek-Cherokee scholar has said,  “A key component of nationhood is a people’s idea of themselves, their imaginings of who they are. The ongoing expression of a tribal voice, through imagination, language, and literature, contribute to keeping sovereignty alive in the citizens of a nation and gives sovereignty a meaning that is defined within the tribe rather than external sources”(Red on Red). The political component of sovereignty infuses itself within Native Literature empowering Native communities to fight colonization and break those vicious cycles of alcoholism, poverty, and hopelessness.

I was invited back to the One Book, One Community Program. This time it will be with the teens whom I will speak to. I will let you know how that goes!

How to Write the Great American Indian Novel

All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.

If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man

then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white

that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps

at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water.

If she is compared to murky water, however, then she must have a secret.
Indians always have secrets, which are carefully and slowly revealed.

Yet Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.
Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives

of any white women who choose to love them. All white women love
Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust

at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.
White women dream about half-breed Indian men from horse cultures.

Indian men are horses, smelling wild and gamey. When the Indian men
unbuttons his pants, the white woman should think of topsoil.

There must be one murder, one suicide, one attempted rape.
Alcohol should be consumed. Cars must be driven at high speeds.

Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions
if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian

then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry
an Indian deep inside themselves. Those interior Indians are half-breed

and obviously from horse cultures. If the interior Indian is male
then he must be a warrior, especially if he is inside a white man.

If the interior Indian is female, then she must be a healer, especially if she is inside a white woman.
Sometimes there are complications.

An Indian man can be hidden inside a white woman. An Indian woman
can be hidden inside a white man. In these rare instances,

everybody is a half-breed struggling to learn more about his or her horse culture.
There must be redemption, of course, and sins must be forgiven.

For this, we need children. A white child and an Indian child, gender
not important, should express deep affection in a childlike way.

In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

Sherman Alexie, “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” from The Summer of Black Widows. Copyright ©  by Sherman Alexie. Reprinted by permission of Hanging Loose Press. Source: The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996)

The Lesser Blessed

One thing I can say about Native writers, they sure know how to get angst right! Like ‘John Hughes’ right. Richard Van Camp’s novel, The Lesser Blessed is no exception. I was introduced to this book from one of my professor’s.  I read it, wept, denounced humanity, cried some more, and then decided to write my Senior thesis on it. It is one of the most exceptional books I have ever read.

The story revolves around a Dogrib, First Nations teenager, Larry Sole, in the fictional town Fort Smith in the non-fictional Canadian Northwest Territories. Larry is a typical teen, he loves music, has a hate/love relationship with his frenemy Johnny, and is obsessed with doggy-styling it with Juliet Hope, but he also has a horrible secret from his past. And it’s a doozy.

Van Camp creates something so alarmingly poetic and raw. He blends traditional Dogrib stories with the contemporary, meshing a pre-and post-colonial narrative. As literary metaphors go this book is bursting with them. There is the juxtaposition of the loneliness of the Northwest Territories and Larry, fire and destruction, and physical & emotional scars. Then Van Camp rolls out the references to Dogrib culture combining a traditional Dogrib creation story with Larry’s own hilarious, honest narrative. References to ravens, ptarmigans, and blue monkeys are extremely metaphoric for Larry and the Dogrib people. Well, I don’t know about the blue monkeys.

The heaviness of the book comes from the issues it tackles; domestic violence, sexual and emotional abuse, drugs, alcoholism, and the intergenerational trauma from residential/boarding school horrors. The heart of the book lies within the flickering hope Larry Sole has about the future and the love he has to offer. Van Camp has created a character that you want to hold and comfort, then ditch school with to go listen to some Iron Maiden.

My thesis looked into the hope Native Literature can bring to the Native community. The effects of colonization are ever still present in the day-to-day life our people, and we struggle. We struggle in how to view ourselves, how we keep our traditions alive and how to find our place. It’s writers like Van Camp and characters like Larry that support us in those struggles, so we can determine how we see ourselves so we can change our future. This is why I love to read Native literature!! The Lesser Blessed is unparalleled in its humor, pain, and well-written First Nation experiences. As I read and re-read this glorious book, I always walk away with greater hope for my Native community.

The Lesser Blessed was also made into a movie and can be purchased on Amazon.com or iTunes. I have seen it and I loved it. I was so happy that they captured the feeling of the book. Joel Evans portrayed Larry’s sweet personality and he did a wonderful job. I would definitely add this to my movie collection. You can watch the trailer here: