The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The setting of this story takes place on a Spokane Reservation in Wellpinit, WA. It is about a freshman in highschool who lives on the reservation with all of the rest of his tribe. He is faced with a very hard decision given to him by his math teacher one day. That decision is to leave the reservation and go to Reardan High School (an all white school)like no other native has before and have the opportunity to go to college, or stay at the reservation and attend High School there. But the thing about Arnold is that he is not your ordinary Native American, he is a hydrocephalic, and has a lisp and a stutter when he speaks. Arnold is beaten up on the daily on the reservation and he is wondering if it would be the same or worse at this new school. There is one thing about staying at the reservation, and that is that his best friend Rowdy is always there to protect him when he needs him. Rowdy is one of the biggest kids on the res and takes on a fight wherever he can get one. Arnold has to make the decision whether to keep going to school at the res or leave their school and go to Reardan, either way there will be serious consequences. Losing his best friend and still having to see him everyday when he comes home from school, or living a life knowing he is not reaching his academic and personal potential. Down the path he chooses he suffers major loss, but still somehow manages to stay strong and realize who he truly is.

My overall response to this book was that it was very interesting. The narrator of the story, Arnold, was very different than expected which gave a pleasant twist to the stories emotion. For example even though Arnold was born with issues with his brain he was still able to compete on a varsity basketball team. He was also able to do many other great physical feats like climbing trees even with the lingering danger of his brain damage. Arnold showed how someone who is very different can turn out to be one of the best people. With every page my feelings for Arnold grew stronger and I seemed to think of him almost as my friend. This could be because of the fact that the story is written in the form of a diary, which means we are able to see Arnold’s deepest feeling and become attached to him. I enjoyed this feature of the book very much. There weren’t many weaknesses to the story other than the fact that the book was written in the form of a diary and we weren’t really able to see the other characters feelings. I would have enjoyed to see Rowdy’s true feelings when Arnold decided to switch schools. On the bright side Arnold was very good at describing the other characters feelings based on his relationships with them, but then again this is Arnold’s diary we are talking about and there is no way of telling whether or not he speaks the truth about these characters. I also enjoyed the fact that this book showed a young boy changing his way of life for the better even with the pressures of not only his family and friends, but his whole community to stay with them. It put a different perspective into my mind knowing that someone who was already not the most loved person in their community for no reason, could go and do something so bold that would make him hated just to better his own life. I really learned a lot from this story on how people can be, especially people with a tradition or a culture that has lasted for hundreds of years.

This book was not very challenging based on the diction of the author, but that didn’t make it any less interesting. The author used the fact that the narrator was a teenage boy to his advantage, making the book not hard to understand yet interesting enough to keep readers reading. The usage of the comic strips that Arnold, the main character was said to have created also put an interesting spin on the story. It gave a little life and imagery to the characters displayed in the story. And it wasn’t like the author did not portray a good image of the characters already, the images just added to the readers picture of the characters. I believe that the author did a great job portraying this story as though it would have came from a teenagers mind and diary. This was a great book and I definitely would recommend it to my peers.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman, and Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Little, Brown, 2009.