The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

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

I really liked this book, and thought that it specifically fit for junior high and high school aged kids if nothing more than for the fact that they're still trying to figure out who they are and what they want. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I want out of life! I felt like this made Arnold a very easy character to relate to. It's like he's living a split life: he's an Indian by night (and on the weekends) but a...well, for lack of a better phrase "white-man-wannabe" by day. That seems really harsh to say that's what he's trying to be, but I think that in a sense it's what he's doing. He would like to keep a part of his "Indian self", but he knows that if he wants to fit in he has to be more like the other kids he's going to school with, and that means trying to "be white." I think that as we grow up we go through this too. He wants to get out and being something bigger, and I experienced the same thing and still am to an extent.

I grew up in a very small town. (Actually, it was more of a "small community with lots of little towns added together".) It was common to see the older kids graduate and think that they would go out into the world and leave the small town life behind to "make something of themselves" only to end up back in the same small town working a minimum wage job. There were plenty of kids who gave up on college after only a year. There were plenty of kids who didn't even make it through a summer of being away from home before their lack of experience in the world and their fear of something bigger forced them back to their parents homes (or the apartment down the street, or the tiny little house they shared with two or three other friends who had done the same thing).

Growing up I wanted to be a writer. I always wanted to, and I still do. That was my "big dream." I was going to leave my small town behind, move to someplace far away where I could live in the beauty of a wide-open place that would allow me to write. Teaching was also always in the back of my mind, and it came about particularly when I realized that writing probably wasn't going to pay the bills. This was a part of that small town attitude pulling me back in: "You can't really do that. You have to be more realistic. You know how well that will work." But even now I find myself still trying to get out. I want to teach, but I don't want to stay here. My plan has always been to come back to Iowa eventually, but I want to experience something different for a while. I want to teach in Ireland, get a feeling for what it's like to become a part of another culture. I want to teach in L.A. for a while, find out what else there is to this country and our society, see something more than rural farm town schools. Des Moines is the biggest I've seen, and while I've loved the experience I've had there and the differences I have seen between these schools and my own high school, it's still Iowa. It's still the same types of experiences and culture (though more diverse than what I'm used to). I want to see what else is out there. Maybe it's the same. Maybe there really isn't much that's all that different; but that's not something I can know without experiencing it, and that's exactly what I want to do.

Arnold's motives for getting out are a little bit different. He isn't doing it just because he wants to experience more, but because he wants to get out of the cycle that he sees happening over and over again. He doesn't want to become an Indian who is always drunk. He doesn't want to become disconnected from life. In a sense that's what trying to get out of a small town has been for me. The kids who go back, they work, they drink, they work, they drink...that becomes their life. But like Arnold, I've realized that there are some pieces of my past, pieces of my small town, that I want to take with me. Arnold realizes that while he wants to escape the drinking, he wants to keep his sense of family. He learns from his interactions and observances that the parents of the kids at Reardan aren't all that connected to their children. They don't support their children the way the parents on the reservation do. I think that this same thing can be said for a rural life. I know my neighbors, I know most of the people in town (or I did growing up at least) and even the ones that I didn't necessarily know usually knew me and/or my parents. Everyone said hi to everyone whether it was your next door neighbor or just someone you occasionally saw at the grocery store. Society as a whole I think is moving away from this, but particularly in bigger cities. While I understand that the city isn't as safe of a place necessarily and that this may not be a practical way to look at life in a "bigger place" I feel like this ideal of knowing your neighbor and being friendly to everyone whether you know this or not is one of the main things from my childhood experiences that I will take with me no matter where I go.