Reading Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, you wonder why all young adult fiction can’t be this good.  The narrator is never precious or precocious, even though he is sentimental, and the writing is raw and real and harsh. There’s no pandering, awkward slang or haphazardly slung morals. Plus, there are cartoons!  This is the kind of stuff kids never get. Alexie is the kind of writer who understands kids secondarily; instead, he understands people primarily. Their age is only part, and not the motivating force, of his characterization. 

Much of Sherman Alexie’s material in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is autobiographical. Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, was born in 1966 in the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA. At the age of six months, Alexie undertook a dangerous brain operation to remove water on his brain.  He was not expected to survive, but he did. Doctors predicted he would have severe mental retardation. Instead, he had seizures all throughout his childhood, but also an incredible intelligence, reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath at age five.

Because of this intelligence that the reservation could not hold, freshman-aged Alexie decided to leave the reservation and attend school at Reardan High, about 20 miles from the reservation.  The school was almost completely white, except for Alexie and the school’s Indian mascot.  Alexie found academic and athletic success there.

The book, published in 2007, is strikingly similar to Alexie’s life.  The main character, Arnold “Junior” Spirit, is in school on an Indian reservation.  The textbooks are outdated, the teachers are burnt-out and the students don’t want to be there.  Still, perhaps because of the brain operation he lived through as a baby, he’s extremely bright and exceeding talented in basketball.  Junior decides to leave his high school and attend the wealthier—and whiter—high school, Reardan High, twenty miles away.  Like Alexie, Arnold is the only Native American besides the school’s mascot.

Arnold makes a lot of trouble for himself on the reservation because of his decision.  His parents, mostly lovable alcoholics, sometimes don’t have enough money for gas or don’t remember Arnold at school, so he has to walk the twenty miles back home. His best friend since birth, Rowdy, calls him a traitor and vows to never speak to him again. He gets the cold shoulder from many of the residents.

Junior gets off to a rocky start at Reardan, as well. He is an outcast because he doesn’t belong in the community.  He becomes more popular, however, when he makes the varsity basketball team as a freshman. The pinnacle of his basketball career is when he plays against his friend Rowdy and against the reservation team.

The most poignant and tension-filled parts of the novel are based around Junior’s want to grow up into something bigger than the reservation versus the pull of the reservation to keep him small and at home.  Junior wants to straddle both worlds, but this balancing act increasingly difficult to navigate. Alexie writes this character with a lot of heart and self-awareness, so there’s no need for hyper-dramatic plot points or angsty inner monologues. Alexie may know this character so well because in most ways, Junior is him.   

Alexie has written many novels for adults and young adults, as well as poetry and screenplays.  He lives in Seattle.