But the Indian Health Service funded major dental work only once a year, so I had to have all ten extra teeth pulled in one day. I went to the Indian Health Service to get some teeth pulled so I could eat normally, not like some slobbering vulture. Junior also has forty-two teeth – ten more than normal, and if I thought my heart was breaking on page 1, it was on page 2 that I truly learnt the meaning of a heart shattered with RAGE:
Especially when you are bullied, constantly beaten up (careful with the head!) and called a “retard”. Being a child with all the aforementioned is bad enough but you can just about get away with being “cute” but being a 14 year old teenage boy is unbearable. The heartbreaking starts on page 1 as Junior starts telling his story about being born with “water in his brain” and the resulting physical damage: ranging from over-sized head, hands and feet, bad eyesight to seizures, stuttering and lisping.
It is filled with hope to its brim even as hope is something that Indians are not supposed to have. The book was first published in the US back in 2007 and is a first person, semi-autobiographical account of Arnold Spirit, Jr’s life as a Spokane Indian living in the Reservation with his family, and his ultimate decision of going to an all-white school just outside the rez in search for a chance to have a future. But I was not prepared for what I found and I don’t think anyone could ever be prepared for it. I heard only good, awesome things about it, about the many awards it won and the Neil Gaiman quote on the cover only helped me picking it up. The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian is one such book. Review: I know I am reading a good book when it simultaneously breaks my heart into tiny million pieces and makes me laugh as the pieces are put together – over and over again. Why did I read this book: It has been recommended to me by many people.
Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author’s own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character’s art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he was destined to live. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Publication Date: Re-print April 2009 (US)/ June 2008 (UK) Publisher: Little, Brown (US)/Andersen Press (UK) Title: The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time IndianĪuthor: Sherman Alexie / Art by Ellen Forney
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