Analysis Of The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian '

Poverty, unemployment and high rates of suicide, who does this ethnic group toggle memories of (Peralta)? In the unfortunate events of discrimination and prejudice against the First Nations living in Canada and the United States, this holds true when looking back at the past and present day. The famous writer, Sherman Alexie also known as Junior, is able to share and beautifully capture his experiences through his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Throughout his novel, he gives lots of insight growing up being Native American, who is hydrocephalic, has a stutter, a lisp and takes a risk to transfer to an all white school (Alexie 1-4). Junior’s decision of transferring schools from his tribe to Reardan, is a poor decision …show more content…
In case of, the fact that Junior lives in poverty and resides twenty two miles away from Reardan, teachers are extremely closed minded and not accepting of how difficult it is to make arrangements to commute to school daily, in short, Junior consecutively misses twenty days of school (Alexie 137). To illustrate, Junior’s teacher mocks him by saying, “We have a special guest today. It’s Arnold Spirit. I didn’t realize you still went to this school” (Alexie 137) and “You really shouldn’t be missing class this much” (Alexie 138). This is insulting to trained professionals because they do not have the right to treat their students so terribly. Instead, his teacher should ask what the problem is and provide assistance as something is obviously wrong. Moreover, Mrs. Jeremy is not understanding and makes his experience at Reardan so much worse because he does not have the chance to explain himself and instead, she embarasses and destructs Juniors sanity. In fact, it is nearly impossible for him to walk as it is it is a ten hour walk and Junior completes this several times ("Google Maps"). Secondly, prejudice and discrimination are a recurring problem against First Nations, they receive a significant amount of unfavourable attention, in unfamiliar settings, which is unacceptable and rude. In this situation when Junior meets his girlfriend’s dad, Earl, he scolds in a racist fashion, “Kid, if you get my daughter pregnant, if you make some charcoal babies, I’m going to disown her. I’m going to kick her out of my house and you’ll have to bring her home to your mommy and daddy. You hearing me straight, kid? This is hi on you now” (Alexie 88). This adds significance to the novel because it is one of the first things that Earl says to Junior when they meet and reveals