1. art and entertainment
2. books and literature

MASARYK UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature
Young Adults in the Writing of Sherman
Alexie
Diploma Thesis
Brno 2011
Supervisor:
PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D.
Author:
Bc. Hana Adámková
Prohlášení:
Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s
využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v
souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy
univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech
souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský
zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.
Brno, 20 April 2011
Hana Adámková
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D., for her
patience, kind guidance, and valuable advice.
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6
1. Children‟s literature ............................................................................................................... 9
1.1 The concept of childhood and brief history of children‟s literature ............................. 9
1.1.2 Pre-modern childhood and literature .................................................................. 10
1.1.3 Age of industrialization and children‟s literature .............................................. 11
1.1.4 Postmodern era and children‟s literature ............................................................ 12
1.1.5 Fragmentation and refusal of meta-narratives ................................................... 13
2. Adolescence and Young Adult Novel............................................................................... 16
2.1 Brief Account of Adolescence........................................................................................... 16
2.2 Young Adults and Identity ............................................................................................... 17
2.2.1 Personal, Social, and Cultural Identity ................................................................ 20
2.3 Young Adult Novel ........................................................................................................... 22
2.3.1 Characteristics of Young Adult Novels ............................................................... 23
2.4 Postmodern American Bildungsroman .......................................................................... 25
3. Native American literature ................................................................................................. 27
3.1 The beginnings ................................................................................................................... 27
3.2 Native American Renaissance .......................................................................................... 28
4. Current life on reservations ................................................................................................ 30
4.1 The concept of reservations .............................................................................................. 30
4.2 Reservations at the turn of the millennium .................................................................... 32
4.3 Sports on reservations ....................................................................................................... 34
5. Identity of a Native American young adult in the novel by Sherman Alexie ............. 36
5.1 The introduction of the character and factors affecting his identity ........................... 37
5.2 Reservation as a safe home ............................................................................................... 38
5.3 Family and friends ............................................................................................................. 40
5.3.1 Identity and best friend .......................................................................................... 41
6. Challenges to identity formation ....................................................................................... 46
6.1 Prejudices ............................................................................................................................ 46
6.2 A new place......................................................................................................................... 48
6.3 Best friend turns into enemy ............................................................................................ 51
6.4 Basketball ............................................................................................................................ 52
6.5 Traitors and outsiders ....................................................................................................... 55
4
6.6 Indian boys and white girls .............................................................................................. 59
7. Achieving Autonomy .......................................................................................................... 63
7.1 No Future on the Reservation .......................................................................................... 64
8. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 67
Resume ...................................................................................................................................... 73
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 74
List of Appendices ................................................................................................................... 80
5
Introduction
The aim of the thesis is to analyse a novel by a contemporary Native
American writer - Sherman Alexie. The analysis will concern a young adult
character and formation of his identity.
The period of adolescence and growing up is very complex, considering
all the processes young adults have to go through. The most important issue
which is dominant in this developmental milestone seems to be the search for
one´s identity. It becomes more complicated for individuals from ethnic
minorities.
In the thesis I will attempt to explore the identity of Junior, a literary
character who represents contemporary Native American young adult. I will
analyse a young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007)
by Sherman Alexie and will focus on factors determining Junior´s identity. The
factors are Indian reservation, Junior´s family and friends there, reservation and
white high school, white peers, and importance of sports. I will attempt to find
out how these factors affect his identity and whether and how Alexie makes
him feel Indian.
In the theoretical part of the thesis, I will discuss the development of
young adult literature and its characteristics, and will describe briefly the
period of adolescence, with emphasis on identity. Next, I will focus on Native
American literature and will also deal with current life on contemporary Indian
reservations.
In chapters on young adult literature I draw mainly on materials by
professors of English at Arizona State University Ken Donelson and Alleen
Nilsen, and on Šárka Bubíková, who teaches at the Faculty of Arts and
Philosophy at University of Pardubice, and her concept of American
postmodern bildungsroman. In the chapters on identity, I primarily used
materials from my psychology classes, and materials by professor of human
communication at California State University, William Gudykunst.
6
The practical part consists of an analysis of the novel in terms of the
issues layout earlier in the introduction.
Being of Native American origin, Alexie‟s work focuses on Native
Americans and Native way of life. Born in 1966, he grew up and lived in the
postmodern era. This is why I will also look at whether Alexie is influenced by
postmodernism and how he uses the means of postmodernism. This will be
only of a marginal focus in the thesis, though.
My first encounter with Sherman Alexie came through his film Smoke
Signals (1998), based on one of his short stories. Only after this film, I have
learnt more about the author, and found his novels and short stories not only
very readable, but also a brilliant source of information on current Native
American life. Alexie himself explains his literary intentions in John Purdy´s
interview: “(...) most of our Indian literature is written by people whose lives
are nothing like the Indians they're writing about. There‟s a lot of people
pretending to be "traditional"... who rarely spend any time on a reservation,
writing all these "traditional" books.” (“Crossroads”)
There are several reasons why I have chosen the genre of young adult
literature with Native American themes. First, being a MU Faculty of Education
student and a future teacher, I wanted to focus the diploma thesis on a topic
connected to my field of study. Not only is it connected to English, but the
theme is also linked to my second field of study – civics, as identity is one the
issues dealt with in the Framework Education Programme.
Second, Native Americans have been paid quite a great amount of
attention from the historical point of view. Many popular novels or stories have
been about the past. I wanted to focus on current Native life, so that my future
students can possibly read and learn about their Native peers and their lives.
Being of approximately the same age, my future students will also be searching
for their identities and reading such a novel could help them with this difficult
task. Lastly, as I learnt in a children‟s literature class and from my own
experience as an au-pair, the popularity of young adult literature has been
increasing considerably nowadays.
7
Since I will deal mainly with Native American literary characters in the
thesis, the term “Native Americans”, as being the most politically correct, will
be used in profusion. Besides “Native Americans” you will encounter also
“American Indians”, and a less formal term to refer to the members of this
ethnic group “Indians.” For Alexie himself uses mostly the later in his writing.
8
1. Children’s literature
The novel I selected for the thesis is a young adult novel. Since the
recognition of adolescence as a developmental period was admitted only at the
beginning of the twentieth century, literature aimed at young adults started to
be produced only then. As a result, children´s and young adult literatures were
treated as one genre until the first half of the 20th century.
There is not much scholarly literature on young adult literature and
whether there is, it, according to professors of English Ken Donelson and Alleen
P. Nilsen, mixes children‟s and young adult literature (2007, p. 1880). Thus to
study the history of young adult literature, I needed to draw on books on
children‟s literature, too.
The topic of this chapter is the definition of children‟s literature. It also
aims to provide a brief history of the genre in relation to the concept of
childhood1 from the beginning to the emergence of juvenile literature.
1.1 The concept of childhood and brief history of children’s literature
Peter Hunt starts his Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism with a
straight and simple definition of children‟s literature: “Children‟s literature is
an amorphous, ambiguous creature; its relationship to its audience is difficult;
its relationship to the rest of literature, problematic.” (1992, p. 1) Let us have a
look on more pragmatic definition of children‟s literature.
The most common definition is that children‟s literature is for children.
However, children‟s literature should not be confused purely with literature
about children or written by children, although these categories mingle largely
(Pokřivčáková, 2003, p. 9).
It is complicated to tell where the period of childhood ends and where
the period of adolescence begins. This assumption could be applied to literature
of these genres, too. There are no definite borders between the genres of
Since adolescence was not recognized until 1904 (Papalia and Olds, 1987, p. 13), the term childhood
used in chapters “Pre-modern Childhood and Literature” and “Age of Industrialization and Children’s
Literature” refers both to the period of childhood and to the period of adolescence.
9
1
children‟s and young adult literature. On the contrary, both genres share very
similar characteristics.
Since the studying of childhood had not been the main field of interest
for a long time, and started to be taken seriously only a several decades ago, the
same process could be observed within the development of children‟s and
young adults literature (Bubíková, 2008, p. 10). Both issues, the concept of
childhood and the history of children‟s literature, will be therefore discussed
together while following developmental phases of the society.
Children‟s literature was considered a secondary branch of the “big”
literature, and was neglected by both authors and parents (Pokřivčáková, 2003,
p. 9). It is therefore regarded as quite a new genre. It is essential to realize that
literature for children has always been derived from how adults perceive
children and what position they have in the society and history. It corresponds
with an idea of Monika Vosková that children‟s literature serves as “a mirror of
contemporary society.”(2002, p. 90) To better define the concept of childhood
and its development within the society, I decided to use three main phases in
the history of childhood defined by Mintz (qtd. in Bubíková, 2008, p. 14-22). The
phases are: pre-modern childhood, the age of industrialization and postmodern
society.
1.1.2 Pre-modern childhood and literature
Pre-industrial society, as Bubíková says, lasted up to the coming of
Enlightenment in the 18th century. The life in pre-industrial society was centred
at home, in the family. The children and young adults were submissive, were
considered defiant and treated as miniaturized or inchoate adults. This period
was influenced by a Puritan way of upbringing: corporal punishments, fear
invocation, no entertainment, and thinking of children‟s souls as sinful (2008, p.
14). Literature written for children in this period, if any, was educational or
religious such as alphabet books, books of manners, and the Bible.
10
The absence of purely children‟s books led to the fact that children had to
read literature for adults, in other words non-intentional literature, and only
later it was transformed and adjusted to children, so called intentional
literature. Defoe‟s Robinson Crusoe (1719) or Swift‟s Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
which were originally intended for adults can serve as examples (Bobulová,
2003, p. 9). The choice made by children to read these originally adult novels
was supported by the fact that they included exotic settings, elements of
adventure, fantasy, entertainment and dynamics, i.e. categories characteristic of
children‟s and young adults‟ literature.
The childhood in pre-modern era was not an easy period, and definitely
could not be considered a careless time of life. Children were seen as small
adults and this was reflected in the literature of that time - no books aimed
solely
towards
children
and
young
adults
were
published.
Hence,
compensation was sought in literature written for adult readership.
1.1.3 Age of industrialization and children’s literature
The second phase that changed the perception of children and young
adults is the age of industrialization. It is connected with the period of
Enlightenment and romanticism. Here, the concept of childhood changed
dramatically. In contrast to pre-modern era, children were viewed as heavenly
creatures, pure, and intuitive (Bubíková, 2008, p. 17). With the coming of John
Locke‟s theory of tabula rasa, an assumption that children have distinctive needs
than adults do and that literature should also provide entertainment, play, and
pleasure appeared. The behaviour of children was accepted and admired,
persuasion was substituted for fear, and the childhood had been prolonged.
Thanks to the change in the perception of children, the 19th century was a
breakthrough in children‟s literature. It was considered Golden Age of
Children‟s Literature. The predominant genres were folk and fairy-tales as the
remainders of Romantic interest in oral literature.
11
In the first half of the 20th century, the role the family played was still
immense and a new tendency appeared in the form of scientific advice on
parenting. These tendencies were, of course, reflected in the literature. Kimberly
Reynolds says that children‟s literature of the first half of the 20th century
features childhood “as white and middle-class, it was associated with rural, or
possibly suburban, environments; it involved plenty of exercise and fresh air...
(and) two loving parents.” (2005, p. 37) The nuclear family was supposed to
protect children from the harsh reality.
The era of industrialization meant not only a huge progress in the field of
industry, but also had an immense impact on the perception of children. With
the theory that children and young adults have different needs than adults and
have to be treated accordingly, a new trend in literature came. It was intentional
children‟s literature that reflected the new perception and treatment of children
and featured children characters with children‟s behaviour and views on world.
1.1.4 Postmodern era and children’s literature
The last phase which had an impact on the concept of childhood is the
postmodern era. The term teenager was invented in the 1940s and young adult
literature started to be written. In this subchapter, I will discuss not only the
concept of childhood, and family – child relationships and their reflection in
literature, but also postmodernism and some of its means.
The second half of the 20th century is undeniably connected with
postmodernism. According to an associate professor of English at the
University of Colorado Mary Klages, postmodernism is a set of ideas that
appears in a wide range of areas, literature included (“Postmodernism”). It is
not quite clear when it first emerged, but generally 1960 is regarded as the
beginning (Lewis, 2001, p. 121). Since Sherman Alexie was born in 1966, he
grew up and had lived most of his life in postmodern times.
Many scholars suggested that postmodernism was over in the 1990s
already. De Villo Sloan, for instance, suggested in 1987 that “postmodernism is
12
a literary movement ... is now in its final phase of decadence,” and other
authors even call the period after 1990 post-postmodernist (Lewis, 2001, p. 122).
There have not been many scholarly publications on post-postmodernism yet.
With the coming of postmodern era, there was a great change in the
parent-child relationship that led into a new way of upbringing. It had become
more democratic and affectionate (Bubíková, 2008, p 21-22). The parent-child
relationship changed because more and more importance has been assigned to
peers and the school. At the same time, a postmodern child spends most of the
leisure time alone, in front of television and computer. Not only are they alone,
but also they get lonely and feel isolated (Bubíková, 2009, p. 67).
Postmodern scholars brought in the assumption that children cannot be
protected from the reality and should be rather exposed to it, and that family
does not have to be only supportive but can cause a crisis as well. Further, there
had been another assumption that children could not enjoy their childhoods
because the burden of the adult world was put on their shoulders.
Consequently, they soon ceased to be looked upon as innocent creatures that
need to be protected (Thacker, 2002, p. 140).
The postmodern era is significant for young adult literature because the
transitory stage between children and adult was recognized. In the 1940s, the
term teenager was introduced (“Teenager”, Answers.com) and literature aimed
at young people from the age category from 14 to 20 years started to be
produced since then.
Postmodern literature stems from modernism and shares many of its
features. To reach their literary intentions, postmodern authors can use a great
amount of means. For this reason only two features of postmodernism and
postmodern literature will be dealt with in the following subchapter.
1.1.5 Fragmentation and refusal of meta-narratives
In the following text, I will discuss the fundamental ideology of
postmodernism – the refusal of grand-narratives and related issues of otherness
and subversion; and the means of graphical fragmentation.
13
Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to modernism, a concept
prevailing in the period from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th
century. As Francois Lyotard argues, postmodernism is a critique of grand- or
meta-narratives in Western societies (in Klages, ”Postmodernism”). Grand
narratives are stories and premises that explain a system or culture and are
considered as the only truth. Postmodernist writers try to offer plurality.
To deconstruct metanarratives, the postmodern authors can use the
means of subversion. In John Lye´s article on postmodernism, he states that
subversion suggests the idea of paradox, black humour, wit, refusal of
seriousness, or turning everything upside down (“Some attributes”).
Postmodern society is highly diverse. By diversity is meant the variety of
groups that came out to oppose the mainstream society and its metanarratives,
which has been dominant until the 1950s. As John Lye puts it, he sees as one of
the attributes of postmodernism “the exploration of the marginalized aspects of
life and marginalized elements of society.” By these marginalized elements, I
understand also minorities, more specifically ethnic minorities, Native
Americans included. As Porter states, the 1960s were a decade when an
investigation into Indian life, condition and affairs took place, and was
accompanied by certain improvements.“ (Porter, 2005, p. 57).
The marginalized elements of society, in this case ethnic minorities, can
be labelled as the other. Mary Klages claims “that modern societies constantly
are on guard against anything and everything labelled as „disorder‟”, which
becomes “the other” in the postmodern world, and more precisely in western
culture. “Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic,
non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of „disorder‟ (...).” (“Postmodernism”)
The second feature of postmodernism to be discussed is somehow
connected with the above mentioned tendencies to oppose grand-narratives by
distrusting and disrupting them. The author can reach fragmentation by
temporal disorder, or he can disrupt the narrative “by breaking up the text into
short fragments or sections, separated by space, titles, numbers or symbols.”
(Lewis, 2001, p. 127) Other means of fragmentation, as given by Lewis, could be
14
various illustrations, typography, fonts, typefaces, arrangements (columns),
visual jokes (coffee-cup stains), or mixed media.
Postmodernism offers a great amount of possibilities in the zeal to
oppose the metanarratives and provide plurality. In the area of literature, the
most common means are subversion and interest in the other. Plurality is also
reached by fragmentation, both graphical and temporal. We will see these
features in the analysis of the novel.
Despite the fact that the pre-modern and postmodern eras are separated
by a couple of centuries, they have one sign in common. In both periods,
children are seen as impure, and guilty. In the first mentioned era, it was caused
by the lack of knowledge of one‟s developmental stages. In the postmodern era,
it is, in my opinion, paradoxically because of this knowledge. The postmodern
era has offered more opportunities for children, for instance in terms of raising
them up, or in ways of spending their leisure time. Most importantly, young
adult literature, which is discussed in detail in the following chapter, started to
be produced.
Literary postmodernism tries to offer plurality by exploring the other,
e.g. ethnic minorities, and women, and by opposing the meta-narratives
accepted in the past.
15
2. Adolescence and Young Adult Novel
Since The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian represents work both
for and about young adults, I find it essential to present the views of the
concept of adolescence. Being a future teacher, I have gained certain knowledge
about the developmental periods of a human and I would like to draw on them
in this chapter. Special emphasis will be put on identity - on explanation of the
term, and theories of identity.
Next, the subject of this chapter will be the development of young adult
literature and its characteristics. The last subchapter is devoted to a kind of
young adult literature, to the genre of American postmodern bildungsroman.
2.1 Brief Account of Adolescence
The concept of adolescence in literature appeared fairly recently. It was
in the era of postmodernism when the period of adolescence started to be taken
into account seriously, and fiction for adolescents has started to be written.
There are different opinions on the age limitation of adolescence. According to
Marshall and Beach (1991, p. 335), for instance, people aged 12 to 15 are
considered early adolescents. But generally, when we talk about adolescents,
we refer to young people from 14-15 to 19-20 years of age.
One of my psychology professors compared adolescence to a bridge
connecting two worlds – the world of childhood and the world of adulthood.
Young adults come from a known world into an unknown world through the
bridge of adolescence which is full of contrast and confusion. From this
confusion, the unstable adolescent behaviour accompanied by bigger sensitivity
and overreaction arises. The imaginary bridge also represents a serious process
of searching for one‟s identity. Since I find the issue of identity important for
the thesis, I will deal with it in a separate chapter.
Next issue that is important for the description of adolescence in
psychology, and which is reflected in fiction aimed at young adults, is the
change in family relationships. Young adults tend to free themselves from
16
parental bonds and attach more importance to their friends and peers. Peers
become the authority; parents, on the other hand, the target for subversion.
This period is also typical for encountering first loves and consequent
first erotic or sexual experience. The obsession with physical appearance is an
important characteristic of young adults associated with the first loves issues.
Adolescents come through huge physical changes that are consequently
reflected in their psyche.
As a result, they want to look perfect and they
measure their own importance according to their look.
To sum the term adolescence up into a simple definition, we could define
it as a critical period coming out from the transition between childhood and
adulthood, and thus typical for internal as well as external changes. The main
task of adolescence is to establish one´s identity.
2.2 Young Adults and Identity
Since the subject of the analysis is the main character´s identity, I will
devote this chapter to the explanation of the term, and will provide some
theories about identity in the period of adolescence. Next subchapter will be
devoted to the introduction of various types of identity.
Identity, defined by psychologist James E. Marcia as “an internal, selfconstructed, dynamic organization of drives, abilities, beliefs, and individual
history” develops and changes during our lives (qtd. in Papalia and Olds, 1987,
p. 517). The most visible and major changes happen during the period of
adolescence. Even after this period is over, the identity is not formed by fixed
and unchangeable aspects. On the contrary, we are likely to accept and deny
several identities and be members of different groups during our life.
People begin to struggle to find and establish their identities in the most
complex developmental period, i.e. when they become young adults. In
Sainsbury´s words, they “attempt to come to terms with themselves and
society.”(2005, p. 126) Identity tells them who they are or where they belong to.
This is an issue strongly connected with their past experience and with the role
17
models given to them by their family, more precisely by parents. In the past it
was really the parents (or siblings) from who came the training for life. Today
the roles the parents are acting out are very confusing to follow and as a
consequence young adults suffer from many stresses. The stresses can further
lead to phenomena such as alcohol and drug use, early sexual activity, or
juvenile delinquency (Beach and Marshall, 1991, p. 338).
It is not only past experience and role models provided by families that
form one´s identity. Donelson and Nilsen in their Literature for Today´s Young
Adults (2009) state that “some psychologists gather all developmental tasks
under the umbrella heading of “achieving an identity,” which they describe as
the task of adolescence.” (p. 36) They give a list of these developmental tasks as
suggested by Robert Havighurst (1972). According to him, achieving an identity
means for instance: to acquire more mature social skills, to accept changes in
one´s body, to achieve emotional independence from parents and other adults,
to develop a personal ideology and ethical standards, or assuming membership
in the larger community (qtd. in Donelson and Nilsen, 2009, p. 36). The result is
that when we finish any developmental period we should be able to say who
we are and where we belong. During the period of adolescence, to be sure
about the state of our identity seems to be the most difficult.
In my developmental psychology classes, the key source was one of the
most distinguished developmental psychologists Erik Erikson. Even though
born at the beginning of the 20th century, his theories are still the core of many
psychology courses. He focused mainly on the period of adolescence. In his
theory of developmental stages, he labelled the period of adolescence as
“identity vs. role confusion” stage (qtd. in Papalia and Olds, 1987, p.515).
Young adults have to find who they are but are confused about the new adult
roles given them by the society. In a previous stage, they acquired skills
essential for success in society. In the period of adolescence, they need to learn
how to use the skills. According to Erikson, young adults during the
“psychosocial moratorium” attempt to find their commitments. Papalia and
Olds explain that “these commitments are both ideological and personal, and
18
the extent to which young people can be true to them determines their ability to
resolve the crisis of this stage.”(1987, p. 516)
James E. Marcia extended Erikson´s theory, and came up with four
statuses of identity according to absence or presence of crisis and commitment.
The result of adolescence should be identity achievement, which Papalia and Olds
define as follows: “after a crisis in which a person in this category has devoted
much effort to actively searching for choices, he or she now expresses strong
commitment.”(1987, p. 517) The individual picks his identity out from the many
other possible identities and becomes a mature man.
The identity achievement is very similar to the individual autonomy
achievement. At the end of adolescence, young adults should achieve personal
autonomy. Peter Bramwell states that “in the case of literature for and about
adolescence, Jung´s theories, with their emphasis on the heroic struggle of the
individual for autonomy, accord closely with thinking about adolescence.”
(2005, p. 141) Autonomous person is independent and free but at the same time
accepts responsibility for his or her behaviour.
Erikson also claims that falling in love is an important factor for identity
formation. When young adults become intimate and share their feelings, “the
adolescent offers up his or her own identity, sees it reflected in the loved one,
and is better able to clarify the self.” (Papalia and Olds, 1987, p. 516)
Adolescence is an important stage in one´s development as it includes
both physical and psychical changes which occur very fast. The major tasks of
adolescence are not to get confused and commit oneself to one of the many
possible identities and to become an autonomous individual. Development of
identity of young adults has become the main concern of many psychologists,
and very often the search for identity is the key theme in literature for young
adults.
19
2.2.1 Personal, Social, and Cultural Identity
We explained what identity is and what difficulties young adults
experience during its formation. In this subchapter, I will discuss briefly several
kinds of identity that we develop in relation to other people and society.
Identity consists not only of how we see ourselves but also how others
see us. There is a change in our self-perception and inevitably our identity
changes, too. Associate professor of media and cultural studies Chris Barker
argues that identity is “an emotionally charged description of ourselves that is
subject to change.”(2003, p. 228) He further prefers to think of identity as a way
of thinking rather than as a collection of characteristics. Even though our
identities change, at certain points we identify with one or several groups at a
time. A social psychologist Henry Tajfel calls these groups ingroups (qtd. in
Gudykunst, 2004, p. 76). While identifying with them our social identity starts
establishing. Ingroups are viewed positively and are based on sharing the same
opinions, values and beliefs. Outgroups, on the other hand, are viewed
negatively.
When we identify with more than one group, our identity can be labelled
as multiple. Barker explains that “identities are never either pure or fixed but
formed at the intersections of age, class, gender, race and nation.” (2003, p.260)
In a contemporary multicultural world it is very likely to happen that we
become members of more, and quite possibly very different, groups.
According
communication,
to
William
social
B.
identities
Gudykunst,
are
derived
a
professor
from
of
speech
memberships
in:
demographic categories, such as ethnicity, social class, age, etc.; formal and
informal organizations; stigmatized groups such the homeless, the disabled, the
poor; or from the roles we play (2004, p.76-77). Further, he says that identifying
with any of these groups is dependent on the many various situations. He gives
the following example: “(...) while I am a U.S. American, I do not think about
being a member of my culture much in everyday life. When I visit another
country, however, my U.S. American identity (my cultural identity) becomes
20
important. I think about being a U.S. American, and my cultural identity plays
a large role in influencing my behavior.” (p. 14)
In connection to cultural identity, there need to be mentioned ethnic
identity and complexity of the term. Virginia Cyrus (1993) says that people tend
to forget the cultural and ethnic origins, either their own or of their fellowcitizens. When we label, for example, U.S. American citizens with European
ancestors as Euro-American, we are generalizing. As she explains, “the label
European-American, for example, camouflages the difference between
Scandinavians and the French and between those two groups and the Poles, the
British, and the many other distinct European cultures.” (1993, p. 12) She
applies the same theory to Native Americans. They identify themselves with a
particular tribe rather than generally as American Indians.
Besides social, cultural and ethnic identity, we also develop personal
identities. According to Turner, “our personal identities involve those views of
ourselves that differentiate us from other members of our ingroups – those
characteristics that define us as unique individuals.” (qtd. in Gudykunst, 2004,
p. 76) By the membership in one or more ingroups, we gain our social identity.
The ingroups are important to us and we share certain views with them. What
differentiates us is our personal identity.
Our identity is strongly connected to the environment we live in and to
people we meet, i.e. to society. From the quite recent works of Barker (2003) and
Gudykunst (2004), it is obvious that our identity is not fixed and is likely to
change. We can identify with various social groups and acquire our social
identity. Besides social identity, which is formed in dependence on other
people, another part of our overall identity is personal identity which makes us
unique individuals. The state of our identity in terms of nation or culture is
affected by the situations we happened to be in. Most recognizably we realize
our cultural identity in a new and unfamiliar place.
21
2.3 Young Adult Novel
In the previous chapter, I discussed the characteristics of adolescence and
identity formation of young adults. Now, I will focus on literature aimed at
them.
If we consider problems which young adults have to face, the function of
young adult fiction should enter our minds immediately. Young adult novels
provide their readers with stories and experiences they can identify with. Thus
it helps them to manage the difficult period of their lives.
Adolescence in fiction was recognized and given more attention only in
the 1940s when the term teenager began to be used, as well as the term “junior
novel” to refer to young adult novels (Beach and Marshall, 1991, p. 339). More
and more publishers concentrated on literature aimed at young adults then.
In the 1940s and 1950s in Britain and America, novels which were rather
stereotypical prevailed. They featured white, middle-class families with two
loving parents (Reynolds, 2005, p. 37). The novels were still affected by moral
tense of that period and there were only a few authors who dared to fight any
taboos. Ken Donelson and Alleen Nilsen (2008) give a list of such taboos which
includes: no smoking, no drinking, no suicide, no violence, no pregnancy, no
scenes showing young people disagreeing with parents, etc. (p. 1875). One
would suggest that these novels were far from reality.
Young adult novels written later, in the 1960s and 1970s, were much
more psychologically concerned, and included also themes and taboos avoided
in earlier novels, such as drugs, sex, or family conflict (Beach and Marshall,
1991, p. 339).
Young adults tend to be subversive in relation to authorities, i.e. to
adults. This is given by the period itself and by the position of teenagers who
are treated neither like children nor like adults. As Reynolds (1994, p. 69-72)
explains, there has always been a dispute about what children want to read and
what adults consider good for them to read. Later it became more clear that
children can find certain value in a book even if the adults finds it a rubbish,
and that children very much like books that subvert or ridicule the world of
22
adults. The point of view that parents had on children‟s literature changed to a
certain extent in the second half of the twentieth century. The parents grew up
in more liberal times and thus approved the choice of books their off-springs
wanted to read.
Young adult novel as a genre has been paid more and more attention
recently. The authors are in a great favour, and in today´s liberal times they can
write freely about things that were tabooed several decades ago. Writing about
things as they are, and not avoiding the taboos, they provide authenticity that is
appreciated by young adult readers. What are other characteristics of young
adult novel will reveal the following subchapter.
2.3.1 Characteristics of Young Adult Novels
Donelson and Nilsen (2009) presented some of the conclusions of Exeter
University study on the qualities of good young adult books. I compared the
conclusions with children‟s literature characteristics as given by Pokřivčáková
in Children’s and Juvenile Literature (2003), and suggestions for writing a
successful young adult novel as given by Paul Zindel (qtd. in Beach and
Marshall, 1991). The characteristics and suggestions corresponded nearly at all
aspects and could be summarized as follows.
The stories should involve young protagonists and should be told from
the child‟s or teenager‟s point of view so that they attract their readers and keep
their attention. Authors of young adult fiction accomplish this characteristic by
writing in first person. As Donelson and Nilsen explain: “It isn‟t really [a
prerequisite for YA fiction], but because when authors are writing from an
omniscient viewpoint, they are careful to tell what the young protagonist thinks
and says, readers come away with the impression that most, if not all, YA
literature is told in first person.“ (2009, p. 26)
As for the language used in the stories, it should be contemporary and
based on real children or young adult speech.
23
We live in a fast-paced world, and dynamic and fast-paced stories are
important within young adult readership, too. This is therefore another
characteristic of a good young adult novel.
As we discussed earlier, young adult literature of the 1940s and 50s was
restricted to white, middle-class protagonists. The change came with the 1960s
when minorities became the subject of the interest. The trend has continued to
influence literature and thus themes of young adult fiction inform about the
wider world, about different cultures and ethnic minorities. The readers are
involved in serious and challenging issues and deals with topics interesting for
them.
Another characteristic is that stories for young adults should be hopeful
and optimistic. As Donelson and Nilsen (2009) explain it was not always so:
In young adult books, the protagonists must be involved in
accomplishments that are believable but still challenging enough to earn
the reader‟s respect. In the 1970s, when realism became the vogue and
books were written with painful honesty about the frequently cruel
world that teenagers face, some critics worried that YA books had
become too pessimistic and cynical. (p. 34)
Young adult stories do not need adults, let alone parents, to play the most
important role. Parents should be in the background to mark the distance
between them and the authority. Moreover, especially young adults tend to
rebel and incline to various sorts of mischief in order to express their attitudes
toward authorities. They like it in the novels, too.
The last characteristic to be mentioned concerns the graphical aspect of
young adult novels. Both children and young adults are sensory-dependent.
They like transitional pictures in the novels such as graffiti, funny graphics, or
doodling; and also sound effects such as rhymes, alliteration, onomatopoeia.
Nowadays, the themes most common for young adult literature could be:
search for identity; somebody or something loveable in the novel; fight for the
24
truth and believes; the knowledge that world can be mad and sometimes there
is no other choice than to laugh at it (Donelson and Nilsen, 2008, p. 1876).
When mentioning contemporary young adult fiction themes, we need to
point out a concept of multiculturalism. The multicultural environment so
typical for postmodern society is also reflected in young adult literature.
Authors of different ethnic minorities began to be heard and wrote about
growing up in America as in a multicultural society. Consequently, another
perspective from which identity can be viewed became ethnic and cultural one.
These and other assumptions gave a rise to a new genre of postmodern American
bildungsroman.
2.4 Postmodern American Bildungsroman
Since the topic I deal with in the thesis is the identity of a young adult
character, I consider it useful to devote a part of the writing to a coming-of-age
novel. There are other terms describing the genre. They are formation novel and
Bildungsroman. First, I will explain the term, then describe its development, and
finally discuss its application in the postmodern time.
A novel which is considered a Bildungsroman usually depicts the bridge
between childhood and adulthood, i.e. the period of growing-up. According to
Encyclopædia Britannica, the term comes from Germany, where the genre
originated, and is translated as novel of education or novel of formation. First
uses of the term date back into the first decade of the 20th century. But the genre
itself appeared already at the end of 18th century, when it brought a literally
novelty. In contrast to traditional eposes, Bildungsroman introduced young and
immature hero (Bubíková, 2009, p. 79).
As for the plot of a traditional novel of formation, Bubíková summarizes
Buckley‟s ideas and says that usually there is
a sensitive boy growing up in the countryside or a small town,
where his intellectual and artistic interests are not understood, and
25
therefore he leaves for a city, where he goes through a painful quest
and love-affairs; eventually he fetches through and returns home to
show his success and rightfulness of his original decision to leave. (p.
83)
Bubíková further adds that very often the hero is an orphan. However,
the development of Bildungsroman changes with the development of society
and culture and so changes the motif as well.
The changes in society gave a rise to what Bubíková calls postmodern
American bildungsroman. The prevailing topic of this genre is a survival of the
protagonists, usually a member of a minority, in a mainstream society. They try
to establish their identities in terms of preserving their ethnic or racial roots,
and to find out what it is like to be a member of a minority group in a
multicultural, postmodern world. Motifs such as stereotypes and prejudices
based on physical appearance and body marks of ethnicity and identity appears
in the genre. Bubíková explains: “These images usually, and probably quite
naturally, come from ethnic writers who deal with the issues surrounding the
childhoods of members of ethnic minorities.” (2008, p .131)
The growing diversity of the society is reflected in the literature for
young adults. Writing about protagonists from ethnic minorities can enrich
both sides. Adolescents from ethnic minorities can identify with the heroes of
postmodern bildungsroman, and can possibly overcome the difficult period
with more easy. Young adults from the white mainstream society can learn
about their peers from ethnic minorities, and can create their own attitudes and
opinions towards them.
26
3. Native American literature
Since Sherman Alexie is a Native American author, I will look at the
development of Native American literature written in English in order to show
his position in the area.
Native American literature developed differently than the non-native
mainstream literature. It reflected the historical context, and depended on the
position of Native Americans in it. I will comment on the beginnings of Native
American literature and will devote the next subchapter to a period from
Native American Renaissance up to these days.
3.1 The beginnings
The beginnings of Native American literature are strongly connected
with oral tradition in native languages. Native Americans preserved their
culture and traditions orally by retelling creation stories, dream songs, visions,
legends, chants, or trickster stories from generation to generation (Vizenor,
1995, p. 6-7).
Before American Indians started to write about Indian issues, there had
been literature about Native Americans written by white man. These writings
were marked by stereotypes held about Native Americans and notions of noble
and brutal savages appeared. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica noble
savage is “in literature, an idealized concept of uncivilized man, who
symbolizes the innate goodness of one not exposed to the corrupting influences
of civilization.“ How these two images were often depicted also shows
Berkhofer: “Nomadic, horse-mounted hunters of buffalo, who fought and died
bravely when portrayed as noble and massacred the innocent when pictured
ignoble.” (1979, p. 167)
Nineteenth century is considered the dawn of the Native American
literature written in English. One of the first literary genres produced by Native
Americans were autobiographies and personal accounts which dealt with topics
27
such as life on white boarding schools and reservations, conversion to
Christianity or description of a tribal tradition and culture. Owens emphasizes
the fact that some of these first English writing authors possessed “a
consistently high level of education (almost always at least one college degree)
and mastery of English.“ (1994, p. 7) We further learn from Owens that until the
1960s only nine works by Native American writers were published (p. 24). It
changed in 1968 with the publication of N. Scott Momaday‟s novel House Made
of Dawn.
3.2 Native American Renaissance
Native American renaissance is a term used to refer to the period of
flowering of Native American literature. The crucial literary event that has
started it off was the publishing of N. Scott Momaday‟s novel House Made of
Dawn (1968). In the novel, Momaday depicted his life in urban environment and
drew on oral traditions. Obviously, he did so very successfully and was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1969 (Vizenor, 1995, p. 15).
From the 1960s on, there have been changes in the perception of ethnic
minorities, American Indians included, and more attention have been paid to
them. People started to look at history from different points of you, and
according to Nathan Glazer, it was “the revisionist attitude towards history”
that appeared and helped to constitute multiculturalism (Glazer, 2003, p. 61).
This led, after Momaday‟s publication of House Made of Dawn, to a need of other
American Indian authors to tell their stories from their own perspectives. As
Paula Gunn Allen explained in her introduction to American Indian Literature
Exhibition, the American Indian authors wanted to write and started to write
literature
that incorporates both indigenous and western traditions…(that) is
representative of and central to the need for preserving and promoting a
uniquely Native American expressive form;...(that) is steeped in Native
American perspective, from mythic history to modern reservation life,
28
deriving its voice from the oral traditions of America‟s indigenous
cultures.
Native American renaissance was an unofficial movement defined by
Native American authors born in the 1940s and 50s and publishing in the 1960s
and 70s. Momaday determined the direction of the development of Native
American novel when he “focused upon the agony of the Indian seemingly
trapped between worlds.” (Owens, 1994, p. 26) In other words, Momaday and
his contemporaries such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, James Welch
or Gerald Vizenor, tried to recognize themselves as Indians in their novels.
They also focused on mixedblood issues while criticizing the mainstream
society. The topics they dealt with were rather serious.
There has been a change with coming of the second generation of Native
Americans authors born in 1960s and 70s. They followed the path smoothed by
the first generation but started to look at the issues from a different perspective.
They still criticize the mainstream society but reserve some critique for
themselves, too. The characters of the second generation authors “can laugh at
themselves and others, are fully capable of cowardice as well as heroism, and
[their] lives can be every bit tangled and messy [...].” (Owens, 1994, p. 29)
Sherman Alexie falls within this generation as an author who tries to rewrite
American history in terms of Europeans‟ coming to America and colonizing
Native peoples (Grassian, 2005, p. 8).
Native American Renaissance meant a crucial milestone in the
development of Native American literature. The first generation of Native
American authors made it possible for the following generations to tell their
stories from their point view, and retell the history in a manner different from
the mainstream society. The postmodern interest in the other and in ethnic
minorities made it easier for the Native American authors to be heard.
29
4. Current life on reservations
It is widely known that Native Americans were suppressed by White
settlers since the very beginning of the white settlement in the 16th century. The
settlers wanted to get rid of the Native American nations, and reservations were
one of the many attempts to do so.
In this chapter, I will focus on the reservation life since The Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-time Indian is set on the Spokane Indian reservation.
Inevitably, the reservation becomes one of the factors affecting the main
character´s identity.
Before I discuss the current life on Indian reservations, I will briefly
introduce the history of the concept of reservations.
4.1 The concept of reservations
With the westward movement of European settlers, Native Americans
living on their lands for centuries became an obstruction to this process. A
solution how to deal with so-called “Indian problem” had to be found.
Founding of reservations was one of the possible solutions.
First attempt of how to get American Indians out of way was the
exchange of south-eastern Indian lands for the lands west of the Mississippi.
This measure was called The Indian Removal Act of 1830 (Owens, 1994, p. 30).
By the middle of the 19th century there were calls for better treatment of
Native Americans. The calls were reflected in the Peace policy which
introduced a new administrative unit – Indian reservation. Reservations “with
definite boundaries beyond which the Indians were forbidden to travel and
where they would undergo civilization transformation,” were controlled by
agents who tried to civilize and Christianize American Indians (Berkhofer, 1979,
p. 165). They try to kill their indianness, i.e. to kill their culture and their Indian
identity. Gerald Vizenor uses the term to refer to „the conditions that indicate
the once-despised tribes and, at the same time, the extreme notions on an exotic
30
outsider,” and says that “the American Indian has come to mean Indianness.”
(1995, p. 1)
The concept of reservations turned out to be a failure. The agents were
incompetent and there were abuses and terrible conditions (diseases, poverty)
on the reservations at the end of the 19th century.
Another disaster in a form of a federal measure - the General Allotment
Act struck the Native peoples in 1887. Their collective land was divided among
them according to certain calculations and as Fixico says: “Forced to become
part of the larger colonized cultures of the mainstream, Indians were victimized
in a numerous ways as, with land to sell and lease, were forced into a capitalist
economy system.” (2004, p. 384) It also meant that the land that was not allotted
to Indians became the federal land.
Fixico further explains that the allotment started off a process of
assimilation that ended traditional Native ways of life and that had to bring
Native Americans into the mainstream white American society. In 1924 the
citizenship was given to American Indians, but it could not hide the fact that
the allotment failed causing bigger segregation and poverty. The Allotment Act
was terminated by 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.
Next step in solving the Indian problem came with the WW II. During
the war American Indians were engaged in war industries outside the
reservation. After the war, the integration of Indians continued. They were
relocated into cities. Not even this step helped the American Indian people
assimilate in urban areas. The reservation problems were shifted to cities as
well and Indians continued to keep ties with their home reservations. Another
catastrophe came in the form of House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953 by
which tribes were terminated. (Fixico, 2004, p. 385-388)
It was the 1960s and the Red Power movement that brought certain
changes into the United States policy towards American Indians and that woke
Native American minority from silence. More radical acts came with the 1970s.
It was 1975 when Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act
31
passed, bringing Indians control over their affairs and recognizing their need of
self-determination (Fixico, 2004, p. 390).
The federal and state policies mention in this chapter had a big impact on
Native people lives. Many of the acts, conceptions, and legislation turned out to
be failure. Almost none of them contributed to assimilation, almost none of
them fulfilled their original purpose.
4.2 Reservations at the turn of the millennium
I said that the conditions on the late 19th and 20th century reservations
were horrible. The reservation policies were oppressive and respected barely
anything of the native life. In this chapter I will look at the current situation.
The situation on the reservations has changed, although not in a very positive
way. Since I have not had the opportunity to experience the reservation life first
hand, I made use of the information provided by authors dealing with Native
American issues and by internet sources.
According to U.S. Census Bureau, there were 4.9 million American
Indians “including those of more than one race” in the United States in 2008
(“American Indians,” Infoplease.com). On the contrary, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs takes into account only full-blooded American Indians and states that
there are 1.9 million of them in the United States (“Who We Are”, Indian
Affairs.gov). Porter claimed that one third of Native Americans, mix-blooded
included, live in reservations. The remaining two thirds live in a city or suburb
environment (Porter, 2005, p. 60). Let us look at the conditions on the
reservations there.
According to Daniel Grassian (2005), drug abuse, alcoholism, and crime
belong among major problems on the reservations. Half of the Native
Americans on the reservations are unemployed and the state financial
assistance and benefits hardly cover the essential needs for a decent life.
Moreover, the native culture and traditions has begun to fade since there has
been an increase in mixed marriages (p. 9-10).
32
The phenomenon which influences the lives of most of Alexie‟s
characters is definitely alcoholism. It is not only Alexie‟s protagonists but also
many of those Native Americans who live both on reservations and in urban
areas. It is important to say that Native Americans lack protective genes against
alcohol which are important for metabolizing alcohol, as explains Hal Kibbey in
the article “Genetic Influences on Alcohol Drinking.” According to the
pamphlet by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) for Native North Americans,
alcoholism is a disease, brought in the U.S.A. by the white man (p. 5).
Native Americans suffer from this disease because “they feel torn
between their native culture and the dominant culture. Many turn to alcohol for
the escape from their problems.” (p. 5) In the pamphlet, there are stories of
people staying sober thanks to the help of AA. Majority of them started to drink
between the age of twelve to sixteen. The reasons are numerous – experiences of
racism, bullying, escape from unbearable financial situation, unwanted
“heritage” from alcoholic parents, acceptance by the peer group, or a confusion
from a Catholic education on a boarding school. As a better explanation of why
is alcoholism so spread among Native Americans might serve an utterance of
one of the AA for Native North Americans‟ member: “I felt being alcoholic was
being Indian and being Indian was being alcoholic.”(p. 12)
Death of many Native Americans is caused by alcohol. The life
expectancy of Native Americans in Washington State – the location of the
Spokane Indian Reservation - was 74 in 2002. Out of all minorities, according to
Washington State Department of Health it is the lowest life expectancy.
Native Americans use humour which is a substantial part of Indian
culture as a means of coping with the reality, even if it is harsh (Porter, 2005, p.
60). When considering the conditions on Indian reservations, or in some cases
conditions in urban environments, one of the first things that come to our
minds could be that there is not much to laugh about. However, there are some
joys appreciated especially by young people. One of them is the game of
basketball.
33
4.3 Sports on reservations
The game of basketball has an important role in many Alexie‟s novels
and short stories. Being a critic of the popular culture and its impact on
traditions and native culture, he praises it for giving reservation people an
opportunity for self-esteem. It gave them basketball (Bubíková, 2008, p. 138).
The origins of basketball date back to 1891. It was invented by the Young
Men Christian Association in order to assimilate and Americanized the already
settled and coming immigrants. It was “a way ethnics could express their
national pride and compete with other immigrants.” (Powers, 1990, p. 212) First
it was intended to be played only by passing the ball and tossing it into a basket
without the back board. Gradually, it developed into nowadays form. The first
basketball teams were just ethnic teams.
Basketball played on Indian reservations is called rezball, an abbreviation
for reservation ball. On Wikipedia, it is described as a quick, aggressive play
with quick scoring. There are dozens of rezball teams nowadays and are
associated especially with high schools. According to some North America
reservation high school players, “it‟s the only fun thing to do around here,” and
“there‟s not much to do on the rez other than play basketball.“ („Rez ball,“
Indianz.com)
When discussing sports, I need to comment on the issue of sport team
and school mascots. The mascots are usually American Indians depicted as
Chiefs, Redskins, Braves, or Warriors. A board member of American Indian
Cultural Support Mike Wicks finds using Indian mascots highly demeaning
and opposes the claim of the schools that it is their way of expressing honour to
American Indians. He further points out that “we [Indians] are the ONLY living
race of people to be used as mascots.“
This subchapter showed the importance of sports, basketball in
particular, to Native Americans. It gives them self-esteem and space to prove
that they are good. It is wide-spread among Native Americans and the players
are equal to their non-native counterparts. It is therefore demeaning that sport
teams, basketball teams included, use American Indians as their mascots. The
34
consequence of this attitude could be that people will see American Indians
stereotypically as an extinct race, for instance.
35
5. Identity of a Native American young adult in the novel by
Sherman Alexie
The aim of the following chapters is to analyse Sherman Alexie´s young
adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007). The hero of the
novel is a fourteen year-old American Indian boy Arnold Spirit alias Junior. He
lives on the contemporary Spokane Indian Reservation, Washington. He
decides to try to struggle for better life outside his reservation at a white high
school, which changes his life immensely.
In the analysis the focus will be on the identity of a young adult Native
American character. As Donelson and Nilsen state “some psychologists gather
all developmental tasks under the umbrella heading of “achieving an identity,”
which they describe as the task of adolescence.” (2009, p. 36)
This aspect
appears in almost any fiction aimed at young adults since it is adolescence
during which the major development of identity takes place.
According to Barker (2003) and Gudykunst (2004) we can choose and
change the identities during our lives. I will look at how Junior´s identity
develops and what factors participate in creating it. From the white mainstream
society perspective, his identity is even more complicated because he belongs to
the Native American minority. He has to find out who he is not only in terms of
his American Indian ethnicity but also in the white society. I will attempt to
find out whether and how Alexie makes his hero feel Indian.
A great deal of our identities is formed by people we live and interact
with, and thus I will look at how Junior´s social identity is influenced by his
family, his native friends and white peers. I will also analyse the novel in terms
of the environment the hero is surrounded by – the reservation and the local
high school, the white high school, and sports. Coming into white society, to the
white high school, Junior´s cultural identity will be in question, too. These
external factors affect his identity and are reflected in his self-perception that, as
an internal factor, forms his personal identity.
It is important to realize that not always it is possible to indicate a clear
dividing line between the factors since they are all linked and influence each
36
other. I will therefore analyse the factors in relation to the hero´s development
and to the climaxes of the novel.
The first part will be devoted to the introduction of Junior and his
environment. The second part will look at the factors determining Junior´s
identity after transferring the schools and commuting to a white school outside
the reservation. Lastly, I will look at the state of his identity at the end of the
novel.
5.1 The introduction of the character and factors affecting his identity
Before discussing the external factors that participate in establishing
Junior´s identity - the environment and other people he is surrounded by, I find
it essential to start with the introduction of Junior. Of course, our selfperception is affected by how others perceive us. This is an issue of the external
factors that will be discussed throughout the analysis, though. In the following
text I will focus on Junior´s physical appearance and self-perception.
For young adults, the physical appearance is of great importance and is
reflected in their self-perception, and therefore in their identity. Alexie does not
make it easy for his character to cope with the difficulties of growing up as
Junior not only suffers from brain damage that leads to a skull deformation, but
he also stutters and lisps which at the age of fourteen makes him “the biggest
retard”(4). Young adults, no matter what their ethnicity or colour of the skin
are, can be very cruel to their peers who are somehow disabled or just look
different. Junior is picked on by the reservation kids, gets beat up and home
becomes his shelter. With almost no friends on the reservation he becomes
ostracized.
Alexie compensates for Junior´s outsiderness by making him an excellent
cartoon drawer and book enthusiast. Lewis (2001, p. 127) gives a list of
graphical means of fragmentation, and includes illustrations there. The novel is
full of Junior´s drawings that Alexie, as a postmodern author, uses as a kind of
fragmentation.
37
Drawing and reading becomes an escape from the uncanny atmosphere
outside Junior´s home. He feels important when drawing because he can be
who he wants to be. Definitely, he does not want to be a poor Indian boy, which
the following excerpt shows:
It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve
to be poor. You start believing you´re poor, because you´re stupid and
ugly. And then you start believing that you´re stupid and ugly because
you´re Indian. And because you´re Indian you start believing you´re
destined to be poor. It´s an ugly circle and there´s nothing you can do
about it. (p. 13)
At this point, at the beginning of the novel, Junior´ s negative selfperception is influenced by his physical appearance. Alexie makes him connect
it to his ethnic identity and consequently see being Indian as something wrong,
as an inherited badge which causes his poverty.
5.2 Reservation as a safe home
Poverty is one of the biggest problems on the reservation. There are
others, though. The topic of this chapter will be the reservation environment
covering not only poverty, but also despair and alcoholism.
Poverty determines Junior‟s life. He feels desperate and hopeless about it
knowing that his parents and ancestors have always been very poor. So the
“there is nothing you can do about it” opinion from the previous excerpt is rooted
in his identity at the beginning.
However, there is a slight feeling of defiance and an indication of
awareness of this situation that can be observed in Alexie´s choice of words
such as “suck.” If something sucks, it usually bothers us and we want to defy it.
Junior starts to be aware that there is something wrong about connecting
poverty and his negative self-perception with his ethnicity, because he would
not believe, until he was forced by the external factors to “start believing,” that
38
being Indian is a miserable condition. The “there is nothing you can do about it”
way of thinking gradually changes as the novel develops.
The reason for Junior´s hopeless way of thinking is made clear by Alexie
throughout the novel. Indians, as pictured by the author, lack hope. They have
been betrayed and maltreated too many times to hope to have better lives.
Having been raised and living on reservation with no hope, Junior does not
even think of getting better life. He identifies with the reservation. It is his
ingroup, and he shares the views held there. He does not perceive it as a bad
place to live, because it is his home. We do think of home as a safe and
comfortable place to live, where most of the happening is viewed as normal.
On Alexie´s reservation, poverty and alcoholism are omnipresent and are
seen as normal. Almost everyone drinks. One of the exceptions is Junior´s
beloved grandmother who has never drunk and for this reason is seen as the
rarest Indian by Junior (p. 158). Alcoholism engulfs the reservation and causes
the majority of deaths. Junior sister dies when drunk unconscious, his
grandmother is killed by a drunk driver, and his father‟s best friend is shot by
his drunken friend. All this alcoholic misery makes Junior decide to never
drink.
As we can learn from the pamphlet of AA for Native North Americans,
many Indians drink because they are torn between their own and the dominant
culture (p. 5). They escape from the harsh reservation reality with the help of
alcohol.
Junior living on Indian reservation feels Indian. He is surrounded by
Indian people who form his ingroup, as Tajfel calls it (qtd. in Gudykunst, 2004,
p. 76). He had not had any opportunity to question his identity because he had
never left his isolated reservation before. He is concerned about being Indian,
though. Seeing the despair and lives damaged by alcohol, he refuses to believe
that this is what Indians should be like. Alexie wants to stress the alarming
situation that Indians die from alcoholism and surrounds Junior with the
hopeless Indian people. His parents are one of them.
39
5.3 Family and friends
The role of parents in forming children´s identities is huge. They provide
the children with role models. The period of growing up is typical for
subversion against authorities, especially parents, and young adults attempt to
differ from their parents. Despite their efforts, it is inevitable for the children to
take over some of their parent´s worldviews and opinions. In this chapter, I will
look at how Junior´s parents affect his identity, and whether Alexie makes him
subversive, as one would expect from a growing up boy.
Both Zindel (qtd. In Beach and Marshall, 1991, p. 342) and Donelson and
Nilsen (2009, p. 17-35) suggest that young adult novels do not need adults,
especially parents, to play the most import role and that the adults as
authorities are often subject to rebellion or subversion.
Alexie depicted Junior´s parents, as well as other residents on the
reservation, as those who gave up. Their lost hope and resignation come from
the fact that no one has paid attention to Indians, their dreams and aspirations.
Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when
they were kids. They dreamed about being something other than poor,
but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid
attention to their dreams.
Given the chance, my mother would have gone to college.
(...) Given the chance, my father would have been a musician. (p.
11-13)
While telling us about the factors influencing Junior´s identity, Alexie
follows the revisionist attitude towards history that had started in the 1960s and
retells the history of American Indians´ conditions and their treatment (Glazer,
2003, p. 61).
Having given up, Junior´s father finds solace in alcohol and watching
TV. When Junior, in Alexie words, tells about his father´s drinking habits, he
does so without complaining about it because he already finds it normal. Junior
40
differs from the theoretical characteristics of young adults in that he is not
subversive against his parents. On the contrary, he loves his parents. They “are
the twin suns around which [he] orbits and [his] world would EXPLODE
without them.”(11)
Alexie´s portrayal of Junior´s parents coincides with his portrayal of
other reservation residents. They gave up. Young adults´ identity is partly
formed by the role models they see in their parents, as Beach and Marshall
explain (1991, p. 338). Junior is affected by his parent´s attitude to life and
would be expected to become the same hopeless individual. But he is different
as Alexie makes him realize that once his parents had dreams but were not
strong enough to realize them. Junior wants to be strong to have better life than
his parents have had.
5.3.1 Identity and best friend
As I learned in my developmental psychology courses, the change in
family relationships is important during the period of adolescence. Young
adults tend to free themselves from parental bonds and attach more importance
to their friends and peers.
Junior follows this assumption about freeing from parental bonds and
attaching more importance to peers only partly.
I think Rowdy might be the most important person in my life.
Maybe more important than my family. Can your best friend be more
important than your family?
I think so.
I mean, after all I spend a lot more time with Rowdy than I do
with anyone else.
(....) Rowdy and I are inseparable. (24)
Junior has only one best friend on the reservation. As a consequence his
family is very important to him as the only people who love him and care about
41
him. But his best friend Rowdy seems to be more important for him. Junior
even prefers him to his family, which suggests that Alexie is very well
acquainted with young adult psychology and development. In creating our
identity, it is essential that we are loved. Junior is loved by his family. But still,
being a young adult he tends to free himself from them and clings to the other
person who loves him, i.e. to Rowdy.
Rowdy is the counterpart of Junior. Rowdy, as his name suggests, is hottempered, strong, and do not think twice to use fists. What puts them together
apart from their friendship is that their parents drink. Rowdy‟s father is a heavy
drinker and beats his son frequently. Rowdy protects himself by being very
tough, which is a pose only.
I like to make him laugh. He loves my cartoons.
He´s a big, goofy dreamer, too, just like me. He likes to pretend he
lives inside the comic books. I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot
better than his real life.
So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds
to live inside.
I draw his dreams.
And he only talks about his dreams with me. And I only talk about
my dreams with him. (23)
Rowdy is a sensitive boy who, unfortunately, only knows how to fight.
The boys are interdependent. Rowdy is Junior´s bodyguard, and he can put
away his tough mask only in front of Junior. From the excerpt, it is also obvious
that young Indian people are not supposed to talk about their dreams and
drawing cartoons is a way of escaping this reality.
The character of Rowdy is essential for developing Junior´s identity as
peer relationships represent one of the factors affecting one´s identity. Erikson
sees falling in love as an important factor for identity formation. Even though
we cannot speak about a teenage love between Junior and Rowdy, the bond
between the two friends seems equally important. Papalia and Olds (1987)
42
explain Erikson´s idea: “the adolescent offers up his or her own identity, sees it
reflected in the loved one, and is better able to clarify the self.” (p. 516) Junior,
drawing cartoons and reading books, differs from other reservation children,
which makes him the outsider. The fact that Rowdy loves to read Junior´s
cartoons reassures him that he is not the only boy with such a hobby. There is
not much connection to Junior´s ethnic identity but rather to the formation of
his identity as a young adult. Their solidarity and Rowdy´s appreciation of
Junior´s work are crucial for his personal identity formation.
5.4 Education at reservation school
The environment we grow up in affects our identities. Young adults
spend a good portion of their time at school and the experience of attending
school inevitably shapes them as another external factor. This subchapter will
discuss the conditions and practices at the reservation school which Junior
started to attend, and will also introduce one of the climaxes of the novel that
brings a new direction into forming Junior´s identity.
Junior, a bookworm, loves school. His affection for books comes from his
position of the outsider on the reservation. Spending a lot of time at home, he
entertains himself with reading. The novel begins when Junior starts the
reservation high school and is very excited about it. He lusts for knowledge,
which is not typical for young adults nowadays as they seem to care more
about their look than their education. This is one of the aspects that makes
Junior special in contrast to his peers.
The key term for Alexie seems to be hope. He describes the reservation
school as a place where children are taught not to hope in anything and to give
up. Nobody encourages them to improve or to pursue better lives. Junior´s
white reservation high school teacher describes the school practices:
When I first started teaching here, that‟s what we did to the rowdy
ones, you know? We beat them. That‟s how we were taught to teach you.
We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child. (...) I didn´t literally
43
kill Indians. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your
songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren´t
trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture. (35)
The Absolutely True Diary is set at the beginning of the 21st century. Yet,
the same practices have been held at the reservation and boarding schools since
the middle of the 19th century when Indian reservations began to be established
and Indians acculturized and re-educated. A very good example can be found
in Zitkala-Sa´s American Indian Stories (1921). She reports on her experience at a
boarding school where she was taken and taught to be white. The teachers
ignored Native American languages and the children were made to accept
Christianity and Euro-American way of thinking and living, very often by the
use of violence.
One would suggest that being raised in such an environment, where
Indians do not get to realize their dreams (12), the identity of American Indian
young adults is strongly predetermined. They are not aware that their lives
could be better, and that what they learn at school is not sufficient. Alexie´s
Junior is different. Due to his love for school, he is depressed when he finds out
that they study from the same textbooks as his parents did. In his rage, he hits
his white teacher with the book and is consequently expelled from school.
Junior´s affective reaction is crucial for his future. Junior decides to leave
the reservation school for a white one. The impetus for Junior to leave the
reservation can be perceived as a kind of atonement of white people for the
treatment of Native Americans. This is embodied in the character of the white
teacher who literally forces Junior to leave, and get better life in a place where
there is hope. Junior does not have much choice of where to go for advice,
except his hopeless parents:
“Who has the most hope?” I asked.
Mom and dad looked at each other. They studied each other´s eyes, you
know, like they had antennas and were sending radio signals to each
other. And then they both looked back at me.
44
“Come on,” I said. “Who has the most hope?”
“White people,” my parents said at the same time.
That´s exactly what I thought they were going to say, so I said the most
surprising thing they´d ever heard from me.
“I want to transfer school,” I said. (45)
Junior decides to go to a white Reardan High school. The prevalent
mood on the reservation is anti-white because Indians know that white people
have better lives and hope, and they blame white people for the Indian
conditions. White people are seen as the outgroup. The example of the hatred
of white people is best illustrated on “the unofficial and unwritten Spokane
Indian Rules of Fisticuffs,” the one of which is: “you must always pick fights
with the sons and/or daughters of any white people who live anywhere on the
reservation.”(61) The reservation encourages the hatred of white people among
Indian children, and they take it over as one of the values of their ingroup.
Living on the reservation, Junior does not interact with white people
very often. His identity is influenced by the opinions on white people held on
the reservation, and by the practices of white teachers at reservation schools.
Taught to give up, Junior accepts and internalizes the assumption that Indians
are hopeless, desperate and alcoholic people and that this is normal because the
reservation is his home and therefore a good place.
In the first part of the novel, his identity is based on this assumption that
Indians do not deserve better, and that there is not much to do about it. Despite
this fact, there is a slight sign of defiance of this belief. His identity also
develops in a way typical for young adults, i.e. it is concerned with physical
appearance mainly and with strong peer relationships.
The decision to transfer to a white off-reservation school brings a huge
change into Junior´s life and into forming his identity. How it changes is the
subject of the following chapter.
45
6. Challenges to identity formation
This chapter will discuss the identity of Junior after he starts to attend a
white school. He gradually starts to see his home – the reservation, differently.
The relationship with his best friend is affected. But more importantly,
interacting with white people, he will start to question his identity more deeply
and strongly and his ethnicity will be the main focus.
The key moment - to leave for a bigger and white city, is the main theme
of quite a new genre defined by Bubíková (2009) as postmodern American
bildungsroman. In the classic bildungsroman, the hero leaves his small
countryside town where he is not understood for a big city to find and fulfil
himself. Postmodern American bildungsroman reflects the changes of society
and puts another task on the hero´s shoulders - to try to establish his identity in
terms of preserving their ethnic or racial roots, and to find out what it is like to
be a member of a minority group in a multicultural, postmodern world
(Bubíková, 2009, p. 94-95). The task of Junior seems to be the same.
6.1 Prejudices
Junior starts to attend Reardan High School with many prejudices about
white people held on the reservation, i.e. by his ingroup, which became part of
his identity. White people are seen as evil, but awe-inspiring one. In fact,
Indians have internalized the negative perception of themselves, and pity and
put themselves into the inferior position.
And let me tell you, we Indians were the worst of times and those
Reardan kids were the best of time.
Those kids were magnificent.
They knew everything.
And they were beautiful.
They were beautiful and smart.
They were beautiful and smart and epic.
They were filled with hope. (50)
46
Junior, being raised in the manner that white people are better, comes to
the school with his expectations of the white children. The adjectives Alexie
uses to describe them, such as “magnificent” and “epic,” evoke fear. Junior is
scared of the white children. When we are scared of something we tend to
attach more importance to things that are certain to us. For Junior it seems to be
his ethnic identity.
“Just remember this,” my father said. “Those white people aren´t
better than you.”
But he was so wrong. And he knew he was wrong. He was the
loser Indian father of a loser Indian son living in a world built for
winners.
But he loved me so much. He hugged me even closer.
“This is a great thing,” he said. “You´re so brave. You´re a
warrior.”
It was the best thing he could have said. (55)
This simple kind of address, a warrior, makes Junior feels stronger,
Indian. Being a fourteen-year-old sensitive boy, who cries easily and gets beat
up for crying by other children, the address helps him to overcome his fear. As
if this was the only epic and magnificent thing he can offer among the white
children.
After some time at the white Reardan School, Junior comes to realize that
the white children are not that magnificent as he thought. He realized that he
was smarter than most them.
Oh, there were a couple girls and one boy who were little
Einsteins, and there was no way I´d ever be smarter that them, but I
was way smarter that 99 percent of the others. And not just smart for
an Indian, okay? I was smart, period. (84)
47
Being among white people now, and being the only Indian there, Alexie
stresses Junior´s Indian identity more than in the first part of the novel. Junior
left his ingroup, i.e. the reservation, and tries to survive in the outgroup, i.e. the
white school. As Gudykunst explains “the degree to which we identify with
these various groups varies from situation to situation.”(2004, p.14) In the same
way as Gudykunst ascribes bigger importance to his U.S. American identity
when abroad, Alexie makes Junior feel more Indian outside his familiar
environment.
Alexie wants Junior to get rid of the badge of despair and the opinions he
gained at the reservation that Indians are inferior. He has to free himself partly
from his ingroup and their way of thinking in order to become a member of
what is perceived by his ingroup the outgroup. Junior realizes that Indians are
not stupid, as he might be taught to believe, and one of the first signs of selfesteem and self- recognition, important for his identity formation, can be
observed.
6.2 A new place
Coming to a completely new place, we are affected by thinking,
behaviour or traditions of where we come from, i.e. of our ingroup. It is difficult
and it takes time to realize that in the new place these social frames are
different. This subchapter will deal with Junior´s meeting and confronting the
new “world”, i.e. the all-white high school in the off-reservation white town,
which has an impact on forming his identity.
First, it needs to be mentioned that Junior is the only Indian at the school,
except for a school mascot.
Those white kids couldn´t believe their eyes. They stared at me
like I was Bigfoot or a UFO. What was I doing at Reardan, whose
mascot was Indian, thereby making me the only other Indian in town?
(56)
48
According to Mike Wicks, a board member of American Indian Cultural
Support, using Native Americans as school and sport team mascots is highly
demeaning and may create a stereotypical presumption that Indians are an
extinct ethnic group, for example. This places Junior into a very peculiar
situation. He draws too much attention because many of the white children
have never met an Indian before. He feels as the outsider from the very
beginning and doubts about his decision to transfer the schools.
As the only Indian at the school, Junior is different. One of the things that
make him different is definitely the colour of his skin. He is dumbfounded by
the whiteness of his classmates and thinks of his skin colour as inferior. The
colour of the skin as the body mark of ethnicity and identity is one of the motifs
that appear in the genre of postmodern American bildungsroman (Bubíková,
2009, p. 95). It is the only visible feature and does not say anything about an
individual´s personality. Junior´s identity is affected by the colour of his skin.
Considering that identity is something that, to some extent, we can choose and
that changes during our lives, we could assume that who we become depends
on us. The colour of Junior´s skin, his body mark of ethnicity, is an obstacle
because he always will be labelled Indian.
Junior brings the cultural customs of his ingroup that are rooted in his
Indian identity to the white society. This puts him into difficult situations
caused by a misunderstanding of the white children. A simple issue such a
personal name actually makes him feel like someone from a different planet. On
the reservation, everyone calls him Junior. His official name in fact is Arnold
Spirit. He is laughed at when he introduces himself as Junior.
I had no idea that Junior was a weird name. It´s a common
name on my rez, on any rez. You walk into any trading post on any rez
in the United States and shout, “Hey, Junior!” and seventeen guys will
turn around.
And three women.
49
But there were no other people named Junior in Reardan, so I
was being laughed at because I was the only one who had that silly
name.
(...) I felt like two different people inside of my body. (60)
After this experience he thinks of his name as silly, as if he was ashamed
of it, which he would not before. From this passage, it is obvious that his
identity is strongly questioned. Erikson saw the period of adolescence as the
stage of identity crisis that can be overcome by finding the right commitments
(Papalia and Old, 1987, p. 516) Junior is confused about his identity. When he is
Junior, he is Indian. When he is Arnold Spirit, he becomes white. His
commitment seems to be the pursuit of better life in white society.
I already mentioned the unofficial Spokane Indian rules of fisticuffs (61).
They also became a part of Junior´s identity. The rules are not valid in the white
society, though. Being the only Indian at the school, Junior is addressed by a
series of common stereotypical insults such as chief, tonto, red-skin, warrior, or
squaw boy. All the insults appear on a list of stereotypes included in the
handout on books about Native Americans “”I” Is Not For Indian: The
Portrayal of Native Americans in Books For Young People” by Naomi Caldwell,
the President of American Indian Library Association (AILA) and Lisa Mitten,
AILA Secretary. They list demeaning vocabulary that appears in books about
Native Americans. Alexie uses them to show the reality of the treatment of
Native Americans. One of the insults is unbearable for Junior and he decides to
use violence for the first time while following the rules of fisticuffs.
I had followed the rules of fighting. I had behaved exactly the
way I was supposed to behave. But these white boys had ignored the
rules. In fact, they followed a whole other set of mysterious rules
where people apparently DID NOT GET INTO FISTIFIGHTS. (65)
Being raised and identifying with the manner that the best is to fight,
Junior assumes that it really is the best. He is confused when his attitude to
50
problem-solving is not accepted. Junior has no idea of how the white society
functions, and wrongly expects that it functions in the same way as on his
reservation.
During our life, we can become members of one or more ingroups. Junior
leaves his reservation to become a member of another group – the white society.
On the reservation, they despise the white society, i.e. the outgroup. Alexie
illustrates the identity confusion that arises from coming to a new and
unknown place. Not only is Junior the outsider because of his skin colour, but
his lack of knowledge of the social behaviour and functioning of the white
society makes him more alien. It also makes him think about his former best
friend on the reservation, who greatly influenced Junior´s self-perception.
6.3 Best friend turns into enemy
Rowdy and Junior are best friends. Their friendship is the evidence of
young adults´ becoming independent of the authorities, especially parents. This
subchapter will deal with the development of their relationship and the
consequences it has on their identities.
The boys are completely different. Junior, besides being smart and good
at school, is sensitive and thoughtful, which makes him weak among his peers.
On the contrary, Rowdy is a tough boy, feared by others. He can be viewed as
the prototype of a contemporary warrior. They believe to be “inseparable,”
though (24). The change comes with Junior´s decision to transfer to Reardan
High School.
Rowdy deals with Junior´s decision badly. He loves Junior and is
dependent on him. Since Alexie unmasks Rowdy and shows him as a sensitive
boy, he breaks the warrior-like image stereotype internalized by many
American Indians.
Rowdy feels betrayed by Junior. He thinks that he is not as good for
Junior as the white children. Rowdy´s reaction is only natural. The reservation
residents do not like white people, who are perceived as the outgroup, and this
51
is assumed by their children. Junior tries to overcome this assumption, which is
something Rowdy is not capable of. As a result the two best friends become
enemies.
There is one more reason for Rowdy´s rage. Junior leaves for not only
white high school, but for school where the children are better at basketball.
Basketball seems to be a crucial issue for the characters of the novel, and will be
discussed later in a separate subchapter.
In the previous chapter, we talked about Junior fighting a white boy
believing he is doing the right thing. Another conclusion can be drawn from
this situation. Nobody expected that from a peaceful and submissive Indian
boy, which is an example of Alexie‟s breaking up this stereotype. It was the first
time Junior coped with a confrontation by the use of a physical violence.
I wished Rowdy was still my friend. I could have sent him after
Roger. It would have been like King Kong battling Godzilla.
I realized how much of my self-worth, my sense of safety was
based on Rowdy´s fists. (68)
There is an obvious development in Junior´s identity as he gradually
becomes less depended on his best friend Rowdy. He starts to take care of
himself and feels stronger. It is the fists, i.e. physical violence, which are usually
used for handling problems on the reservation. Junior has to find a new way of
dealing with them. He has to accept the rules of his new ingroup and this
means, not only for his friend but also for the other reservation Indians, a
simple thing – that he is getting white.
6.4 Basketball
After Junior left the reservation high school for the off-reservation one,
the friendship between Rowdy and him has ended. Though they sometimes
meet on the reservation, the most important meetings are during basketball
52
school matches, each playing for different teams. This chapter will discuss the
importance of basketball since a lot of space is devoted to this kind of sport in
the novel.
Rowdy plays for the reservation high school, Junior for the white
Reardan team. Basketball is an important leisure activity for children and
young adults on the reservation. It is an important, and very often the only
means for getting the self-esteem because Indians do not have many
opportunities to fulfil themselves. Some Native American high school
basketball players express what the game means to them: “it‟s the only fun
thing to do around here,” and “there‟s not much to do on the rez other than
play basketball.” (“Rez ball,” Indianz.com) When Junior, a freshman, is picked
to a varsity team at the white school as the best shooter it makes him feel like a
warrior. It is the first time the fourteen-year-old feels like this.
Having no other opportunity, basketball became the means of getting
even between Rowdy and Junior. First match took place on the reservation.
Junior, the outsider and traitor to the tribe, did not have much audience. Almost
all the reservation Indians called him Arnold, his white name, to show their
hatred towards him. Rowdy did what he knew best to punish Junior for his
betrayal. He knocked him down unconscious.
Surprisingly, there is another white man who has a strong impact on
Junior´s identity and self-esteem. First, it was the white reservation school
teacher who encouraged Junior to leave. Now, it is the basketball coach.
Coach was thinking I would be an all-state player in a few years. He
was thinking maybe I´d play some small-college ball.
It was crazy.
How often does a reservation Indian kid hear that?
How often do you hear the words “Indian” and “college” in the
same sentence? Especially in my family. Especially in my tribe. (180)
On the reservation nobody expects the children to be good.
Consequently, they do not try to be good. At the white school they support
53
Junior, and want him to improve in what he is good at. It is the character of the
white coach who encourages Junior. What Alexie tries to communicate is that
not all white people are bad, which is the opinion of most of the reservation
residents in the novel. He uses the white authorities, the teacher and the coach,
as a compensation for the attitudes white people have taken towards Native
Americans. Junior´s self-esteem is reinforced by the coach´s support.
Consequently, he begins to think about his Indian identity more positively, and
stops to perceive his ethnic identity as inferior.
On the example of the basketball matches between his former ingroup,
i.e. the reservation, and his presents ingroup, the white high school, Alexie
shows Junior´s confusion of his identity. “Who am I?” Junior asks himself in
one of the many cartoons (182). During the rematch with Wellpinit at Reardan,
this is how Junior felt by Alexie‟s words full of humour and irony: “Jeez, I felt
like one of those Indian scouts who led the U.S. Cavalry against other Indians.”
(183) Seeing all his former classmates and members of the tribe, he felt like a
betrayer.
For Junior basketball means the way how to prove that he is strong and
will not give up.
It is a means of getting the self-esteem which is very
important for a teenage boy. As a result, Junior takes the rematch very
seriously.
How about I say that it makes me feel like I´ve had to grow up
really fast, too fast, and that I´ve come to realize that every single
moment of my life is important. And that every choice I make is
important. And that a basketball game, even a game between two small
schools in the middle of nowhere, can be the difference between being
happy and being miserable for the rest of my life. (184)
From this excerpt, the importance of basketball for Junior is obvious. If
his team lost, it would be a double loss as he would not get back at Rowdy. And
there is no other way for Junior to take his revenge than the game of basketball.
54
The excerpt is taken from the later passages of the novel when Junior has
spent almost the whole school year at Reardan High School. What Alexie makes
him say in the extract is affected by the experience he had both at the white
school and on the reservation after he left. What is the experience and how it
influenced Junior´s identity is the focus of the following chapter.
As Alexie explains in his short story “Saint Junior,” “(...) basketball was
the most democratic sport. All you needed to play was something that
resembled a ball and something else that approximated the shape of a basket.”
(Alexie, 2000, p. 156) The most democratic sport becomes crucial in forming
Junior´s identity. He, the Indian and outsider boy, gets into a basketball team
and is encouraged to prove his skills. Richard Powers says that basketball was
invented and served as “a way ethnics could express their national pride and
compete with other immigrants.” (1990, p. 212) Junior expresses his pride in the
white society. He was shown that when Indians are given a chance, they can be
good as any white person.
In contrast to the beginning of the novel, he starts to think about his
Indian identity differently, more positively. This happens later in the novel,
though. After his decision to leave for the white town, he has to cope with the
consequences of the decision.
6.5 Traitors and outsiders
I suggested that Junior was seen as a traitor by the members of his tribe.
Being the only Indian, he is seen as an outsider at the white school. In this
chapter, I will deal with the factors that contribute to forming his identity after
his decision to transfer the schools. The main focus will be the behaviour and
attitudes of the reservation Indians and the conditions at the white school.
At the beginning of his adventure at the new school, Junior experiences
the status of outsider:
55
Zitty and lonely, I woke up on the reservation as an Indian, and
somewhere on the road to Reardan, I became something less than
Indian.
And once I arrived at Reardan, I became something less than less
than less than Indian.
Those white kids did not talk to me.
They barely looked at me. (83)
Junior still thinks of his Indian identity as of something inferior. He
perceives it as the troublesome badge. However, the atmosphere at the school
makes him feel more miserable. The white children treat him in such a way
that, paradoxically, his Indian identity becomes more bearable for him. He feels
bad as Indian, but he realizes that you can feel even worse.
Junior does not find solace at home, on the reservation, either. Even if he
actually did not leave the reservation in the sense of moving out, the tribe
considers him a betrayer. Many Native Americans have to cope with this
unpleasant situation when they decide to “leave.” They betray their tribes by
leaving in a pursuit of better life, which is by many of the members of the tribe
thought of as the pursuit of a white life. When they try to have better lives, they
become white. Alexie tries to change this opinion. For he himself left a
reservation school for a white one, which makes The Absolutely True Diary
highly autobiographical.
Another reason for accusing Junior of betrayal is the tradition of
American Indian sense of community. Junior´s family as well as all the families
on the reservation has stayed there since its foundation and nobody has ever
lived in another place. By breaking tribalism, i.e. the traditions of his ingroup,
Junior is considered a traitor.
Facing hatred on the reservation and the uncanny feelings of ignorance
and alienation at the white school, Junior‟s identity is strongly questioned. He
feels like he does not belong to any community, neither to the Indian nor to the
white one. The following excerpt shows his feelings as well as the origin of the
title:
56
Travelling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little
white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was
half Indian in one place and half white in the other. It was like being
Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn‟t pay
well at all. (118)
Junior is confused about his identity. To people on the reservation he
seems infected by white people. On the contrary, white people would never
consider him white. The fact that he compares his identity to “a job” which is
not well-paid indicates that he is not satisfied with it. He may think white but
his skin will always be dark and make him Indian. This is a reason why people
on the reservation call him an apple. They think that he is red outside but white
inside (132).
Despite the fact that Junior is unhappy about being Indian because they
are treated badly, sometimes his ethnic identity becomes an advantage for him,
as the following excerpt shows.
Because I got to hold hands with Penelope, and kiss her goodbye when she jumped on the school bus to go home, all of the other boys
in school decided that I was a major stud.
Even the teachers started paying attention to me.
I was mysterious.
How did I, the dorky Indian guy, win a tiny piece of Penelope´s
heart?
What was my secret?
I looked and talked and dreamed and walked differently than
everybody else.
I was new. (110)
Adolescence is characteristic for meeting first loves. Alexie does not
avoid this issue and makes Junior fall in love with a white girl. Being the most
57
popular at school, Penelope brings Junior a partial popularity. The other part of
his sudden popularity is caused by his exotic look, his otherness. Only after he
started to date Penelope, he started to be noticed, too. His otherness became an
advantage.
There is another example in the novel of using Junior´s ethnic identity.
Despite the fact that he perceives his Indian identity negatively, he made use of
it to hide the fact that he was poor. He pretended too be all traditional, to be
real Indian. As such he could not buy something or go somewhere because
“there´s this Indian ceremony at home.” (120)
When going trick-or-treating on Halloween as a homeless man, Junior
does not have to wear any fancy dress. He just wears his usual clothes. He
realizes the difference between being white and Indian. White children have
plenty of money, plenty of everything. What they do not have, however, is the
caring family. Even if drunks, Junior‟s parents do care about him, which is a
thing that many of his white peers miss.
Since there is a stereotypical opinion in Reardan that Indians are rich
because of their casinos, Junior wrongly assumes that money is an important
factor in establishing his position among his white peers. He lies about being
poor in fear that he would loose his hardly gained friends. Eventually, he learns
that “if you let people into your life a bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”
(130) By revealing the truth, he was assured that his white friends care about
him and love him no matter what his ethnicity or financial situation is.
What Junior experiences after his decision to attend a white school is the
confusion of his identity. Tajfel´s theory of positively viewed ingroups and
negatively viewed outgroups can be applied to explain Junior´s experience (qtd.
in Gudykunst, 2004, p. 76). Junior´s reservation ingroup perceives him as a
traitor because he tries to become a member of the white outgroup. In the small
white town, he has the status of the outsider for the same reason. The colour of
his skin, as the body mark of ethnicity, becomes the main obstacle in
establishing the position at the white school. At some points, however, his
exotic appearance, i.e. his otherness, helps him to be partly accepted. Still an
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outsider in the white town, he started to feel more comfortable at the school
than on the reservation.
6.6 Indian boys and white girls
It is not easy for an Indian boy to live in a white mainstream society.
People in the small white town are influenced by stereotypes and prejudices
about Native Americans. However, Indians are not the only ones who suffer
from the Euro-American way of thinking, typical for western mainstream
societies. White girls from small towns are disadvantaged, too. This chapter will
focus on the character of Junior´s white girlfriend who, in many aspects,
resembles Junior.
For Junior, one of the best things in Reardan is his girlfriend Penelope.
She is the opposite of Junior. According to him she is the prettiest, smartest, and
most popular girl in the world (110). One would assume that she must happy.
But she is not and this is what puts them together.
On the character of Penelope, Alexie shows that the small white town
and the Indian reservation are not completely different.
“Arnold,” she said one day after school, “I hate this little town.
It´s so small, too small. Everything about it is small. The people here
have small ideas. Small dreams. They all want to marry each other and
live here forever.” (111)
As well as Junior, Penelope, too, feels uncomfortable in the place where
she lives. On the reservation, people are traditional and acknowledge tribalism
and consequently see Junior as a traitor. In the small, white, and predominantly
farming town nobody expects young people to want something more and to
leave. To be more specific, nobody expects girls to pursue something better.
They both have dreams that are not supposed to come true:
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And I couldn´t make fun of her for that dream [to study
architecture]. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren´t supposed
to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren´t supposed
to dream big, either.
We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there
was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. (112)
From the excerpt, it is apparent that both small town girls and American
Indians are treated in a similar way. Junior is aware of the situation that
Indians, as a marginalized minority, are not paid attention to. And he wants to
change it. Alexie points out to the fact that the American mainstream society is
still burdened by the modernist metanarratives which postmodernism tries to
break. Mary Klages claims that “modern societies constantly are on guard
against anything and everything labelled as „disorder‟”, which becomes the
other in the postmodern world, more precisely in western culture. “Thus
anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational,
(etc.) becomes part of „disorder‟ (...).” (“Postmoderism”)
Meeting first loves during the period of growing-up is another factor that
has an impact on young adults´ identity. When young adult becomes intimate
and shares his or her feelings, “[he or she] offers up his or her own identity, sees
it reflected in the loved one, and is better able to clarify the self.” (Papalia and
Olds, 1987, p. 516) The white town prefers white males to Indians and women.
Both Alexie´s characters find out that their dreams are similar. They want to
change the situation, and to purify their identities from this way of thinking.
Alexie illustrates the male dominated white society on the character of
Penelope´s father. He is a racist and hates Junior because he is an Indian.
Penelope, very well aware of it, starts to date Junior to make her father angry.
Unlike Junior who has no reason to be subversive against his parents, Penelope
does it for this reason. In this sense, she uses Junior. He is attracted to her
mainly by her whiteness:
60
She was wearing a white shirt and white shorts, and I could see
the outlines of her white bra and white panties.
Her skin was pale white. Milky white. Cloud white.
So she was all white on white on white, like the most perfect kind
of vanilla dessert cake you´ve ever seen.
I wanted to be her chocolate topping. (114)
Adolescents go through their first loves very intensely and very often the
physical appearance seems to be the most important. Junior is fascinated by
Penelope´s white skin because it is exotic for him, as he is exotic for his white
peers. Alexie does not make it easy for him as he accuses him of racism for
being in love with a white girl through the characters of his friends. Alexie says
that Indian men get white women as bowling trophies and that white girls are
privileged. Junior feels bad about it because he sincerely loves Penelope.
Here, I attempted to show that being a reservation Indian and a white
small town girl is not of much difference in terms of pursuing better life and
realizing one´s dreams. For both characters, Junior and Penelope, it is difficult
to overcome the rooted concept of white male dominated mainstream society.
Alexie, as a postmodern author, makes them strong and try to defy it.
Considering Junior´s ethnic identity, Junior perceives it as a burden
again because he is accused of falling in love with a white girl, which is by his
friends seen as racist.
In this chapter, I focused on factors which form Junior´s identity. After he
left his home on the reservation for the white high school outside the
reservation he felt more Indian. Alexie let him attach more importance to his
cultural identity which could be explained by Gudykunst theory. He says that
when we are in an unfamiliar environment, in a different culture, or generally
abroad, we tend to cling to our ethnic or cultural identities. They suddenly
become important to us, because at home we do not have many reasons to think
about them (2004, p. 14). This is what Junior did.
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One of key factors of forming Junior´s identity seems to be the game of
basketball through which he can prove that Indians can be good when they are
given the chance. Basketball is also important for forming his identity as a
strong boy, capable of taking care of himself.
Having been raised in a place where Indians accept their inferior
position, Junior brought prejudices about white people being magnificent into
the white society. There is a gradual change in his view of Indians as he finds
out that he is smarter than most of the white children. He begins to understand
that Indians are not more stupid or inferior as white people want them to be.
He wants better life and opportunities that white people have. The obstacle in
gaining this seems to be the body mark of his ethnicity – the colour of his skin.
Alexie puts Junior into a position where his identity is greatly
questioned. He finds it hard to identify either as Indian or white. On the
reservation, he is treated as white. At the white town, he still will be the Indian
boy. Despite the fact that he experiences difficulties in both ingroups, he still
finds his decision to leave a good idea. In contrast to the reservation, at the
white school he has a chance to realize himself. He no longer sees his
reservation as a good place to live.
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7. Achieving Autonomy
The aim of this final chapter is to find out how Alexie finishes Junior´s
search for identify at the end of the novel. Having spent a whole school year in
a white town surrounded by white people, Junior learnt many things about
himself, mainstream American society, and American Indian minority. In the
following text, I will try to analyse how this experience participated in forming
his identity.
At the end of the novel, there are some crucial moments that tell us about
the state of Junior´s identity. An example of the development of his identity is
connected to the rematch in basketball with his former reservation peers, the
Wellpinit Redskins, and is most obvious from the following excerpt:
The buzzer sounded. The game was over. We had killed the
Redskins. Yep, we had humiliated them.
We were dancing around the gym, laughing and screaming and
chanting.
My teammates mobbed me. They lifted me up on their shoulders
and carried me around the gym. (194)
Alexie´s use of the pronoun “we” clearly indicates that Junior identifies
himself with his white teammates. Through basketball he became the hero at
Reardan. He was given a chance to prove that he is good at something and he
used it. On the reservation he would be the same ostracized boy hiding at
home. Blinded by the lust for revenge on his former best friend Rowdy, he
started to feel white and forgot what it was like to live on the reservation.
Alexie makes him realize that there is nothing to be proud of the winning soon
afterwards. He makes him realize that Indians will always be disadvantaged in
comparison to their white peers.
I realized that my team, the Reardan Indians, was Goliath. (...)
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Okay, so maybe my white teammates had problems, serious
problems, but none of their problems was life threatening.
But I looked over at the Wellpinit Redskins, at Rowdy.
I knew that two or three of those Indians might not have eaten
breakfast that morning. No food in the house.
I knew that seven or eight Indians lived with drunken mother
and fathers.
I knew that one of those Indians had a father who dealt crack and
meth.
I knew two of those Indians had fathers in prison.
I knew that none of them were going to college. Not one of them.
(195)
Junior‟s team won, but his goodness and empathy do not allow him to
enjoy it. Alexie illustrates the terrible conditions in which young American
Indians grow up. At the same time he makes Junior not to forget his origin and
his home. Junior feels sorry for his former teammates because he still is the
member of the ingroup. We can be members of one or more ingroups, and
therefore identify with them. Junior identifies himself as Indian, even though he
accepts certain behaviour and uses benefits of the white ingroup.
7.1 No Future on the Reservation
There is a change in Junior´s perception of his home, the reservation. At
the beginning of the novel, he found the reservation a safe home. At the end of
the novel, he is more critical about it.
Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were
supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to
disappear. But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten that
reservations were meant to be death camps. (217)
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This excerpt shows Junior´s concerns about his life on the reservation.
He, as the only one, realizes that there is no future for Indians on the
reservation. As we can learn from Fixico´s A Companion to Native American
History (2002, 2004), the concept of reservations was one of the many attempts
of destroying Native American nations and their culture (p. 382-388). After
more than a century since Indian reservations had started to be established,
Indians got used to the manner they have been treated, and forgot the original
purpose of the reservations. Alexie makes Junior extraordinarily strong to see
that staying on the reservation would mean having no education and possible
death caused by alcohol. He now sees his home as a bad place to live, even
though he will always love it. Junior feels Indian but he also feels the urge to
leave, and get better life in the white world.
At the very end of the novel, Alexie works with the concept of multiple
identities. As Barker explains “identities are never either pure of fixed but
formed at the intersections of age, class, gender, race, and nation.” (2003, p. 260)
Junior´s quest for identity ends with Alexie‟s conclusion that Junior is not only a
Spokane Indian, but in a contemporary multicultural and diverse world, he also
belongs to the tribe of American immigrants, basketball players, bookworms,
cartoonists, teenage boys, funeral-goers, etc. (217)
The fact that Junior identifies as Spokane Indian, and not generally
Native American or Indian is an interesting issue. When the first European
settlers came to what is now North America, they encountered hundreds of
American Indian tribes. They labelled them all as Indians, though, not taking
into account the huge difference among them. Cyrus mentions, in her
introduction to ethnic and racial ethnicity, that it is common for Native
Americans to identify with a particular tribe rather than generally as Native
American (1993, p. 12). Alexie wants to point out this stereotypical categorizing,
and therefore lets Junior identify with the Spokane tribe.
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In the final part of the novel, Alexie depicts Junior as a transformed man.
Despite the fact that identity changes during one´s life, we can say that Junior
knows who he is and what he wants from life. He identifies himself as Indian
but refuses to internalize the perception of Indians by white people as hopeless
and weak people who do not strive for better lives. Getting to know the white
society and the opportunities people have there, he does not want to be
deprived of them. To apply Erikson´s theory of identity crisis expanded by
Marcia (Papalia and Olds, 1987, p. 517), we can say that Junior, travelling
between the reservation and the white town, undergone a crisis of identity, but
he found his commitment. He keeps his Indian identity, and tries to adapt to
the white society to have the same chances as any other American citizen. In her
work about childhood and postmodernism, Bubíková says that “there are
stories of children who tried to escape the limits imposed by their race by
passing as whites (...).” (2008, p. 131) I can see the similarity between these
protagonist and Alexie´s Junior.
What Alexie suggests is that especially young people should try and
pursue happiness outside the reservation but at the same time not forget their
ethnic origins.
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8. Conclusions
In the diploma thesis I attempted to explore the identity of contemporary
Native American young adult on the basis of analysis of a young adult novel
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007) by Sherman Alexie. I
focused on selected factors and analysed how they affect Native American
identity of Junior, the novel´s main character. The factors are his home – the
Spokane Indian reservation, his family and friends there, reservation and white
high school, white peers, and sports. The analysis consists of three parts which
correspond to the development of the novel. First part looks at the state of
Junior´s identity at his home, i.e. on the reservation. The second and largest part
deals with his identity after his decision to leave for an off-reservation white
high school. Last chapter is devoted to the completion of his identity. Besides
the character´s identity, I was also interested in what attitudes the author takes
in the discussion of life possibilities of contemporary Native American young
adults in terms of preserving their identities.
The analysis has turned out to be successful and the following text
acquaints the reader with the conclusions.
One cannot assert oneself without forming the identity. The formation of
identity is predominantly the task of adolescence. It is a complex
developmental period, defined by Erikson as a stage of “identity vs. role
confusion.” (qtd. in Papalia and Olds, 1987, p. 515) Young Native American
people have to find out who they are both in terms of their culture and of the
white mainstream society. They have to overcome many obstacles while
forming their Native American identities. Living in a postmodern, according to
some authors in post-postmodern (Lewis, 2001, p. 122), and multicultural
world, contemporary young Native Americans can hardly avoid life in a white
mainstream society in case that they want their lives to be better. Not only have
they to overcome the opinions about white people held by the members of their
tribes, but also they have to be strong enough to leave the reservation and to
face hatred when they come back.
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According to Šárka Bubíková, the prevailing theme of postmodern
American bildungsroman is the survival of the protagonists in a mainstream
society. They try to establish their identities in terms of preserving their ethnic
or racial roots, and to find out what it is like to be a member of a minority group
in a multicultural, postmodern world (2009, p. 94-95). Alexie, letting his Native
American hero leave for a white mainstream society, where his identity is
questioned, follows the genre of postmodern ethnic bildungsroman.
In the analysis, I was observing whether and how Sherman Alexie makes
his contemporary hero feel Native American and how the factors named in the
introductory paragraph participate in forming his Native American identity. I
worked with various kinds of identity. As far as identity is concerned, the
distinction between ingroup and outgroup, first suggested by Henry Tajfel, was
most useful (qtd. in Gudykunst, 2004, p. 76).
Living on the American Indian reservation, young Native Americans are
members of the reservation ingroup. They accept its beliefs, values, and
opinions. Not interacting with the white society, the negatively viewed
outgroup very often, they does not think about their identity profoundly. It is
not easy to grow up on reservation where people are surrounded by
unemployment, poverty, hunger, and alcoholism. On the character of Junior
Alexie shows that some of the young people identify as Native Americans but
at the same time are not satisfied with the internalized self-perception of Native
Americans as hopeless, desperate, and alcoholic people.
When people started to be interested in and learn about the other with
the coming of postmodernism, ethnic minorities included, they did so through
the media of popular culture. Alexie blames popular culture, especially the
medium of television, and mainstream society for creating stereotypes about
Native Americans (Bubíková, 2008, p. 138). They eventually accept these
stereotypes, and try to behave according to them, which is reflected in their
identities. This perception is rooted in the identities of Native American young
adults because they grow up in families who think in this manner. Families as
role models then take part in forming young adults´ identities.
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Alexie appeals to the young Native Americans to be strong and to leave
the reservation to have better lives as his Junior did in the novel. Once they
decide to leave, even if not in the sense of moving out but, for instance, in the
sense of attending a white school, their identities become more important to
them. Leaving the reservation means that young Native Americans happen to
be in a new, unfamiliar place. Gudykunst states that when we are in a new
place, we tend to attach more importance to our cultural identity, and it
consequently influences our behaviour (2004, p.14). There are similarities
between Gudykunst´s theory and Junior as Alexie makes Junior attach more
importance to his ethnic identity. Junior, and possibly any other Native
American individual who follows Junior´s steps, brings the beliefs, values, and
behaviour of his ingroup into the new place. They consider them the right ones,
which puts them into the position of outsiders. They have to learn to survive in
a society which they formerly saw as the outgroup.
There is a positive thing about leaving the reservation for a white society.
It is that the young Native Americans realize that they are not inferior to white
people. In the case of Junior, Alexie made him realize that Indians are not
stupid and hopeless when they are given a chance to prove it. Junior wants
better life and opportunities that white people have.
Leaving for a better education in the white mainstream society, young
Native American people may find it hard to identify either as Indian or white.
On the reservation, they are treated as white because they try to become
members of the white outgroup. The members of their tribe perceive their
decision to leave as a betrayal to the tribe. At the white society, they will still be
Native Americans and treated stereotypically as an inferior minority. Many of
these young Native Americans are misunderstood in the white mainstream
society influenced by stereotypes and prejudices. In his work, Alexie tries to
deconstruct the stereotypes. One could suggest that Alexie, too, writes
stereotypically about Native Americans. He writes about social issues, such as
poverty and alcoholism. This is not a stereotypical depiction but a true one.
Alexie belongs to the contemporary generation of writers who give a portrayal
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of things as they are, of the real life of contemporary Native Americans. They
are not presented romantically as noble savages or primitive human beings, but
as ordinary people.
Despite the fact that Junior experiences difficulties in both ingroups, he
still finds his decision to leave a good idea because, in contrast to the
reservation, at the white school he has a chance to realize himself. He no longer
sees his reservation as a good place for future live.
The key factor in forming Native American young adults´ identities
seems to be the game of basketball through which they can get self-esteem and
pride important for identity formation. The reservation environment depicted
by Alexie is gloomy and many young adults may not feel comfortable there.
There are not many opportunities for them how to spend their leisure time.
Alexie ascribes a huge importance to the game of basketball. Through this lowcost game, young adults can prove their skills and their self-esteem is
recognized. They can hardly achieve this in any other reservation activity.
Towards the end of the novel, Alexie depicts Junior as a mature man.
Despite the fact that identity changes during one´s life, we can say that Junior
knows who he is and what he wants from life. When the period of adolescence
is accomplished, young adults should be autonomous individuals. Here, I can
see similarities between Alexie´s portrayal of the state of Junior´s identity and
Erikson´s expanded theory about identity by Marcia. Marcia says that the
desirable stage at the end of adolescence is identity achievement (qtd. in Papalia
and Olds, 1987, p. 517). Junior identifies himself as Indian but refuses to
internalize the perception of Indians by white people as hopeless and weak
people who do not strive for better lives. Getting to know the white society and
the opportunities people have there, he does not want to be deprived of them.
He keeps his Indian identity and tries to adapt to the white society to have the
same chances as any other American citizen. He reached the autonomy because
he is positive about his decision to continue his education in the white society
and is also prepared to take responsibility for his decision.
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In the novel, there is an obvious appeal to young Native Americans to try
and pursue happiness and better life outside the reservation, in case they are
unhappy on their reservations. If they decide to follow Alexie´s steps and do
leave the reservation they have to face an assigned status of outsiders. This is
not an easy task. They set out to become the members of former outgroups. At
the same time Alexie wants them not to forget their ethnic origins and to try to
preserve their culture and traditions.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is definitely one of the most
excellent contemporary young adult novels. The evidence is the National Book
Award for Young People‟s Literature it gained in 2007. The reasons may be the
following. It meets most of the characteristics of a University of Exeter Study on
the Qualities of Good Young Adults Books presented by professors of English
Donelson and Nilsen (2009, p. 17-35). It is written in the first person and in a
contemporary teenage language, which provides authenticity. It uses the
graphical aspects – cartoons and illustrations, important for sensory-dependent
young adult readers.
The use of illustrations places Alexie among postmodern authors since
graphical fragmentation is one of the postmodern literary means of subversion.
Postmodern authors use also humour, irony, and paradox to be subversive.
Humour and irony can be found throughout the novel, which is appreciated by
young adult readers. There are three more characteristics of the novel that meet
the characteristics of a good young adult book. It is fast-paced. Even if
sometimes sad and painful, the novel ends on a positive note, which gives the
young adult reader the hope. It teaches about culture and ethnic minority
different than the mainstream one.
Here, I can see that Alexie extends the ideas of the Native American
Renaissance of 1960s. As one of the second generation of Native American
Renaissance authors, Alexie gives the readers a portrayal of the Native
American life from his point of view, from his own experience. He shows that is
it complicated to grow up and be a member of ethnic minority. He gives a
71
depiction of the position of contemporary young adult Native Americans, and
suggests possible ways of getting better life.
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Resume
Tato diplomová práce se zabývá faktory, které se podílí na formováním
identity současných dospívajících Indiánů a jejich možnostmi v současné americké
společnosti na základě analýzy románu pro dospívající současného Indiánského
autora Shermana Alexieho The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.
Práce zachycuje, v jakých podmínkách vyrůstají současní mladí Indiáni a
jaké faktory se podílí na utváření jejich identity, rozhodnou-li se v období
dospívání pro život v bělošské většinové společnosti.
Analýza ukázala, že současní mladí Indiáni musí prokázat velké úsíli, aby se
oprostili od převzatých názorů a vnímání sebe sama, které je na ně uvaleno
většinovou společností, a které přijali za své, a aby se prosadili za hranicemi
rezervace v bílé mainstreamové společnosti, která nabízí více možností pro
uplatnění. Musí přitom čelit negativnímu přijetí jejich rozhodnutí hledat lepší život
právě v mainstreamové společnosti ze strany obyvatel rezervace, ale také
zakořeněným předsudkům o Indiánech ze strany této společnosti.
The diploma thesis deals with the factor affecting the formation of identity of
contemporary Native American young adults and their opportunities in a contemporary
American society on the basis of an analysis of a young adult novel The Absolutely True
Diary of a Part-time Indian by a contemporary Native American writer Sherman Alexie.
The thesis depicts the conditions in which young adult Native Americans grow up
and the factors which affect the formation of their identity, in case they decide for life in
white mainstream society during the period of growing-up.
The analysis suggests that contemporary Native American young adults have to be
very strong in order to overcome the internalized perceptions of themselves imposed on
them by white mainstream society, and to succeed in this society which offers more
opportunities for assertion. They are exposed to a negative acceptance of their decision to
pursue better life outside the reservation. They also have to face prejudices and stereotypes
about Native Americans held by the mainstream society.
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Bibliography
Primary sources:
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary Of a Part-Time Indian. New York:
Little Brown, 2007.
Secondary sources:
Alexie, Sherman. “Saint Junior.” The Toughest Indian in the World. New York:
Atlantic Monthly Express, 2000.
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. London: SAGE
Publications, 2003.
Beach, Richard W., Marshall, James D. “Teaching the Young Adult Novel.”
Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc. 1991, p. 336-348.
Berkhofer, Robert, F., The white man’s Indian: images of the American Indian from
Columbus to the present. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Bobulová, Ivana. “A Brief History of Children‟s Literature. The Conception of
Childhood.” Bobulová, Ivana
et.al.
Children’s and Juvenile Literature
(Written in English). Nitra: Pedagogická fakulta UKF v Nitre, 2003.
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List of Appendices
Appendix 1: The cover of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
Alexie, Sherman. Illus. Ellen Forney. The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian.
New York: Little Brown, 2007.
Appendix 2: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian: a brief summary
Appendix 3: An Illustration from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
Alexie, Sherman. Illus. Ellen Forney. The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian.
New York: Little Brown, 2007, p. 14.
Appendix 4: A brief biography of Sherman Alexie
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<http://www.fallsapart.com/>.
80
Appendix 1
The cover of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
81
Appendix 2
An illustration from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
82
Appendix 3
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian: a brief summary
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007) is a second young
adult novel by Sherman Alexie. Alexie draws on his own life experiences which
makes the novel highly autobiographical.
The main character of the story, Arnold Spirit alias Junior, is a fourteen
years old Spokane Indian. He lives on the reservation but decides to change the
reservation high school for a white high school in white city of Reardan. A lot of
problems arise from his decision. He is considered a traitor by the people on the
reservation. He experiences racism and prejudices in the white town.
Alexie gives a story attracting young adult readers for its humour, diary
form, and extraordinary contemporary hero.
83
Appendix 4
A brief biography of Sherman Alexie
-
Born: October 1966, on Spokane Indian Reservation, Wellpinit, Washington
-
Education: BA in American Studies at Washington State University,
Pullman, Washington
-
Work:
-
Collections of poetry: The Business of Fancydancing (1991); I Would Steal
Horses (1992); First Indian on the Moon (1993); The Summer of Black Widows
(1996); Face (2009); etc.
-
Collections of short stories: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
(1993); The Toughest Indian in the World (2000); Ten Little Indians (2003);
War Dances (2009)
-
Novels: Reservation Blues (1995); Indian Killer (1996); Flight (2007); The
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)
-
Screenplays: Smoke Signals (1998); The Business of Fancydancing (2002)
Awards:
-
Awards for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: 2007 National
Book Award for Young People‟s Literature; National Parenting
Publication Gold Winner 2007; Publishers Weekly 2007 Best Books of the
Year – Children‟s Fiction; 2008 American Indian Library Association
American Indian Youth Literature Award; 2008 Pacific Northwest Book
Award; 2009 Odyssey Award for audio version; etc.
-
Other awards: 1993 Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award Citation; 1996
Granta Magazine: Twenty Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40;
2007 Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award;
2008 Stranger Genius Award in Literature; etc.
84