Subverting the Stereotype: Sherman Alexie's an Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian as a crucial Intervention in Today;s Language Arts Classrooms

Sherman Alexie is known as the contemporary voice for the modern American Indian because of his deep and wide popularity amongst many different ethnic and racial groups. His novels and short stories have become very popular in classrooms and libraries across the nation. By being the voice of a whole people in popular culture, he must open up new "undocumented understandings and perspectives" on being an American Indian, which is given to his readers in all of his literature, but particularly in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (Bailey 3). He is trying to bridge the gap between different worlds and different peoples through the disruption of binaries and boundaries placed upon identity, and realizing the commonalities between a native and non-native experience growing up today. However, he does not do so without extensive criticism from those who study indigenous scholarship and literature, as well as other popular indigenous writers and peers. Despite the criticism from these people, I believe that Alexie's adolescent novel is what critics would call a crucial intervention in today's post-colonial world. It allows students to identify with a population they perhaps have never encountered, or identify finally with someone who knows their history and their story. It also teaches minority students how to understand themselves in the contemporary world as someone who is proud of their people, but wants to overcome the obstacles of systemic discrimination. The book itself is funny and entertaining enough to engage a wide range of readers and non-readers and that in itself is valuable to Language Arts teachers who worry about student participation. This book is an important addition to curriculum today, and if taught carefully, can help shape a more culturally competent society.

SUBVERTING THE STEREOTYPE: SHERMAN ALEXIE’S AN ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART TIME INDIAN AS A CRUCIAL INTERVENTION IN TODAY’S LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSROOMS by Morgan Lami A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts In English Approved: ______________________________ Robert Stephen Tatum Thesis Faculty Supervisor _______________________________ Disa Gambera Honors Faculty Advisor _____________________________ Barry Weller Chair, Department of English _____________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Dean, Honors College December 2016 Copyright © 2016 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Sherman Alexie is known as the contemporary voice for the modern American Indian because of his deep and wide popularity amongst many different ethnic and racial groups. His novels and short stories have become very popular in classrooms and libraries across the nation. By being the voice of a whole people in popular culture, he must open up new “undocumented understandings and perspectives” on being an American Indian, which is given to his readers in all of his literature, but particularly in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (Bailey 3). He is trying to bridge the gap between different worlds and different peoples through the disruption of binaries and boundaries placed upon identity, and realizing the commonalities between a native and non-native experience growing up today. However, he does not do so without extensive criticism from those who study indigenous scholarship and literature, as well as other popular indigenous writers and peers. Despite the criticism from these people, I believe that Alexie’s adolescent novel is what critics would call a crucial intervention in today’s post-colonial world. It allows students to identify with a population they perhaps have never encountered, or identify finally with someone who knows their history and their story. It also teaches minority students how to understand themselves in the contemporary world as someone who is proud of their people, but wants to overcome the obstacles of systemic discrimination. The book itself is funny and entertaining enough to engage a wide range of readers and non-readers and that in itself is valuable to Language Arts teachers who worry about ii student participation. This book is an important addition to curriculum today, and if taught carefully, can help shape a more culturally competent society. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 5 BRADFORD’S CRITIQUE: NOT TOO DIFFERENT 11 COYOTE CARTOGRAPHY AND CRUCIAL INTERVENTIONS 13 SUBVERTING THE STEREOTYPE 24 CONCLUSION: TEACHING THE NOVEL 36 WORKS CITED 39 iv 1 INTRODUCTION “Take a picture with a real Indian,” says James Luna, wearing traditional American Indian clothing, those clothes we familiarize with the historical Indian, those clothes we wear as Halloween costumes each October, as strangers walk past him, interested, willing to pay, as if he were a character at Disneyland. “Take a picture with a real Indian,” says James Luna, wearing what he chooses to wear every day, to those strangers again, who are less interested, less willing to pay, not understanding that this version of Luna is just as real as the real Indian, and that Indians are not found only in history or characters in Western films, but are a group of contemporary people who live on, who did not die so long ago on reservations. James Luna is a performer. He does this performance, changing his clothes, saying the same phrase, around the country, at museums, on street corners, everywhere to prove a point. His point ties into centuries of prejudice, discrimination, colonialism, and stereotypes in relation to the indigenous people of North America. He wants his spectator to ask the question: who is the real Indian? This questions gets answered in many different ways; however, capturing American Indians’ experiences as they know them to be, using words, images, speeches, and actions is a common method or solution to this question. Utilizing movies, books, essays, memoirs, fiction, and more, American Indians reveal their contemporary experiences to their peers, indigenous or not. Sherman Alexie writes across disciplines to speak to his peers in and outside his tribe to make his life and the indigenous life visible. He tries to answer the question of who is the real Indian with one answer: me. Most of his works have autobiographical elements, some more than others, that critique and celebrate 2 the parts of his own life as an indigenous American man. Smokes Signals and An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian are both very widely popular works across populations that are making the “vanishing Indian” appear to those who perhaps had forgotten or chosen not to see. There are other writers, but none so popular with the youth of this country as Alexie is, and, as an educator, this popularity among adolescents is why he and his works interest me so much. However, Alexie depicts some aspects of his life on the reservation and some of his characters in ways that start to become problematic, especially in a classroom. In my own reading, it seems to me that where there are problems, Alexie himself proposes solutions. He makes the stereotype visible in his texts, but carefully uses it to discard its value and its validity. This is especially true of An Absolutely True Diary. An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian is written by Sherman Alexie and illustrated by Ellen Forney. The book itself is somewhere between novel and comic book, using illustrations to add to the narrative. The book follows Arnold Junior Spirit who was born with “water on the bran,” meaning that he was born with brain damage due to extraneous fluids in his brain (Alexie 1). He wears glasses, is unsure of himself, is scrawny, and, overall, doesn’t fit in on his reservation. His best friend Rowdy keeps him grounded and protects him from bullies. Rowdy is himself what one perhaps would expect of an Indian: stoic, strong, and angry like a warrior. Junior, contrary to Rowdy, who is content with staying on the “rez,” seeks something greater than the reservation life, which is, to him, bleak, poor, and hopeless, but is unsure of how to find it. On the reservation, during his geometry class Junior comes to his wits end about the state of the reservation in the contemporary world. Looking at the previous owners, Junior’s 3 mother’s name appears in his own geometry textbook for the school year. This signifies to him that nobody cares about him, his education, his well-being, or his place in the world. This implies to him that a lack of funding (or a lack of wanting to fund) American Indian schools has led to the schools’ inability to buy new textbooks in the thirty or so years between his schooling and his mother’s. After this event, he decides, with a push from his teacher Mr. P. (who he threw the book at, and who blames himself for many of the problems faced by the American Indian youths), that he needs to get off of this reservation. He then attends a white school called Rearden in the small town outside of his reservation and tries to balance his new life there and the life on the reservation. He is a stranger in both places, but also finds comfort in both places for different reasons. His identity development continues to get disrupted and solidified by three (one could argue four with the inclusion of his dog’s death) critical losses throughout his life story; however, he eventually creates an identity for himself that he is comfortable living with, through friendships on the reservation and at Rearden. Junior’s development focuses on not just the differences in being American Indian growing up in contemporary times, but also on growing up in the “in between” of being American Indian and going to a white school. His identity is always in question and he never forgets either part of him because of the prejudice and praise on both sides. His coming of age story does not only show the differences, however, of the colonized and the colonizer, but also the similarities that make us all recognizable as human beings. Alexie uses this book to play with the binaries and stereotypes that exist between the two worlds Junior grows up in. Despite the hopeful outlook, the awards, and the popularity, Alexie did not meet an accepting audience from the more affluent people in his community of American 4 Indian scholars. Many see Alexie’s novels as an addition to colonial discourse, giving the colonizer the American Indian he wants to see: violent, alcoholic, impoverished, statuesque, storytellers, dying out; however, Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, nearly an autobiography of his own life and trials, does not seek to give the colonizer a picture of the American Indian s/he wants to see, neither does it seek to give the colonized a picture of the American Indian s/he wants to see: he tells what he knows to be as truth in his lived experiences. He argues this in an interview done a year after the publication of the book: What really gets me angry is that I write about [alcoholism], a lot, and people assume it's a stereotype. When anybody uses that word to describe alcoholism among Native Americans, as a stereotype, that's what really gets me angry. It's a disavowal of the truth. Alcoholism is epidemic among Native Americans and anybody who says otherwise is either drunk or they're lying or they're romantic fools, and so it's not the alcoholism itself that gets me angry, it's the denial that surrounds it (Sherman Alexie, interview with Enrique Cerna, July 11, 2008). However, it’d be untrue to say that he doesn’t write to many of the stereotypes that exist in colonial discourse: Rowdy as a warrior; Rowdy’s abusive, alcoholic father; Junior’s own alcoholic father; the three deaths all tied to alcohol; the immense poverty faced by Junior and his peers on the reservation; and the hopelessness that some may interpret as laziness. Also, Junior’s criticism of the reservation and Alexie’s portrayal of it has been severely criticized by Alexie’s opponents due to its negativity, especially as it is being read by those who may have no other perception of a reservation than Junior’s perspective. However, it is also true that these are not depictions that damn their characters to acting stereotypical, or that damns the reservation as a place of stagnation. One of the many scenes that gets critics riled 5 up is the opening depiction of the pow wow and Forney’s illustration of what are called the chicken dancers. Junior is afraid of getting picked on at the pow wow which gives the reader the idea that somehow these people are dangerous: “What if somebody picks on me?” (Alexie 18). And his worries come true when three adult men attack him and Rowdy; however, the cause of violence here is a theme seen across development stories for adolescents: Junior is disabled and different. He is the butt of everyone’s joke not because American Indians are inherently savage or dangerous, but because Junior is an outcast to begin with. In regards to Forney’s picture, we get a very different identity of the American Indian than the violent one initially depicted. It is the lack of repetition of the same identity that begins to complicate the viewer’s ideas of the American Indian. In addition to that, while there is some worry that the audience is laughing at this cultural tradition instead of laughing with it, one must remind oneself, and readers whom one is responsible of, that this is a fourteen-year-old’s perspective of this tradition. Think of family traditions that are present in other cultures. They become less cool, less impressive, easier to make fun of, as one goes through puberty and begins to care what others think of them. On top of that though, while Junior is quick to draw a funny cartoon, he also “think[s] the chicken dancers are cool” (Alexie 19). He even begs Rowdy to go watch them, even though Rowdy describes them as “boring,” as he is another 6 fourteen-year-old boy (Alexie 19). This shows Junior’s own appreciation for the pow wow and the traditional dances of his tribe. There is some magic to be found in Junior’s perception of his home and his people that contributes to creating a nuanced ideation of the reservation: both a place where Junior feels uncomfortable, and a place where he finds immense joy and pleasure. Alexie gives his characters freedom through humor, Forney’s illustration, and roundness to break down the seeming “hard lines” of American Indian stereotypes. Alexie is aware of what stereotypes are used to characterize his people, and uses this knowledge to disrupt and deconstruct these characterizations; he does so very carefully. Nevertheless, this subtlety can be problematic when the book lands in uninformed, unexperienced, and uncareful hands: the hands of adolescents; however, it remains an important novel for those adolescents. It has the ability to shape a more culturally competent society through the younger generation, and give many minority adolescents, specifically American Indian adolescents, a safe space in the classroom. 7 BRADFORD’S CRITIQUE: NOT TOO DIFFERENT Clare Bradford, one of Alexie’s loudest critics and a relatively famous scholar in American Indian Studies, makes the assertion that “children’s texts. . . [that] afford diverse, self-conscious, and informed representations of Indigenous cultures comprise a crucial intervention in processes of decolonization across settler societies” (Bradford 229). Bradford looks toward indigenous authors to write texts that are innovative, collective, new, and represent indigenous life positively, in a way that teaches children to regard indigenous peoples positively. She wants authors to reflect cultural differences in the construction of their texts. She wants authors to represent their people and tribes accurately. She believes that, if done correctly, an indigenous novel or book anchored toward children, can change society all together and rework “settler societies”. However, Bradford does not see Alexie nor his novel as one of these “crucial intervention[s].” His focus on humanity, multiplicity, and universality creates a popular narrative, which Alexie’s novel has definitely become. His popularity and universality creates an indigenous perspective that is “not too different” (Bradford “Race” 49). Not different enough to change and upset the way post-colonial societies look on the colonized. She attacks its use of first person narration, which she deems as particularly poignant to white readers, its conventional topic of identity formation, even if the protagonist has an unconventional identity, and she attacks the use of a widely known publisher as well as its awards and popularity. She contends that if a book finds a white audience it can’t be different enough to intervene in the process of decolonization. 8 Bradford, like many scholars involved in indigenous literature, wants to see a breakaway between American Indian writing and Euro-American writing, as well as a breakaway all together from indigenous lifestyles and Euro-American lifestyles. These people would like to see a singular tribal identity within indigenous groups: a collective singularity, if you will. Alexie does not argue for this type of singularity. At times, the book, and Junior seem to be promoting assimilation, which would be toxic for the American Indian identity and culture; however, where the novel seems to be “not too different,” or a condemnation of American Indian people, culture, and identities, there is a different argument. Alexie neither wants assimilation nor a singular tribal identity. He wants a healthy American Indian identity that confronts other groups, other peoples, and individuality. This individuality perhaps seems dangerous to Bradford and other scholars working in indigenous scholarship who worry of the dying out of languages, cultures, and peoples. To verify Bradford’s claims, the book, indeed, is written in first person, is very popular among white audiences, is about identity formation, and reads similarly to other adolescent, or young adult novels. However, it is different. Not different in the ways that Bradford wants indigenous writing to be like, but different altogether, across literature, that creates what Alexie believes to be the healthiest, most hopeful solution to American Indian distress in the colonized world today. In some ways he creates a solution across minority identities that promotes healthy ways to engage in our contemporary world that are inclusive and not exclusive, which some of Bradford’s peers and herself might be criticized of being. 9 CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS AND COYOTE CARTOGRAPHY In addressing the first person, Alexie himself has said that “I suppose I'm most proud of telling the story in first person… I realized that I was afraid of the first person because I was afraid of my own history. I'm not a fearful person, onstage or in my books or anywhere else, so I was nearly debilitated by my fear,” but with support and realization that it was the right thing to do, he finished writing it in first person (National Book Foundation Interview). In this way, while seemingly conventional, the use of first person, to Alexie, is actually dangerous in this novel (especially because it is so close to depicting his own life story). It of course, does not understand the collective experience of indigenous peoples, or show nuances in different experiences of being indigenous, but it was a step outside of Alexie’s comfort zone as a writer, and in the less organized space of the mind, he approaches a more coyote-like direction, losing borders that hold him in. Bradford’s own critique does not acknowledge the nuances of writing in first person: the lack of borders between the minds of readers and the mind of the author, the freedom of explaining things as the mind, the indigenous mind in Alexie’s case, sees things, and the danger in writing exactly what one sees as one sees it to an unaware audience. Bradford might say it is not too different, or not different enough to change misconceptions of the American Indian, but it is dangerous, and hungry to break down the borders between reader and writer that can begin to explain why many think this book does act as a crucial intervention for children. In relation to Bradford’s critique of the novel’s structure and genre, it is true that An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian is not too different: it is a coming of age 10 story, similar to Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and even more similar to the more contemporary novels of John Green and David Levithan; however, it is different and in the ways it is different it finds new ways to weave “undocumented understandings and perspectives, and of new theoretical stances that can be adopted when analyzing indigenous literature” (Bailey 3). Alexie describes Junior as part of multiple tribes. That is his healthiest way of identifying himself. This use of multiplicity to explain identity is very against the dominant American Indian scholars of today’s focus on singularity, and it also acts against the dominant individualism of most white American authors. Alexie’s novel somehow lives between the two worlds, just as Junior in the book lives between Rearden and the reservation. The use of drawing and prose, while not exactly new, is also new to the American Indian indigenous writers of the past and today. Images and prose rest side-by-side to engage in an even more critical conversation with the reader. The images ask the reader not only to derive meaning from words on a page, but also to derive extended, emphasized, or enhanced meaning in Forney’s illustrations. While these illustrations are done by a white woman, they are the development between her understanding, and Alexie’s understanding. This cooperation and collaboration is inherently different to indigenous and colonial writing because it is much more community-oriented, even when done across ethnicities. The collaboration is itself an intervention on Alexie’s part into Forney’s own world and knowledge. She, too, must embody a 14-year-old Spokane Indian boy, and does so with constant help from Alexie intervening. The issues that face Junior in forming an identity and in Alexie forming an adolescent novel are different not only from other indigenous writers, but are different from almost all other writers. And with Junior’s interactions between the borders of white 11 and American Indian, along with Alexie’s own interactions that exist “on-the-hyphen” the book creates new frameworks to align with indigenous literature. In this way, they both can be called what Caleb Bailey, border theorist, calls “coyote cartographers.” It is different from Bradford’s intervention in that it builds bridges between peoples and cultures rather than solely discussing one’s own experience within the borders of one’s reservation; however, I’d argue it is just as crucial, if not a more crucial intervention. While still affording diversity, a sense of self, and accuracy that Bradford’s claims to be critical, it also appeals to an outsider, makes the majority and dominant peoples identify with the margins, the other, and become comfortable with their stories and lives. Bailey offers a perspective on the coyote in recent discourse that seeks to combine the cultural trickster figure of American Indian traditions with the coyotes in Mexican politics, also known as people smugglers. The idea creates new theoretical stances for analyzing indigenous literature as well as documenting that which has yet to be documented. Alexie not only is smuggling his life experiences into the mainstream, but also into specialized indigenous discourse. His discussion on multiplicity, as discussed earlier, is a much different solution than other famous scholars, like Elizabeth CookLynn, who argue for the creation of singularity. Adrienne Kertzer, in establishing a connection between Alexie and Cook-Lynn writes, “The multiple tribal identities that Junior embraces at the end of the novel are clearly opposed to Cook-Lynn’s insistence upon a singular tribal perspective.” She pulls into her community, while Alexie pulls outside of the reservation and tribe into a new community. He holds a much different perspective than his peers in this way. He, like the coyote, resists boundaries and borders put on him by skin color, tribal ties, colonizers, poverty, etc. He walks where he wishes 12 to walk, existing both in the white world and the native one, being a loud voice in both communities, telling each what he knows about the other in hopes of creating new understandings on both sides. He writes this novel to the tribes and worlds that he knows. In an interview with the Iowa Review, he’s talked about the difference between him writing about white men and white men writing about American Indians: “I live in the white world. A white person doesn't live in the Indian world. I have to be white everyday” (Iowa Review). He, like the coyote, can walk where nearly no one else can walk and takes responsibility to do so in the only way he knows how: telling the truth, as he knows it to be, on both sides. He doesn’t sugar coat his experiences, which is why scholars like Bradford believe him to write in a way that gives white readers what they want to hear about the “unhappy deficit model” of Indian life (Kertzer 56). But he also doesn’t hesitate to discuss the wrongs done by colonizers unto the colonized: “We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we’ve been lied to” (Alexie 10). In some ways by being the coyote, by writing to a mass audience, instead of an indigenous one, by blurring the lines between colonizer and colonized, and subverting the stereotype of American Indians, showing the similarity of Junior with both his American Indian and his white peers, Alexie being “not too different” in the realm of young adult and children’s novels written predominately by white authors is actually quite different. He recognizes that all adolescents go through the same type of development, regardless of race or culture. Puberty is a human thing, not a social or cultural thing (although there are definitely traditions that surround puberty that differentiate certain adolescents’ experiences). Gordy and Junior understand sexual desire, as both are undergoing puberty, 13 and they can relate well enough to physical arousal that they can joke about “metaphorical boners” in relation to well written books, or just learning something really interesting. Junior himself is not hesitant to talk about his own sexual adventures: “I belong to the tribe of masturbators” (Alexie 217). He is quite proud of his self-love. Junior, like all kids, feels “zitty and lonely” during his adolescence now and again (Alexie 83). He feels desire for Penelope simply because she is physically appealing to him. In regards to relationships, Alexie explores how puberty on top of social factors influence love bi-racially. Junior gets criticized by Rowdy and Gordy for asking advice on how to get a “white girl” to like you: “I’m sick of Indian guys who treat white women like bowling trophies. Get a life” (Alexie 115). Rowdy criticizes Junior for believing that white girls are any different in relationships than girls on the reservation would be. Gordy also criticizes Junior saying that he is “just a racist asshole like everybody else” (Alexie 116). In addition to showing how Junior’s attraction and biological development are not necessarily inherent to American Indians, but are more human-oriented, Alexie shows that cognitively there are similarities, too. From the beginning, we understand that Junior has a very unequal vision of himself. He has a low self-esteem, not unlike the majority of adolescents in contemporary America. This universal self-loathing present in adolescence is not understood by Junior until Alexie shows us in the exchange between Penelope and Junior that adolescents across genders, races, and cultural backgrounds in America have trouble with their opinion of themselves. Penelope is bulimic, and actually proud to be 14 bulimic, but her disorder is compared by Forney’s illustration to Junior’s father’s addiction. Junior comments that “we all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away,” recognizing that pain is universal (Alexie 107). Penelope then confides in Junior that she is lonely, and while he pokes fun at her hashing and rehashing her perfection, he comes to an understanding in this exchange that suffering and loneliness are universal characteristics of humanity. He begins to blur the lines between colonized and colonizer, playing with the stereotypes of both, showing Penelope when she is powerless, giving power to Junior, and continually showing the inequities of Junior’s situation with the situation of Penelope, Roger, and Gordy, all of whom have privilege for their whiteness. The colonizer, by being part of the colonized, is equally affected by stereotypes. There are negative repercussions on both sides, even if the repercussions on the side of the colonized are much more dangerous and unequal. Alexie shows he understands this relationship and continues to play with power with Junior’s experiences. However, Alexie does highlight the differences between the two cultures of Rearden and Wellpinit in order for us to understand that borders do exist, even as he complicates them and tries to smooth out the space between them. He also does not want to make the claim that all suffering is equal or more so that his culture and the culture of Rearden shouldn’t be distinct. They are distinct. They have different problems and 15 different successes. Alexie finds the high alcoholism in his community very problematic and very much tied in with their cycle of poverty. He largely focuses on these two issues in An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. Tammy Wahpeconiah, worries that Alexie’s focus on these two issues in differentiating his community from others only perpetuates negative stereotypes, making her people out to be self-loathing, alcoholic, lazy people who in some essences deserve to be where they are in the world. It isn’t hard to see the self-loathing or alcoholism in Alexie’s novel; however, self-loathing is present in most adolescent literature because it is part of being an adolescent, as discussed earlier. In addition to that, Alexie definitely does not try and shame those in the novel who are alcoholic, doing his best to separate the person from the addiction, comparing it to bulimia, or calling it a kind of epidemic. Alcoholism is very much painted by Alexie as the number one issue facing Indians today; Junior makes this clear: “all Indians are unhappy for the same exact reason: the fricking booze” (Alexie 200). Wahpeconiah does not belittle the stats either: “the 2001-2005 ageadjusted alcoholism mortality rate for Native Americans is approximately three times the rate for the U.S. population as a whole” (Wahpeconiah 40). But she qualifies those facts by stating that “blaming someone for being an alcoholic is like blaming someone for having cancer” (Wahpeconiah 40). She worries about Alexie’s novel because of this blame and how it commits the American Indian to the white, colonial narrative. However, what she will realize in her essay, and why I argue that Alexie does not commit his people to the “Euro-American view,” as Wahpeconiah puts it, is his blaming and Junior’s blaming of trauma and suffering outside of any direct event and not the individual. Junior does recognize that historical “collective trauma” is present in the 16 American Indian way of life. He refers to the injustice from the beginning about how poverty “only teaches you how to be poor” (Alexie 13). Indians “don’t get chances. Or choices. We are just poor. That’s all we are” (Alexie 13). Junior builds on this collective state of his community, caused by the cyclical nature of living on the reservation, whether that be the state of poverty or alcoholism, the blame cannot be placed on a single person or on the community itself. There is a history to Junior’s assessment of their poverty, alcoholism, and suffering so it is appropriate to look at history for the loss of hope that Junior and Alexie see in this group of people. Suffering from historical events is termed collective trauma. Collective Trauma as described by Kai Erikson is a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bond attaching people together… ‘I’ continue to exist, though damaged maybe even permanently changed. ‘You’ continue to exist, though distant and hard to relate to. But ‘we’ no longer exist as a connected pair or as linked cells in a larger communal body (41). Wahpeconiah explains that “Junior is the damaged ‘I’…Spokane Reservation is the ‘You’” (41). It becomes easy for Junior to leave the reservation and find himself outside of his tribe: he is not connected, none of them are in the same way they were centuries ago. All the elements that make Alexie’s novel seem stereotypical are actually what make it unique to the literature. Alexie, perhaps even unknowingly, speaks for what Jan Johnson calls “the soul wound” in a way that mirrors contemporary sociological studies in American Indian culture today. He makes this struggle understandable for the outsider who might be tempted to point fingers at Junior’s father or his sister for their misfortunes, but cannot with the general context that this community faces an epidemic of sorts, caused by a “cumulative, collective, intergenerational, and intersubjective” traumatic 17 experience versus the “extraordinary occurrence” which is the norm in trauma theory (Wahpeconiah 42). This brings a “new theoretical stance to reading indigenous literature” as literature of a suffering people collectively, not individually (Bailey 3). Thus, the collective trauma matters much more to the reading experience than the individual traumas that the character might encounter: a much different approach than the Western model of individualism, blame, and lack of connective tissue through history. It disrupts how scholars understand trauma, but also how they understand the importance of community in healing or the lack thereof. This also creates yet another duality and multiplicity in the American Indian existence “who sees herself as both colonist and colonized, as part of and yet outside American culture, as living person and historical memory” (Wahpeconiah 43-44). Being a strong member of a community and being an individual is partly where Junior’s suffering begins in the novel. He must separate himself from the broken tribe he belongs in order to identify his own individuality. This initial split makes it difficult for him to cope at the beginning. It isn’t until he starts making friends and rebuilds relationships with his tribe, specifically Rowdy his best friend, that he truly understands who he is: which, ironically, ends up being a tribe member, but in a new way. Johnson remarks that healing for this community is no longer in this novel about decolonization and rejection of white people but about “the efficacy and necessity of forgiveness” (Johnson 236). This forgiveness is not just given to those who have done wrong in Junior’s life, like the man who killed his grandmother, but forgiveness is also given on a historical scale. Junior forgives as a living person and as a historical memory. Junior copes: he finds family in both the white and the native communities: “Cross racial alliances and communities of 18 concern can play a powerful role in healing those afflicted by the soul wound of colonialism” (Johnson 237). Alexie’s most radical shift from his own writing and the usual narrative of the American Indian is his acknowledgement of forgiveness and community to heal the anger, suffering and alcoholism present in life of contemporary Indians. This forgiveness directs itself at the forefathers of Alexie and his people, but of the white oppressors, too, even if it seems impossible. An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and Alexie’s more recent writings are developments of coyote cartography: he crosses many borders literally and figuratively in his identity and understands that cooperation and acceptance between communities is the best way to smooth down existing striated space and bridge gaps between stereotypes and real people. Writing to a majorly white audience, his novels open up a space where “readers turn from private encounters with novels to the public history these texts reflect, a wider discussion on the efficacy and limits of apology, forgiveness, reconciliation, and reparation can begin” (Johnson 237). Professor Wahpeconiah too believes that Alexie’s writings can be used to teach students the “complexities and contradictions inherent in American society” (Wahpeconiah 51). An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian has a goal to shape reader’s understandings of Alexie’s own narrative and the narrative of his people in new, uncharted ways in order to make a difference in the lives of the readers and in the lives of the people he came from. Alexie writes books that involve being an active participant in inequities that natives face every day. He changes who his readers think about when they visualize “American Indian.” This is coyote cartography: there is an active change in the reader. 19 Coyote cartography is a way to bring minority voices like Sherman Alexie into the major discourse because in order to be a coyote cartographer one must be willing to get rid of preconceived categories of people and cultures and be willing to fall for tricks here and there to find for yourself in the contradictions of reality. Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian is a coyote book written to create coyote cartographers: those who break down borders and cross them with disregard for traffic lights or laws that say stop. It is a book written for a teenage audience, already a person at the crossroads, that explores what it means to be Indian, moreover, what it means to be human, giving the nuances of both experiences. Alexie throws irony, humor, and tricky plays on macro narratives of Indians in order to keep the reader active, engaged, and critically aware of why weakness exists in the native community and also where there exists incredible strength. He gives new readings of forgiveness in indigenous literature as well as mixed identities not because of blood but because of individuality. This is an important piece because of its coyote nature and function. It has the power to shape those who read it and enjoy it. 20 SUBVERTING THE STEREOTYPE In post-colonial discourse the stereotype is seen as a controlling device used by the colonizer to differentiate between the “us” and “them.” Stereotypes are meant to “other” the colonized group and give power to the colonizer. However, Homi Bhaba, a leader in post-colonial studies, describes and complicates this definition by talking about ambivalence in relation to the stereotype. Firstly, stereotypes require fixity in order to work, meaning that there is an impossibility for the “other” to change or differentiate from their definition; however, in order for the colonizer to fix their definitions on a people, it also must be repeated in order to be identifiable. This is a bit paradoxical as fixity does not have a need for repetition. For example, Junior, from the beginning, acts differently than the American Indian or the white groups expect him, too. He becomes a part of both, but also acts as if part of neither. By being disabled, having brain damage, wearing glasses, and having seizures, the reader learns about the variability in the American Indian experience: that disability and ability are present in all ethnicities. The colonizer is forced to recognize that there are differences between different Indigenous people. Both populations, the colonizer and the colonized, are forced to understand that disability is a human condition, not a condition of one of the other. In addition to his own identity, he is able to also describe the individuality of other characters throughout the book. His parents are also not part of the stereotype. He “wanted to hate Dad and Mom for our poverty…but I can’t blame my parents for our poverty…[they] came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people” (Alexie 11). This syntax reveals the kind of repetition that 21 Bhabha talks about in relation to stereotypes: American Indians are poor; however, Alexie doesn’t allow this repetition to have too much power for very long. “Given the chance, my mother would have gone to college. She still reads books like crazy,” Junior describes (Alexie 11). “Given the chance my father would have been a musician” (Alexie 12). These are not stereotypical people who simply repeat the ideas of what it means to be an American Indian. These are individuals with dreams like those we all dream of, dreams that are true to them and not to any other. The text emphasizes this idea of individuality by illustrating Junior’s parents, describing each portion of their image, individually, part by part, recognizing not the coherence of the whole, but the coherence of each part that sets them apart from others, even those who are like them. On top of reversing the idea of repetition and lack of complexity in the colonized, Alexie does not hesitate to transform the idea of poverty from something that is stereotypical (we are poor) to something that is irreversible (I do not act on poverty, poverty acts on me.): “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor” (Alexie 22 12). His parents aren’t lazy, they are held back by outside forces that were generations in the making, and that we know can be tied back to the “first poor people,” meaning the first group of Indigenous Americans that were degraded, pushed, and enslaved by the first European immigrants, made poor not in spirit, as the dreams persist into modern day, but poor in money, something imposed onto them in order to create them as “other” (Alexie 12). Furthermore, in the second ambivalence in Bhabha’s definition of stereotype, the colonizer recognizes who the “other” really is, all of their complexities, all of their distinct dreams and qualities, and then “disavows” this complexity for what the colonizer wants the “other” to be in order for them, the colonizer, to take control and power. Meaning that the colonizer makes or tries to make the colonized completely knowable and visible, when this, of course, is not the case, as one cannot really know anyone besides themselves. Moreover, this means something for the colonizer that Bhabha will talk about in psychoanalytic terms: the stereotype in some ways creates a desire for wholeness and coherence by the colonizer (even when identifying themselves); however, the world does not work this way. Just like Freud’s analysis on the separation of the infant from the mother, Bhabha discusses how stereotyping the “other” creates the same type of strife for the colonizer who separates from the colonized. There is both a fear of being like the “other” and a desire to be so. He discusses that the stereotype creates problems for both the colonized and colonizer by creating the idea of coherence when not one individual on either side is the ideal of their stereotype, positive or negative, in control or out of control. 23 Alexie continues to use these ambivalences to play with identity, and stereotype. He complicates the recognition of the “other’s” complexities, and the “disavowal” of these, particularly when he characterizes Junior’s best friend Rowdy. In fact, Rowdy’s introduction in the piece shows the colonized people’s own “disavowal” of their complexities, in the desire of the stereotype or the desire of the colonizer’s own power. Rowdy is “too tough” (Alexie 16). Toughness, and being warrior-like, while perhaps seen more positively than poorness and violence, in colonial discourse, is still an image forced upon the American Indian by Western films, Wild West stories, popular advertisements, etc. Alexie has utilized the subversion of this stereotype before, particularly in the iconic scene in “Smoke Signals,” where Victor tells Thomas what it means to be a “real Indian.” “Get Stoic…You got to look tough, or the white people will step all over you…You got to look like a warrior” (“Smoke Signals”). Smoke Signals is another semiautobiographical piece that Alexie wrote, like An Absolutely True Diary, that finds moment of truth and moments of fiction, and struggles to answer questions of identity. Victor is a character similar to Rowdy, and with a similar history, while Thomas can be characterized as more Junior-esque. And, as is the case with Victor’s breakdown of his toughness and forgiveness of his own abusive father, Rowdy’s introduction, through Junior’s eyes, reveals Rowdy’s own complexity. He is more than just a warrior. Rowdy, Junior says, “would miss me [if I was gone]…but he’d never admit that he missed me. He 24 is way too tough for that kind of emotion” (Alexie 16). Junior understands the difference between who Rowdy looks like and who Rowdy actually is. Ellen Forney has another significant illustration, perhaps a good indicator that Alexie is “tricking” us and therefore needs Forney’s additional help in expressing the subversion, of Rowdy where Junior draws him as he can be seen in reality, and Rowdy draws over it with a mean face, trying to cover up his own sensitivity. “He was born mad…always crying and screaming and kicking and punching…he really hasn’t changed much since then” (Alexie 17). Why then, would this mad child protect “broken” Junior (Alexie 17)? He is more than a warrior to Junior. He is a hero. Very rarely does colonial discourse represent Indians as heroes. Very rarely does the conversation coming from the colonized represent themselves as “mad,” as this also creates the image of “savages.” This heroism is particular to Alexie’s Rowdy and subverts both the idea of the pacifist, environmental Indian and the violent, warrior, savage Indian. He plays within the discourse of the two, trying to create a pathway to an “absolutely true” vision of his life, Junior’s life, and the everyday life of American Indians in the modern world that exists somewhere in the middle. Alexie, perhaps, is not in denial of the effects stereotypes have on the stereotyped, but is also not in denial of the falsities and misconceptions that also exist in these stereotypes. Rowdy wants to appear to others as powerful through his warrior guise, but Junior’s intimacy with him provides 25 us with an understanding that the complexities of humanity cannot be truly hidden, even if hiding is most desired. Alas, the stereotypes that exist today continue out of this need for coherence and control, impacting not only the development and well-being of the colonized, but also of the colonizer. For the development of identity, especially for the colonized, there begins to be problems of repetition, as with Junior’s own concept of American Indian poverty, and the desire to be more like the colonizer, like Rowdy’s meanness and toughness. This is what Bhabha terms as “mimcry:” the desire to be like the colonizer, show you are just as powerful as the colonizer in order to have the power of the colonizer. However, Junior and Rowdy also desire to be more like themselves and to pull tighter into their group to prove once and for all their value and difference and power as they are. When Junior’s basketball team at Rearden wins against the reservation team, the team that Rowdy plays on, Junior first feels powerful like the colonizer, but then recoils immediately at the realization of what this loss means for his tribe: “We had defeated the enemy…the champions! We were David who’d thrown a stone into the brain of Goliath! And then I realized something. I realized that my team, the Rearden Indians, was Goliath.” The power of the colonizer that Junior mimics causes pain to his people, his tribe. His identity is stuck between being the winner, the colonizer, the power, and being a part of his community, a Spokane Indian, and find power in that identity. Junior ultimately struggles throughout the novel in the development of a healthy identity. In True Diary, Junior himself obviously desires to be tough like Rowdy and mimic the colonizer like Rowdy. He feels as if he was taught by his friends and enemies on the reservation to be tough. Junior also desires to be powerful, he is in a “semi- 26 relationship” with Phoebe, the prettiest girl he’s ever seen/the “queen” of the school, in order to have a good reputation. Also, by going to Rearden in the first place, Junior is trying to become more like the colonizer and less like the colonized, which is why his community feels so betrayed by him, specifically Rowdy, when he chooses to leave. It is as if he is accepting that his people are less than, and that the white people are better, thus he chooses to be white; however, this is not the case. Junior describes himself as an outsider: “I was a freaky alien and there was absolutely no way to get home” (Alexie 66). Here, home is intended to mean the reservation, meaning he obviously does not wish to cut ties with his other half. Even as he gets more popular and more comfortable with his friends and his classes at Rearden, he continues to long for Rowdy. He continues to long for his sister, have the utmost respect for his grandmother, and he continues to love and cherish the support his parents give to him. He struggles considerably with the desire to be like the colonizer, but also he struggles with the fear that this will lead him to be isolated by his community and his people. He shuns both parts of him and that drives this coming of age story, which is very unlike the young adult novels being written by white authors to white children and adolescents today. And perhaps it is this struggle that Alexie himself cannot complicate in relation to stereotypes. He cannot disrupt this aspect of fear and desire, embracing and shunning, because he finds it to be true in himself and in his experiences. This book begs the question of what is identity and how identity forms, specifically for minority Americans, and more specifically for American Indian adolescents. In explaining his name, Junior tells his classmates at Rearden that “My name is Junior…and my name is Arnold. It’s Junior and Arnold. It’s both” (Alexie 60). 27 Explaining this two-ness of names symbolizes Junior’s explaining and introducing to his new peers the two-ness he feels being there as a reservation Indian in a small white school. He follows this comment with “I felt like two different people inside of one body” (Alexie 61). This liminality is a realization of double-consciousness, a coin termed by African American writer W.E.B. Dubois. Double-consciousness is “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,” which Junior’s experiences under the scrutiny of his peers, whether that be the white students in this scene or the Spokane tribe members who beat him up and call him a traitor (DuBois 689). Creating an identity from the outside-in develops stereotypes, as Junior utilizes what people see of him (whether that be weak when he is on the reservation, or savage when he joins Rearden) to explain who he is. Junior is unable to make an identity for himself by himself, living between the expectations of his community in both Rearden and Wellpinit, discovering his true identity in the midst. He is proud of being Spokane, but also ashamed of it. He is proud of his achievements at his white school, like when he makes it onto the basketball team and improves, but ashamed of his privilege, like the moment after his white basketball team wins over the Spokane reservation team and he realizes that his victory acts as just another loss after another loss for the reservation kids. As stated by Dubois, he has a “longing to…merge his double self into a truer, better self,” but isn’t allowed to by the boundaries given in his society today (Dubois 690). One might call Junior’s identity a “border identity.” Junior feels in between, like what Dubois says about double consciousness, his community members call him “an apple because they think I’m red on the outside and white on the inside” (Alexie 132). However, Junior himself “never commit[s] [him]self to a particular site or territory,” 28 feeling “always like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other,” but never wholly one or the other (Bailey 5, Alexie118). And this feeling of in between and being on the hyphen is what Gloria Anzaldua calls “mestiza/o consciousness.” It is different than double consciousness because it is more than a duality and it is more than the stereotypes placed upon someone, making them form an identity from the expectations of said stereotypes. Anzaldua’s mestiza/o consciousness is described as “the product of cross-breeding, designed for preservation under a variety of conditions” (Anzaldua 103). The cross-breeding of his reservation culture and the culture of academia lets Junior adapt and preserve his experience, and perhaps is used as an avenue to preserve the experiences of his family and his community. Alexie himself functions similarly as an indigenous author who left the reservation for the white advantages of schooling, college, and authorship. Alexie and Junior’s ability to be in between and on the hyphen lets them be loud voices for their communities. Junior begins to realize this hybrid identity, leaving the insecurities of duality, and becomes a complete but contradictory identity that permits him a truer self than that of the double-consciousness that DuBois describes. In this way, he smooths the boundaries between himself and the expectations and identity inscribed upon him by others. As he 29 begins to identify himself at the end with multiple different tribes, he does not split himself, like the double consciousness does in the latter scene, but creates a fuller, deeper, truer individual: “I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms…It was a huge realization. And that’s when I knew I was going to be okay” (Alexie 117). Junior and Alexie trick the rational reader by splitting themselves into many different pieces or tribes instead of only two as seen in the beginning, creating one complete individual with multiple parts. Alexie also breaks down the binary here of being indigenous and being an immigrant. He hints two things: firstly, that this land does not belong to anyone. Even though it was 14,000 years ago, indigenous peoples, too, travelled before making this country home. Also, he hints that by leaving the safety of his community and going into white America he, too, is an immigrant going into a culturally much different world. The myth of “the whole” as one person, one group, or one community separate from all others creates stereotypes: the idea of coherence. Thus, when the whole is made up of many different parts it becomes much more difficult for stereotypical definitions of people or cultures to remain; this is the recognition of one’s and the other’s complexities. After realizing the multitudes of someone’s identity it becomes very difficult to disavow these complexities, and the stereotype, according to Bhabha is broken down. While culturally different than the students at Rearden, Junior realizes that it is more important to point out their similarities than to fear and reveal their differences. There are similarities between those of similar cultures, but all those similarities stretch and weave together in multiple places, peoples, and cultures. 30 Anzaldua writes “I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face…and if going home is denied me, then I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture” (Anzaldua 44). She is arguing that there be a space for her multiplicity where she is welcome, and this is the solution that Alexie, too, is arguing toward in his novel. In order to solve the dangers of stereotypes, alcoholism, and poverty, he is arguing to create a new space where people like him, his community all together perhaps, can build hope through recognition of their similarities with other groups, tribes, and communities. While many scholars talk about singularity, Alexie and Anzaldua dream up a world full of people made out of multiples, and it is in this place they feel the most confident and comfortable. In the end, Alexie uses, abuses, and reverses the stereotype through the means of the language of the book, like in his descriptions of Junior, Rowdy, and others, the structure of the book, using Forney’s illustrations to further satirize or comprehend the subversion of a stereotype, the use of multiplicity as a means to develop an identity, especially for those like Junior who live in between places and peoples, and the use of community, forgiveness, and understanding of collective trauma to explain the problems of the American Indian and solve these problems. He uses his novel as a call to action to readers to better understand the Indigenous people, and begin to discuss and make visible what popular culture would like to completely forget about. If anything, like Kertzer mentions, by being a contemporary novel, written in contemporary times (the book takes place during the same years it was written and published: 2006-2007ish, maybe into 2008) “serves as a blunt response to the “vanishing Indian” who has not vanished” (Kertzer 56). Alexie understands himself as the bridge between his people and the 31 colonizer. He understands he has to be the coyote, the border figure, in his writing, willing to break down binaries and stereotypes and reach across these to find truth, healing, and change. 32 CONCLUSION As a future educator and someone who has spent time in today’s classrooms, both as a student and as a teacher, I understand the importance of multiculturalism in education today. This country has become and is becoming more and more diverse and I believe this to be quite a wonderful development. It has forced education into uncharted, dangerous territory where teachers not only get to explore and expand their teaching practices in new uncharted ways, but they must do so in order to find success in their classrooms. In the Language Arts classroom, there is especially the opportunity to connect closer with students and have students connect closer with others by the use of novels that represent multiplicity in our culture, in identities, and in our individual classrooms: “When certain voices are excluded, students never hear and experience the ‘power of voices,’ and thus teachers deprive young readers of one purpose of literature: to read and learn about themselves and others in life” (Kaulaity 8). And when we speak of the power of voices, we are talking about the personal voices and stories of different groups, “too often someone else speaks for or about [ethnic and minority communities]” (Kaulaity 9). And too often it is educators and educator’s choices in their classrooms that do the speaking without doing any of the listening. The importance of “teaching native voices,” the title of Kaulaity’s article, is to begin the conversation of our nation, our population, our classroom in all its diversity. This land holds thousands of years of history that only the indigenous Americans can know about due to the stories and histories of their ancestors. It is time students hear these stories and histories in order to better inform themselves of the true beginnings of 33 the Americas. “Teachers play a huge role as decision-maker, change agent, and as determiner of whose voices are heard and experienced in the classroom,” and it is our duty to act as coyote cartographers ourselves and begin to expand understandings of indigenous literature (Kaulaity 11). However, this is a not a task that is easily taken on, being as teacher’s own understandings of native consciousness and cultures are blurred and distorted by mainstream textbooks, movies, etc. It requires the teacher to be patient, well researched, and able to deal with the tough consequences of teaching about a population that is widely misunderstood. Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian seems like a difficult starting point, especially when Marinda Kaulity suggests to “start small,” with short stories or short narrative pieces (12); however, I argue it is where you should begin as a teacher, because it is a contemporary novel, hardly found in the English classroom today, that explores the complexity of the human experience, and is written in language that is accessible and humorous, and it gives students motivation to read. Wahpeconiah, a teacher of Ethnic Studies courses, understands the importance of this last point: “I believe he is an important voice in Native American contemporary literature, and, more important, my students love him. When you are teaching non-English majors, this is not an insignificant point” (36). Getting students excited to read, as someone in schools today, is incredibly poignant. I have students in some of the classes I participate in who have literally not read a book since they were in elementary school. During independent reading time, the majority of students have difficulty sitting down and actually making it through a page. They are distracted, bored, and uninspired by the literature they have in front of them. Alexie excites students. My own fifteen-year-old cousin who finds books 34 boring ripped through the pages of An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. This is astonishing and is probably the major reason I argue for this book to be taught in classrooms. Love for one book can act as a gateway for a love for reading in general and I think this is one of the main desires of English teachers in the field today. However, like Wahpeconiah and others, it is easy also to see how this book is dangerous and problematic to teach in a classroom. If it takes thirty-or-so pages for me to describe, as an English major with a love for critical and close reading and a background in it, how Alexie subverts stereotypes, how are we supposed to expect ninth graders not to make negative or wrong assumptions about American Indians? The worry of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and Clare Bradford and others about Alexie not being different enough, or being too negative toward the reservation and the American Indian experience, is valid when we’re looking at young adult readers or any reader who is unfamiliar with the history and life of American Indians. Kertzer worries about not “know[ing] for certain why viewers laugh when they look at the cartoons,” and she is “not convinced that we can confidently predict viewers’ response to the satirical cartoons in The Absolutely True Diary” (66,68). As teachers, especially when we are trying to teach native voices to humanize and “real”-ize them and their experience, we ask these same questions, hoping we are not worsening the problem instead of bettering it. One teacher, also able to say full-heartedly that the book gets her students reading, also says that “the pedagogical challenges involved with teaching Alexie's work tend to surface once discussion ensues, as non-American Indian students are inclined to make sweeping claims about the hopelessness and alcoholism that plague Indian reservations-and about American Indians in general” (Szeghi 74). Despite this problem, it is important to remember that we should 35 “feel a sense of responsibility to provide the fullest and most accurate picture of contemporary Native life as I possibly can. And Alexie’s picture of his life is accurate. Therefore, the responsibility lies with me and not with Alexie; it is up to me to find a way into his texts that provides students with the tools they need to understand not only his life experience” (Wahpeconiah 41). In order to best teach this novel, I think background is one hundred percent necessary. Problems arise immediately in classrooms where students’ backgrounds are inhibited by binary thinking, stereotypes, and textbook ideas of Indian culture and life: “Students equate reservation life with poverty and alcoholism, and many commented during class discussions on their difficulty understanding why some Spokane resent Junior for leaving and/or why anyone stays on a reservation. Further, students acculturated to the individualist ethos of mainstream U.S. culture can have difficulty appreciating the communitarian values present in much American Indian literature, including Diary. Teaching Diary to young college students in a fashion that exposes Alexie's subversive invocation of colonialist discourse (even as he ultimately validates leaving the reservation as being in the best interest of all Spokane people) requires educators not simply to work against the grain of centuries of U.S. cultural production, but also to find strategic ways of encouraging students to shift from binary to more syncretic levels of cognition” (Szeghi 79). As an educator, these problems beg for outside resources to be used while teaching Alexie. Junior is fourteen years old and I think this helps explain where criticism from Gloria Bird and the like come from, where they explain his (Junior’s and Alexie’s) inability to see the magic in reservation life and culture. Being a fourteen-year-old means there are few things to see that are magical. I think Alexie’s analysis of Junior’s experience with the powwow holds true to the attitude of an adolescent boy; however, this attitude is unrecognizable to high school students (most of them sympathize with parents or family dragging them to 36 events that are a ‘waste of time’ in their opinion), so these moments are the ones that are critical as a teacher you highlight with videos, stories, etc. that are able to show the magic of these events, and show the characterization of Junior that is taking place in these moments. Also, it is important to note that Junior is disabled, with certain characteristics that while, “empower[ed] with humor,” make him feel less than and in this way social activities are much different to him than they are to Rowdy, who actually in that scene does want to go to the powwow and seems excited about it (Crandall 72). Utilizing different perspectives in itself is the healthiest way to teach a book from a perspective unlike your own as a teacher, as it gives more voice to those who truly know about the American Indian experience and can give personal, varied insights about their lives to students in order to continue Alexie’s own work in disrupting the stereotype of his people. Kaulaity says that the first thing she hears teachers say against teaching Native American voices is “testing and standards” (9). On the contrary, Alexie’s novel is, as I’ve mentioned, nuanced and those nuances require students to have good critical reading skills. Also, bringing in other texts creates a place to discuss relationships between the narratives of course, but also the structure, style, and tone of the pieces. In order to decode the humor in the book, it is necessary not only to have background in American Indian history and culture, but also be able to read between the lines and find the double meaning of words. What is Alexie saying when he says that Indians should be better liars because of all the times they have been lied to? What and who is he alluding to? Those kinds of questions get students beneath the surface of what is being said literally into what is being 37 said literarily. Also, as one critic has complimented that if Alexie’s writing “has an unexpected poetry to it, that’s because it was written by a poet” (Crandall 72). In regards to fulfilling the Common Core standards in place today for Language Arts, it is meaty in form as well as content. In addition to that, by having students actually reading the book because they are excited to read it (Szeghi, too, comments on the increased engagement surrounding teaching An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian), the book is already doing more than any other book could possibly do in the realm of reaching the grade standard of reading. Even if it isn’t incredibly complex in relation to syntax or sentence structure, it is nuanced and “lyrical” in its composition and that makes it equally difficult to read as Shakespeare, but also is less deterring (Crandall 72). It demands just as much from its reader in the realm of rhetoric and form. There are ways to push through the difficulties of teaching Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary that actually dismantle the idea of stereotypes all together. It is important to bring in outside sources, give varied accounts of reservation life, of native cultures in general (showing just how varied indigenous cultures are within our own nation, not counting the South American indigenous peoples or the Inuits), focus on close reading, understanding the humor in a way that distinguishes laughing at the stereotype and laughing with Junior and his community. It is important to point out the different character traits that make Junior feel the way he does. It is important to point out the difficulties of developing an identity, as discussed with Dubois and Anzaldua, of breaking the binary thinking of I’m either an Indian or a white kid, and seeing himself as 38 multiple parts of multiple cultures and people. It is important to tell the truth, as Alexie does, of the misinformation that crowds popular ideas of American Indian life, as well as the difficulties facing their community in this day and age. Alexie meant this book to be a call to action and it is our job as educators to direct the action our student’s take in the most beneficial way for Alexie’s community, our classroom community, and our world community. This book opens up the avenue to begin speaking and identifying the stereotypes we have and then deconstructing them and breaking them down. This not only creates better human beings in the classroom, but creates a more productive, safe environment for all your students. This book brings up difficult questions that have difficult answers, but if education was meant to be comfortable we wouldn’t teach our students anything at all. Safety and comfort are two different conversations. 39 WORKS CITED Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print. Alexie, Sherman. Interview conducted by Rita Williams-Garcia. National Book Foundation, November 2007. Web. Alexie, Sherman. Interview by Joelle Fraser. Iowa Review, 2001. Web. Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. 4th Ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 2012. Print. Bailey, Caleb. “Creating a Coyote Cartography: Critical Regionalism at the Border.” European Journal of American Studies 9.3 (2014): 2-6. PDF. Bhabha, Homi. “The Other Question.” The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. PDF. Bradford, Clare. “Race, Ethnicity and Colonialism.” The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature. Ed. David Rudd. London: Routledge, 2010. 39–50. Print. Bradford, Clare. Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2007. Print. Cerna, Enrique. "Enrique Cerna Interviews Author and Poet Sherman Alexie:' Interview by Enrique Cerna. KCTS 9 News. KCTS Television, ll July 2008. Web. 4 June 2013. Crandell, Bryan Ripley. “Adding a Disability Perspective When Reading Adolescent Literature: Sherman Alexie’s ‘An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.” The ALAN Review. Winter, 2009. PDF. 40 Dubois, W.E.B. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 3rd Ed. Ed. Henry Gates et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014. 688-693. Print. Johnson, Jan. “Healing the Soul Wound in Flight and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Sherman Alexie: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Jeff Bergland, Jeff, Jan Roush. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010. 224240. Web. White-Kaulity, Marlinda. “The Voices of Power and the Power of Voices: Teaching with Native American Literature.” The ALAN Review. Fall, 2006. PDF. Kertzer, Adrienne. “Not Exactly: Intertextual Identities and Risky Laughter in Sherman Alexie’s An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.” Children’s Literature, vol. 40, 2012. 49-77. PDF. doi: 10.1353/chl.2012.0023 Smoke Signals. Directed by Chris Eyre. Miramax, 1998. Szeghi, Tereza M. “The Possibilities and Pitfalls in Teaching Sherman Alexie’s ‘An Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian’.” English Faculty Publications, Paper 26, 2015. PDF. Wahpeconiah, Tammy. “Navigating the River of the World: Collective Trauma in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Critical Insights: Sherman Alexie. Ed. Leon Lewis. Pasadena: Salem Press, 2011. 35-52. Web.