Brief Introduction

The absolutely true diary of a part time Indian

    Arnold, 14 years old, is miserable, not only funny, poor eyesight, but also stuttering. Moreover, his family is very poor, his parents are the losers of society, and he does not come out in the basement of his family all day. The future seems to have been doomed. He only loves reading and painting. One day at school, he was angry and took the textbook to the teacher. But the teacher told him after class that unless he bravely walked out of the current environment, he was destined to stay here for the rest of his life. 
    After an unhappy day, Arnold made the most important decision in his life: Leaving the village and going to the white middle school in the wealthy town to study there, he became a stranger. There were only two Indians in the school: one was him, the other was the mascot of the school, his appearance was deformed, his costume was weird, his name was strange. Everywhere seems to be out of place.

    This is a story of a brave teenager discovering his inner potential. Although his body is crippled, he is often ridiculed and bullied, but he has a broad heart and is not overwhelmed by poverty. What is more important is that he has a kind of resilience of "courage to face challenges", with humor and love. Overcome every difficulty in life.

About Sherman Alexie

Life

    Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a short story writer, poet, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.

    His best-known book is The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories. It was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay.

    His first novel Reservation Blues received one of the fifteen 1996 American Book Awards. His first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007), is a semi-autobiographical novel that won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audio book for young people (read by Alexie). His 2009 collection of short stories and poems, War Dances, won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Alexie is the guest editor of the 2015 Best American Poetry.

writing style

    Sherman Alexie's poems often have some kind of narrative tone, and they are often interspersed with the image of "Indians." The "Indian" symbol can be understood as Sherman's concern for the weak-sex group, but "requesting for the people" is by no means the main purpose of Sherman's poetry. To a certain extent, Sherman is using the Indian group of weak people to express the despair of the generally weak and generally absurd state of existence.

10 Questions for Sherman Alexie - YouTube：

Author's Craft

1. The protagonist is born with hydrocephalus and has a strange shape. Living in an Indian reservation, he suffered from poverty, violence and alcohol abuse by his family and tribes. He only loves reading and painting. But he wanted to change his fate, listened to his teacher's advice, and went to a white school. The protagonist has a spirit of tenacity and never giving up. And like to make friends, but also care about what white people think of him. This book describes the protagonist in a straightforward way.

2. Use Narrative Elements technique. And use literary techniques such as repeat, anthropomorphic, exaggeration, metaphor and onomatopoeia. There are also a large number of descriptive languages and Illustration comic. For example, there is a section. "I was born with water on the brain." this is use metaphor. Actually, the protagonist was born with too much cerebrovascular fluid, not water. 

3. The purpose of this book: This book has written a lot of experiences of the author when he was a child. This book is written by an Indian and wants to change his destiny. In fact, it also reflects the social background at that time, the relationship between Indians and whites, and some views of whites on Indians. 

Book: http://www.sturgeonenglish.com/uploads/1/3/6/0/13602064/the-absolutely-true-diary-of-a-part-time-sherman-alexie-1.pdf

               

       

The absolutely true diary of a part time Indian------Sherman Alexie

    This book is about an Indian kid who is very like to draw. He chooses to leave the school that was originally studying in the Indian Reservation and go to school in a school full of white children. This story is both heartbreaking and funny. It is said that the author wrote according to his own experience, and recorded the youth and youth that he tried to get rid of his destiny. 

                                                                                                                 
    The author describes himself and his family and friend from the beginning. Then he hear his teacher's advice. He want to transfer white school. On the white school, only have one Indian people. Next, how he will lives in white school? Can he get rid of his destiny?

About this book Wikipedia：
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Absolutely_True_Diary_of_a_Part-Time_Indian
Author‘s Wikipedia：
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Alexie