Page Count: 230
Genre: Realistic Fiction
This book
is relatable. This book is funny. This book is honest (from what I can tell).
This book has got to be one of my favorites that I’ve read this entire school
year. It has a great message with a great story and great literature devices
and I’ll be *insert appropriate cuss word* if I can think of anything negative
to say about it.
Before I
begin the review however, just know my English teacher (that may be you if
you’re reading this) gave us a choice in some allegories to read and I chose Dante’s Inferno, which is one heck of a complicated book. There are also
other assignments, exams coming up, theater related stuff (still salty with my
theater teacher right now) I need to do/prepare for, and yeah, this review is
going to have to be short sadly. On the bright side, my thoughts about this are
pretty simple surprisingly.
So in a
nutshell, this book is a glance in the life of Arnold Spirit Junior as a high
school freshman when he decides to go to an all-white school (being an Indian
on a reservation with a colorful medical history). Automatically you can see
that this book takes up the mantel of “the struggle of being a minority” which
I actually try to stray from for some reason. Maybe I feel like they content
will be too jarring with its stereotypes and the main character’s struggle (or
whoever) will be unbelievable or offensive in some manner. This is a rather
touchy subject for me as I’m a minority in a class full of the majority and
constantly feel like I need to prove something to my classmates. I kid you not,
I walk into my class with the mindset that I’m going to war and have to
represent all the black people in my school since I’m one of the few (like less
than ten) black people in pre-AP/AP/any type of advanced classes in my school.
So depressing.
Any who, I
already had an established connection to the main character that gave me some reason
to like him, but what I really like about Jr. was the fact that he had drive.
People with drive are my kind of people, and 90% of the time I meet someone
without drive I have it in my mind that they’re a waste of resources and would
be better off not existing. Yeah I know it’s harsh, but overpopulation is a
problem and I can’t stand it when people who don’t try complain. So before I go
on a tangent that comes back to haunt me if I try to run for any political office,
I found Jr. a great respectable character as he came from humble origins,
wanted to do something big with his life, and was willing to take the steps to
make that happen. Even if that meant leaving the reservation. Even if that
meant seeming like a traitor to his people. Even if it meant losing his best
friend. That is some serious drive guys.
Jr. even was
a better person than me as he wasn’t bent on proving his worth to the white
kids a Reardan (the school he went to). He was relaxed, had his faults, and
failed at lots of things, and wasn’t about to let things stop him from getting
a good education. Did things come close to stopping him? Heck yeah. At one
point his grandma died (a hilarious chapter by the way, not the fact that
someone died but the way he handled the subject was humorous) and his dad’s
best friend too. He became (slightly) depressed thanks to that, but it’d didn’t
stop him from going to school. After that, his older sister died too, (she eloped
early on in the book by the way) and although that was another strong blow to
him it didn’t stop Jr. from working hard. Needless to say, Jr. wasn’t a quitter
and I loved that about his character, super inspiring and nice to know that
other minorities struggle in life as fight uphill know as tradition and
expectations.
Other cool
things I liked about the book include:
·
Drawings Jr.
was a budding artist and he included lots of pictures to go along with the text
(also another reason I can relate to him).
·
Pacing The
story as well paced and featured the right amount of time in Jr.’s life instead
of rambling or focusing on pointless chapters that didn’t develop his
character.
·
Diction Such
lovely, casual, teenager diction. You shouldn’t expect anything less from
someone of Jr.’s character and it’s nice that Alexie could keep with the times
on this.
·
Struggles
Yes, Jr. struggled with lots of things from the excess amount of cerebral
spinal fluid in his brain, to his acromegaly later on in life, to his trouble
keeping up with all the fancy “rich” kids at Reardan, and all sorts of things.
Character in poverty appear in books pretty often, but if you ask me it can be
hard to find a book where the economic situation of a character is written as
well as it is here.
·
Rowdy The
best friend of Jr. for a brief point in the book, I must say I loved the way
Jr. and his relationship progressed through the book. They were the best of
friends, they were the worst of enemies, and when they made up at the end of
the book it wasn’t too much feels to be unrealistic or rushed too quickly to be
unbelievable. While things may not be 100% patched up between them, I loved
reading about the evolution of their relationship as it gives me comfort to see
two friends not agree on everything and be forced to go through some
challenging times. I wish some of my friendships were as durable as this (or
maybe they are and I’m just unaware of this).
There you have it folks, nothing
but good stuff to say about this book. I don’t know if you can feel the
soullessness of this review (I can kinda sense it since I didn’t explain things
too much), but I do apologize for that again, these next few weeks of school
are going to be tough (they’re the last few weeks of school, they’re always a
challenge). I recommend this book to all people middle school and up, as it
will give them a good laugh here and there, has cool pictures (who doesn’t love
pictures?), and give some deep insight to the life of a minority that struggles
to get some quality education when he faces discrimination. Having experience
this myself, I resonate strongly with the content of the book and find its
message of perseverance and taking the high road to be quite touching. With the
way America is screaming for people to embrace their diversities while at the
same time creating clear boundaries for different communities it can be rather
hard for people in my generation to feel like they belong to anything. I find
it hard belonging to the African American community even though both my parents
are clearly black, as I’m more of a golden-brown and I don’t act black or dress
black if you know what I mean. I don’t want to “betray my people,” but at the
same time I don’t necessarily want to associate with every aspect of “my people.”
Funny thing is, there’s this one picture in the book that sums up my feeling
about all this pretty well:
All that aside, perhaps I’ll get to go into
depth about my feelings over America’s black community in my next book review
as I’m reading The Hate U Give by
Angie Thomas. If you’ve heard anything about that book, then you know I’ll
probably have a lot to say (and over 50 pages in already I already got some
beef with the book). For real my dudes, read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, it portrays a
lively account of a freshman that struggles to find his identity and I feel
that’s something we (Americans) could all use in this day. At the end of the
day (book) one has to realize that while similarities group us together they
also isolate us from others, and deep down there’s no reason for these boundaries
as we’re all human and we shouldn’t divide ourselves this way. Such a wonderful
message shouldn’t be conveyed to you just through my book review, go pick up a
copy of the book and discover the masterpiece Alexie has created. Until next
time!
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