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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Alexie, S. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Born with a variety of medical problems, Junior Spirit is picked on by everyone but his best friend on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to get a good education, the budding cartoonist leaves the rez to attend an all-white school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Despite being condemned as a traitor to his people and enduring great tragedies, Junior attacks life with wit and humor and discovers his own inner strength.
Author Notes
Sherman J. Alexie Jr. was born on October 7, 1966. His mother was Spokane Indian and his father was Coeur d'Alene Indian. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He decided to attend high school off the reservation where he knew he would get a better education. He was the only Indian at the school, and excelled academically as well as in sports. After high school, he attended Gonzaga University for two years before transferring to Washington State University, where he graduated with a degree in American studies. He received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1992.
His collections of poetry included The Business of Fancydancing, First Indian on the Moon, The Summer of Black Widows, One Stick Song, and Face. His first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. His other short story collections included The Toughest Indian in the World, Ten Little Indians, and War Dances. His first novel, Reservation Blues, received the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize. His other novels included Indian Killer, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and Flight. He won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2018 for You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir.
Alexie and Jim Boyd, a Colville Indian, collaborated on the album Reservation Blues, which contains the songs from the book of the same name. In 1997, Alexie collaborated with Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, on a film project inspired by Alexie's work, This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona, from the short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Smoke Signals debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1998, winning two awards: the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy. In 1999 the film received a Christopher Award.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Arnold "Junior" Spirit, encouraged to want more than the Spokane reservation offers, enrolls in an all-white high school off the rez. To his Indian friends, Junior is a traitor; to white kids, he's a curiosity. Alexie draws us into this semi-autobiographical story of reservation poverty, alcoholism, and the dignity of upholding ancient traditions with poignantly witty prose and well-paced, compelling, and culturally authentic narration deserving of the 2009 Odyssey Award. Standard: Students will be able to recognize and discuss cultural stereotypes depicted in a story. Learning Activity: In a group, students can create a chart that compares and contrasts the similarities and differences between life on and off an Indian reservation. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Read by the author. (Middle School, High School)Alexie's singular wit and candor is more obvious than ever in this stellar performance of his own award-winning novel about a Spokane reservation teen who decides to attend the local all-white high school. The recording renders the listener teary-eyed one minute and laughing out loud the next. Alexie knows firsthand the voice of his main character Junior, and he plays it up, using his "singsong reservation accent" to the utmost. In the print edition of the book, drawings and cartoons help to heal and relieve heartbreak for Junior; Alexie's narration is so personal, and so perfectly conveys the very essence of Junior, that listeners will not miss them. Brought to life by Alexie's autobiographical intimacy, this audio will make a lasting impression on every listener. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
New York Review of Books Review
ARNOLD SPIRIT JR. is the geekiest Indian on the Spokane Reservation. He wears chunky, lopsided glasses. His head and body look like Sputnik on a toothpick. When he doesn't stutter, he lisps. Arnold is a 14-year-old high school freshman. When he goes outside he gets teased and beaten, so he spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons. "I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods," he says, "and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats." If that line has an unexpected poetry to it, that's because it was written by a poet. Arnold's creator, Sherman Alexie, grew up on the Spokane Reservation in tiny Wellpinit, Wash., and made his name as a poet before expanding into short stories, novels, screenplays, film directing and stand-up comedy. "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" is Alexie's first foray into the young adult genre, and it took him only one book to master the form. Recently nominated for a National Book Award, this is a gem of a book. I keep flipping back to reread the best scenes and linger over Ellen Forney's cartoons. To say that life is hard on the Spokane rez doesn't begin to touch it. "My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people," Arnold explains, "all the way back to the very first poor people." The kid was born with 10 too many teeth, so he gets them pulled - all in a single day, because the Indian Health Service pays for major dental work only once a year. When Arnold cracks open his geometry textbook, he finds his mother's name written on the flyleaf. "My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from," Arnold says. "That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world." Enraged, Arnold beans his geometry teacher with the book and gets suspended from school. The targeted teacher, Mr. P., visits Arnold at home and gives him a piece of advice: Get out. Mr. P. has seen too many promising students - like Arnold's sister, Mary Runs Away - fade year by year, beaten down by poverty and hopelessness. "The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up," Mr. P. says. "The Absolutely True Diary" tracks Arnold's year of getting out. He transfers to Reardan High, 22 miles away, a gleaming campus full of wealthy white kids, with a computer room and chemistry labs. He's the only Indian - if you don't count the school mascot Early on, Arnold fears being beaten up by the jocks. "I was afraid those monsters were going to kill me," he says. "And I don't mean 'kill' as in 'metaphor.' I mean 'kill' as in 'beat me to death.'" (The comedian in Alexie pops up as often as the poet) Arnold's toughness soon earns him their respect, though, as well as a spot on the varsity basketball team. What he can't win back is the love of his neighbors at home. On the rez he's considered a traitor. His best friend punches him in the face. When Reardan plays Wellpinit High in basketball, the Indians rain so much abuse on Arnold that a race riot nearly breaks out. Triumph and grief come in equal measure. Arnold figures out that he's smarter than most of the white kids, and wins the heart of a white girl named Penelope. ("What was my secret?" he says. "If you want to get all biological, then you'd have to say that I was an exciting addition to the Reardan gene pool.") Meanwhile, his father's best friend is shot and killed, and his sister dies in a trailer fire. "I'm 14 years old, and I've been to 42 funerals," Arnold says. "That's really the biggest difference between Indians and white people." For 15 years now, Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of the Indian and white worlds. He's done it through various characters and genres, but "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" may be his best work yet. Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home. Which, by the way, Arnold doesn't have. Unless his folks get lucky and come up with some gas money. Bruce Barcott is a contributing editor at Outside magazine. His book "The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw" will be published next year.