Absolutely True Diary Research Articles

<b>Implicações históricas e identitárias do dia de Ação de Graças para o indígena estadunidense em uma obra de Sherman Alexie

An event frequently goes beyond its own place and time in history and becomes a symbol of formation for national identity, even though there are always gaps, untold facts, or simply one of several versions of the history is told. Current paper clarifies some of the historical aspects that surrounded the establishing of Thanksgiving Day as an official holiday in the United States, and how this issue is dealt with in Native American Literature, especially in Sherman Alexie’s book The Absolutely true diary of a part time Indian. A postcolonial theoretical approach is used, emphasizing the concepts of transculturation, nation, resistance and subjectivity, based on the scholarly works by Bhabha (1998), Ashcroft et al. (2007) and Pratt (1992), coupled to Native American literary criticism by Vizenor (1998). Analyses show that, by using several strategies such as humor and criticism, Alexie questions not only the historical situation of the Native American in the United States, but also reveals the effects that those facts, which helped to produce US national thought, have on contemporary Native Americans.

Leaving the Reservation: Reconstructing Identity in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie is an acclaimed Native American author who writes about growing up on the Spokane Indianreservation and the harsh realities of widespread poverty and alcoholism. This paper aims to examine hisreconstruction of Native American identity in his young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-TimeIndian. This book presents a Native American’s education, culture, and wounds through the eyes of a teenage boynamed Arnold. The phrase “absolutely true diary” hints at the semi-autobiographical nature of Alexie’s novel; likeArnold, Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and transferred to the all-white high school in Reardon toescape the hopelessness of the rez. The words “part-time” signify Arnold’s struggle to reconcile his disparateexperiences in the white world and the Indian world. Caught between the two, he must reconstruct his NativeAmerican identity to find his own place in the world.

O'Neill, Cognition, and the Common Core Standards

O'Neill, Cognition, and the Common Core Standards

Resurgence of Ethnicity and National Identity in Contemporary Native American Literature

The paper offered is devoted to the analysis of Native American identity questions discussed in contemporary Indian fiction. Though the author of the article is Not-Native, an attempt to consider cultural issues from Indian point of view is made. Such novels as “Ceremony,” 1977 by Leslie Silko; “Bingo Palace,” 1994 by Louise Erdrich; “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” 2007 by Sherman Alexie are used as the study material. The problems of self-realization, national dignity regain, inferiority complexes and post-colonial trauma causes are considered. The research proposed draws attention of both Native and Non-Native audiences to the destructive aftereffects of ethnic genocide. It also helps understand indigenous values, priorities and mentality. Misinterpretation of Native objects purposes and disrespect towards Indianness result in cultural misunderstanding and offense which can be regarded as a further endeavor of colonization. These ideas are supported by the relevant examples from the novels selected. The work of indigenous writers is treated as a powerful means of mass influence helping solve current problems of ethnicity and national identity, bridge the existing cultural gaps. Expansion of knowledge on important aspects of Indian nations’ worldview improves cross-cultural understanding and promotes balanced co-existence of Native and Non-Native peoples. It also encourages indigenous people to be aware of their rich spiritual and cultural legacy helping them survive the painful blunders of the past. The following methods are applied in the study: historical, cultural and comparative analyses. The results received may contribute to the recent social decolonization and Native resurgence process.

Sherman Alexie’s Many Tribes

Sherman Alexie hoped his first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, would reach students of color, but had no idea it would hit a nerve with readers across the country and from a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicities.

Not Exactly: Intertextual Identities and Risky Laughter in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian

Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian does not exactly fit theories of reading, identity, and authenticity often cited in scholarship on children’s literature by and about Native Americans. Examining the novel’s multiple intertextual identities and the risky laughter of Ellen Forney’s illustrations, I situate its radical potential in Thomas King’s theory of reading.

"Humor Is My Green Card" A Conversation with Sherman Alexie

381 World Literature Today "Humor Is My Green Card" A Conversation with Sherman Alexie Joshua B. Nelson Sherman Alexie?poet, novelist, short-story author, screenwriter, film director, Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, comedian, and more?visited the University of Oklahoma campus in March as the 2010 Puterhaugh Fellow. It was an exciting time for OU as well as for Alexie. Just before he arrived, he learned he won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for his latest short-story collection, War Dances, and while he was here, he was honored with the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award. War Dances, like his recent poetry collection Face, continues the stylistic innovations and penetrating insights he introduced with the publication in the early 1990s of his first short stories in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and his poems in The Business of Fancydancing. In the prolific interim, he has published several other story collections, three novels, numerous collections of poetry, and a novel for young adults (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) that won the National Book Award. In our conversation, he spoke of the pragmatics of Indian politics, the commercialization of art, his engage ment with his critics, Sarah Palin, and much more with characteristic humor, acumen, and abandon. The following is an excerpt of our conversation. Joshua B. Nelson: In your mind, what makes War Dances what it is? It seems to be doing something that not very many people are doing stylistically, in terms of form. Sherman Alexie: It's old-school, actually; it's nothing new. War Dances is really a lot like my first book, The Business of Fancydancing, which was also a combination of stories and poems but reser vation-centric. So you could think of War Dances as the urban equivalent of The Business of Fancy dancing. I think that subject matter was exciting to people because at any given point, somewhere around 70 percent of Natives live off-reservation. And yet our literature doesn't reflect that. Those amazing urban Indian stories are not being told, and I think War Dances makes a gesture toward that. So because there aren't many of us, because we don't have a huge body of literature, I think when one of us does something new it still feels revolutionary in the context of an art form that's thousands of years old. JN: You also do some other sort of smaller genre inclusions, almost like readers' guides. You do a little bit of lit crit, a little bit of art crit. I'm inter ested in what you are up to there. I think, for instance, of "Fearful Symmetry," of the critical engagements you've got there. You talk about an escape fire in that story and of writing about writer's block as a way to get back to writing. I'm wondering if you're maybe doing a little bit of escape-fire setting with your engagement with criticism. SA: Honestly, that never even occurred to me. But it's like in therapy when your therapist says something and you're like, "Yeah, you're right. Subconsciously, I must have been doing that." Because it makes perfect sense. I mean, it was a story about escaping. JN: And using up the fire before it gets to you. SA: Yeah, using the fire to protect yourself from the fire, which is what English is all about for me. I think of Adrian Louis's line of poetry about Eng lish hanging Indian tongues on its belt. What is the Joy Harjo title, Reinventing the Enemy's Language? Yeah, that story is definitely part of such a tradi tion. Especially talking about cinema, which is where all the negative imagery, all the inaccurate Editorial note: For more on Native languages, see Mary Linn's assessment on page 56. imagery of Native Americans, comes from. So for a Native to be working in that genre is far more ironic, far more ludicrous than an Indian writing books. You know, writing an honest, truthful story about an experience but also satirizing myself and my process in it, with a capitulation to...

Adding a Disability Perspective When Reading Adolescent Literature: Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Adding a Disability Perspective When Reading Adolescent Literature: Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sacred Hoop Dreams: Basketball in the Work of Sherman Alexie

The game of basketball serves as a fitting metaphor for the conflicts and tensions of life. It involves both cooperation and competition, selflessness and ego. In the hands of a gifted writer like Sherman Alexie, those paradoxes become even deeper and more revealing. In his short story collections, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and The Toughest Indian in the World, his debut novel, Reservation Blues, and his recent young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie uses basketball to explore the ironies of American Indian reservation life and the tensions between traditional lifeways and contemporary social realities. So central is basketball to the Lone Ranger and Tonto short story collection, in fact, that the paperback edition's cover depicts a salmon - the Coeur d'Alene Indians are fishermen - flying over a basketball hoop.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (review)

Reviewed by: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Karen Coats Alexie, Sherman The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; illus. by Ellen Forney. Little, 2007 [256p] ISBN 978-0-316-01368-0$16.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 7-10 "Who has the most hope?" Junior, a Spokane Indian, asks his parents. "White people" is their instantaneous and simultaneous reply, confirming for Junior what he already knew: if he is to have any hope of fulfilling his dreams, he has to leave the rez. Braving the fierce anger of his best friend, Rowdy, Junior attends a white high school twenty-two miles from his home, where he falls in love, makes a few friends, and becomes a basketball legend. His triumph is always more bitter than sweet, though, as a boy caught between two conflicting worlds of loyalty and responsibility. His sense of humor and his cartooning become his salvation as he bears the loneliness of trying to escape the life of poverty and/or alcoholism that he sees as inevitable for Indians who stay on the reservation. Meanwhile he shares the perpetual grief of his community as they bury more people in a year than his white friends have lost in their whole lives; his pain reaches a peak when he loses his sister, who made her own escape from the rez by marrying a guy she met at a casino and moving to Montana, only to get drunk and die without waking up in a trailer fire. Through these experiences, though, he begins to get a sense of who he is and where he belongs, of which affiliations he can afford to keep and which he must walk away from; most poignant is the gift of identity that Rowdy gives him as he too comes to terms with what Junior must do to survive. The grief in this narrative is enough to leave a reader gasping, with both the humor and the hope always deepened by sadness and the ever-present niggling of undeserved and impotent guilt. Nevertheless, what emerges most strongly is Junior's uncompromising determination to press on while leaving nothing important behind. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois