Sticking It to the Script: Embracing Unclarity in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The expectation of a “nurturance of optimism” often locks “young people’s literature” in never-ending happy-ending “happiness scripts” (Wayland 101). To echo a cliché, who does not want a happy ending? Especially if the protagonist is a wide-eyed child or adolescent, it’s difficult not to hope we see them pick themselves up after falling down the playground of life and emerge triumphant, a well-earned cape of growth flying behind them. In reading Sherman Alexie’s 2007 novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, many scholars have noted the negativity that permeates the book. Yet the turn to the novel’s final pages, which sees Junior embrace a form of Native American “nomadhood” through his best friend Rowdy, often also leads to a shift in their view: it’s a positive conclusion after all. The scratches are but steps, and Junior now achieves a rightful reconcilement of his life in the reservation with his newfound place in the white world. Set-Byul Moon calls this catharsis into being a nomad an “ultimate triumph” (163). Similarly, Edyta Wood defines it as an “absolution” that makes Junior a “warrior … [who] transcends boundaries” (191). I concede that these perspectives offer meaningful validation and inspiration for audiences, especially for Native American and indigenous readers, who, as Wood underscores, mainstream literature has pervasively misrepresented. However, I argue that a recurring pattern rooted in the harsh reality for indigenous peoples envelops Alexie’s novel, and it continues through rather than changes in Junior’s story and ending, reworking the happiness script that Wayland describes. By employing this repetitive structure that haunts Junior and his tribe both externally and internally from the book’s beginning to end, Alexie illustrates the reality of being Native American in the contemporary U.S. and offers a radical alteration of the happiness script, leaving room for his indigenous audience to make their own meaning while challenging more privileged readers.
From the book’s beginning to end, Alexie plagues many of the Spokane Indian characters with a recurring sequence: they try to escape an element of the oppressive system, win a battle, then eventually lose the war. This repetitive structure establishes the pervasiveness of contemporary Native American struggles. For instance, in the early chapters, Junior explains his mother and father’s dreams, a college professor and a musician, respectively. These dreams could have unclutched them from the unrelenting pull of the oppression on the reservation, and Junior’s parents do try to achieve them. His mother “reads books like crazy” and his father “sounds good[,] like a pro” (The Absolutely 13). These actions suggest a form of resistance against the hopelessness in the reservation. However, their poverty and situation wear them out in the end, tying them into that “ugly circle,” as both fail to reach their goals (The Absolutely 13). Similarly, Junior’s sister, inspired by her brother’s departure from Wellpinit High School, attempts to free herself from oppression’s grip. She emerges from the confines of their basement, where she has wasted away for some time, elopes with a significant other, and then lives happily ever after. For some time. Like her parents, she wins a battle and resists the reservation’s familiar gravity, but her success is short-lived. She ends up dying a tragic death, the system getting the best of her. Perhaps, however, this repetitive sequence burns most tragically in Junior’s grandmother, who epitomizes the resistance to the conventional traps of the reservation. She abstains from alcohol, which is a prevalent problem in many reservations, and practices tolerance, a heritage from Native Americans’ “old days” (The Absolutely 155). Yet the irony is writ: she dies from getting hit by a drunk driver. Even she, who elopes from the reservation’s toxic habits, is unable to escape. Now, both this section of my essay and the repetitive sequence from the novel have become monotonous, and to my point and to Alexie’s, such is the condition for indigenous peoples in the U.S. One could try, but one can’t win a game designed to make one lose. It is brutal. It is viciously cyclical. It is trapping. So trapping, in fact, that some scholars, as Emily Nagin notes, claim that this unhopeful feature of Alexie’s novel is a reverberation of the “Vanishing Indian” stereotype (16). They contend that Alexie lends himself to the conclusion that hope is lost for indigenous peoples in reservations and chains his characters instead of advancing the possibility of change. However, such a perspective overlooks the reality that Alexie’s novel mirrors. It’s not as if Alexie writes from an outsider's perspective. The novel, after all, is semi-autobiographical, as Wood notes. Alexie has experienced these struggles first-hand, having grown up as a “poverty-stricken, sexually and physically abused, self-loathing Native American teenager” (“Why”). Thus, I align with Adrienne Kertzer in his article titled “Not Exactly: Intertextual Identities and Risky Laughter in Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”: Alexie’s novel presents an accurate “representation of contemporary Native Americans,” and does not contribute to the vanishing Indian stereotype (56). The repetitive sequence that haunts Junior’s parents, sister, and grandmother, among others, establishes that accuracy: instead of vanishing, the characters live and become real, and, unfortunately, part of that life and reality are these undeniable struggles the characters and – by extension, indigenous peoples – face under the oppressive system.
The struggles that affect Junior’s external environment encroach upon Junior’s internal thoughts too, as Alexie shows through Junior’s first-person commentary, which challenges norms and validates a possible experience of his Native American readers. For instance, writing about his parents' lost dreams, Junior reflects that, “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor” (The Absolutely 13). This thought subserves norms in at least two ways. For one, it challenges the “nurturance of optimism” that some view as staple to young people’s literature (Wayland 101). What one often expects when poverty comes in books written for children is a pandering to the convention that one can rise despite it through hard work. The quote above directly challenges that, arguing instead that only one lesson can come out of poverty – poverty. While pessimistic, this assertion that Alexie shares through Junior is realistic. Take it from Junior and Alexie, who have both experienced poverty first-hand and have seen it plague – starve, depress, and kill, even – their family and their friends and their tribe. Thus, by refusing to turn Junior’s poverty into a catalyst of persistence and resilience, like many young adult narratives do, Alexie refutes a common belief and implies that optimism maybe isn’t always the best option. For another, it is crucial that the distressing thought comes from the first-person perspective of Junior, who is 14. One expects a child of his age to carry that familiar naivety, that world-is-my-oyster glow. However, Junior’s situation denies him that. The harrowing experiences of the people around him intrude upon his young mind and inform his views on the world in a way that is uncharacteristic of the “typical” adolescent. Scholars might uphold that such “dark content” has no place in young adult literature, but as Wood points out, these self-narratives, such as can be seen from Junior, are crucial for indigenous authors to forward authentic representations of themselves, “validating [Native American] experiences [and] familiariz[ing]” others to these realities (197). Junior’s difficulties, after all, are reflective of many real struggles. Thus, by unapologetically using Junior’s perspective to pose this view, Alexie continues to expose the predicaments that beset indigenous peoples, forces readers with more privilege to reconsider conventions that overlook others, and shows how it might affect young people’s perspective on life as it affects Junior.
As anticipated, the difficulties do not just surround Junior; they happen to him and to many indigenous peoples, too, as Alexie depicts most poignantly in Junior’s breakout basketball game against Wellpinit. Some scholars uphold that this game is what drove Junior to reconcile his identity as a Spokane Indian and a participant of Reardan, the white world. While relating that Alexie often “thwarts a simple interpretation” of how he uses basketball in his writing, David Goldstein ascribes a transformative power for the sport in the 2007 novel, exemplifying that it becomes a “metaphor for … transcend[ing] the binary … [into] a capacious, complex, joyful world” (80, 83). Likewise, Wood considers the match as the path through which Junior becomes a “warrior [who] … transcend[s] boundaries” (191). Raymond Schuck also argues that many young adult books, especially analyzing the work of Walter Dean Myers, who has “prominently represented sports … as a central theme” in many of his young adult novels, utilize sports as a “source of fulfillment” or “hope” for young characters (2, 9, 11). Thus, Alexie could have easily used this moment in the novel as Junior’s turning point. After all, this book is under the young adult genre, Junior has avenged himself through sports against his former team, outplayed his best friend-turned-enemy, and may have found a home at Reardan.
However, Alexie decides otherwise. In fact, the sequence of events in the game against Wellpinit resembles the pattern that haunted Junior’s parents, sister, and grandmother: an attempt to win, coming close to it, then an eventual loss; therefore, through this choice, Alexie continues to illustrate resonating Native American struggles through Junior’s dissonance and to grapple with expectations of optimism. Junior plays the game against Wellpinit to free himself from the reservation’s damaging gravity. As he pointedly stresses, pressed by a reporter interviewing him pre-game, “I have something to prove to the people in Reardan, the people in Wellpinit, and to myself” (The Absolutely 186). He reaches his goal as he plays the “most important night of his life,” wins, and limits Rowdy, his best friend-turned-rival, to “four points” (The Absolutely 186, 194). He even identifies himself with Reardan post-game, using the pronoun “we”: “We had humiliated [Wellpinit]. We were dancing … laughing,” Junior describes (The Absolutely 194). Except, the mood and the pronouns shift quickly. From “we,” Junior utilizes “I” as he reflects, “... I realized something. … I looked over at the Wellpinit Redskins, at Rowdy” (The Absolutely 195). While simple, the pronoun shift mirrors the alienation from his teammates and the internal discord that Junior feels. He no longer identifies with his team but turns inward, primarily using “I” because while his teammates freely ride the high of their conquest, Junior moves to another battle – inside. His relationship with Reardan and his celebration intrude on his identity as a Spokane Indian, a fact that his white teammates do not grapple with. For them, the victory and the joy are crystal. Thus, by shifting from “we” to “I,” Alexie highlights Junior’s unexpected isolation and internal conflict that stems from his differences with Reardan, souring his success. And Junior is not alone. A study by Jackson et al. identifies “paradoxical cultural pressure” as a potent challenge for the “academic persistence” of Native Americans who go to college and leave home, who say they constantly “feel… somewhat uncertain about their families’ and communities’ acceptance of them” (548, 559). While this study deals with an older group and a different context, it parallels Junior’s struggle of reconciling one’s indigenous identity with conforming to an oppressive system that forces them to leave home and aspects of their culture. It is a gridlock. There is no other path neither for these students nor Junior; they must play in-system if they seek the normative “thrive.” Therefore, by subverting the genre’s expectation of celebration from Junior after the win and revealing the character’s internal conflict, Alexie depicts how the dilemma inflicting many Native Americans replicates itself in Junior (albeit in a less familiar form) and questions tropes of the happiness script: can it really work for them if they follow normative paths to happiness?
Thus, it is with all this considered that I hold Junior’s ending as a nomad does not provide an “absolution” or an “ultimate triumph,” which some scholars suggest. Instead, through Junior’s conflicting thoughts that Alexie injects in the final chapter, he purposefully denies a definite resolution for Junior, breaks constraining expectations of happiness, and encourages readers to think for themselves as Junior does. Indeed, the reconciliation between Junior and his best friend is moving, especially as Rowdy embraces vulnerability as he calls Junior an “‘old-time nomad’” which echoes how “‘old-time Indians … used to be nomadic’” (The Absolutely 229-30). Considering this moment as a clear path forward for Junior is tempting. Aha: he’s picked himself up after the conflicting basketball game, and that familiar cape of growth flies behind him as he embraces a new future. However, such reading overlooks the ambivalence discussed in previous chapters and in the succeeding sentences. After all, Junior does not even seem clearly content with his nomadhood on the final page. Right after that, he thinks, “I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them” (The Absolutely 230). Particularly striking words in this sentence from Junior are “someday forgive myself,” through which Alexie elucidates that all is not quite well yet, although there is a possibility of hope. Fittingly, it reflects the author’s life as well. In a note for the 10th anniversary of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie, who himself left a Spokane reservation, admits that although he has “lived an amazing life,” he has also “lost so much beauty” because “in leaving, [he feels he has] betrayed [his] tribe” (“A Note” 174). This note comes from 2017, when he would have been significantly older than Junior in the book. If many years later, Alexie still labors with the complexity of his identity as a Native American in the U.S., it might not be accurate to perceive Junior as having clarity at the end of the novel. Of course, it is valid to hope for positivity for a character in a young adult book. It can help readers find hope and meaning. But as Kertzer asserts, Alexie’s novel presents a call to reevaluate one’s “reading practices” and change oneself post-reading (72). This call includes considering that not every young adult novel has to or ends with positivity. This call includes accepting that one might not exactly find that hope clearly in Alexie’s novel, and even so, it can prove equally productive. As Wayland asserts, too often, a beguiling “fantasy of happiness” that is “elusive and constrictive … governs” which can harm those who do not or cannot conform to that conventional Dick and Jane life (91, 96). Ergo, by continuing the pattern of dissonance seen throughout the book in Junior’s ending, Alexie “rework[s]” the happiness script and offers his readers the “liberation” that can come from not having to conform to it (Wayland 104). No, things do not always have to end with that familiar clarity, and that’s part of the condition of being indigenous in the U.S., Alexie suggests. But now, the choice to resolve it is up to his readers: are they fine with such ambivalence being part of one’s normal?
Overall, by using a pervasive pattern in his novel that bites Junior both externally and internally and by refusing a clear ending, Alexie taps into conventions of happiness often found in young people’s literature, offering a path out of it for his indigenous readers and presenting questions to his wider readership. Although a clean resolution escapes the novel, perhaps its strength isn’t in answering but in raising crucial questions. Is the ending that Junior had satisfying enough? Are we content with it? Should we work towards change? I mean, to echo a cliché, who does not want a happy ending?
References
Alexie, Sherman. “A Note from Sherman Alexie.” The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. 10th Anniversary ed., S.L., Little, Brown, 2007, pp. 164-74.
Alexie, Sherman. Interview with John and Carl Bellante. “Sherman Alexie, Literary Rebel.” Conversations with Sherman Alexie, Edited by Nancy J. Peterson, University Press of Mississippi, 2009, pp. 3-15.
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. S.L., Little, Brown, 2007.
Alexie, Sherman. “Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood.” Wall Street Journal, 9 June 2011, www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEB-65604. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.
Goldstein, David S. “Sacred Hoop Dreams: Basketball in the Work of Sherman Alexie.” Ethnic Studies Review, vol. 32, no. 1, 2009, pp. 77-88, https://doi.org/10.1525/esr.2009.32.1.77. Accessed 16 Nov. 2023.
Jackson, Aaron P., et al. “Academic Persistence Among Native American College Students.” Journal of College Student Development, vol. 44, no. 4, 2003, pp. 548–65, https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2003.0039. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.
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Moon, Set-Byul. "Superheroes Do Not Live on the Rez: The Nomadic Identity for Native Indian Young Adults in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." Trans-Humanities Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, Feb. 2016, pp. 151-69. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A493448531/AONE?u=txshracd2598&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=7ddc0a98. Accessed 13 Nov. 2023.
Nagin, Emily. “Irredeemable Stories? Native American Children’s Literature and the Radical Potential of Commercial Literary Forms.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 28, no. 4, 2016, pp. 1–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.28.4.0001. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.
Schuck, Raymond. “From Politics to Personal Expression: Representations of Sport in Walter Dean Myers’ Young Adult Works.” Young Adult Literature and Culture Edited by Harry Edwin Eiss, by Harry Edwin Eiss, Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2009, pp. 1–20, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utxa/reader.action?docID=1114337&ppg=11. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.
Wayland, Nerida. "Representations of Happiness in Comedic Young Adult Fiction: Happy Are the Wretched." Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 86-106. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/jeu.2015.0025. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.
Wood, Edyta. “Native American Lives in between Cultures in Selected Contemporary Self-Narratives.” Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies, edited by Jacek Mydla et al., Springer International Publishing, 2017, pp. 183–98, link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-61049-8. Accessed 14 Nov. 2023.