The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Reading Response

            Many people lose hope in themselves when others don’t believe in them. In the book “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, Junior, a 14-year-old boy, was born with a brain disease and has been bullied all his life. He lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation with his poor Indian family. For as long as he can remember, the Indians from the reservation and the white people from the neighboring towns have never been friends. The white people are rich and the Indians are poor. The white people have futures and the Indians do not. But most of all, the white people have hope and the Indians have none. For these reasons, the Indians saw themselves as less than the whites, but Junior is about to change that by going to an all-white school 22 miles away from his reservation. Over the course of the story, Junior is able to show the rest of the reservation, and more importantly himself, that they shouldn’t put themselves down because of their race.

            In the beginning of the story, Junior shows how the way the white people treat the Indians had an effect on their self-esteem. Junior gives an example of the awful way the white people treat them by talking about when he had to get his teeth pulled. “And what’s more, our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half the pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain.” The white people do not see the Indians as their equals. They treat them differently and don’t see that what they are doing is wrong. This treatment affects the Indians because after being treated like this all the time, they start to believe it too. When Junior first begins to attend the all-white school, he begins to feel like he doesn’t belong. “I didn’t deserve to be there. I knew it; all of those kids knew it. Indians don’t deserve shit.” Not only do the white people not see the Indians as their equals, but the Indians themselves don’t think they deserve the same things. They let the white people’s actions and words get under their skin and they believe everything they say. This is probably why the Indians lost their hope, but Junior is about to bring it back. He was the bridge between the races, connecting them in a way.

            Junior was able to maintain his courage, bravery, and hope even through difficult times. In the pep talk that Junior’s math teacher, Mr. P, gave him about hope he says, “’Son, you’re going to find more and more hope the farther and farther you walk away from this sad, sad, sad reservation.” Mr. P recognizes that Junior still had hope when the rest of the reservation had lost it. He wants Junior to leave before he loses his hope as well. A few days after Junior came to Reardan, the all-white school, he got into a fistfight with a boy named Rodger. Rodger was big and tough, but Junior punched him in the face after he made a joke about Indians, and Junior was very proud. “I felt brave all of a sudden. Yeah, maybe it was just a stupid and immature schoolyard fight. Or maybe it was the most important moment of my life. Maybe I was telling the world that I was no longer a human target.” Junior was proud for standing up for himself and it made him feel powerful. None of the Indians on the reservation would ever talk back to a white person, let alone punch them in the face. After that, the boys respected him. They walked away from the fight, but they didn’t forget. They liked the fact that Junior wasn’t afraid to fight back. They did not care about his race.

            By the end of the book, it is clear that the kids at Reardan accepted Junior for him, not caring what color his skin was. When Junior was about to play an important basketball game against his old school he says, “In fact, my white fans were going to cheer for me like I was some kind of crusading warrior.” The white kids’ opinions about Junior had changed. Instead of making fun of him because he was an Indian, calling him names, and picking on him, they cheered him on at a game that was significant to him. Not only that, but they made him feel like he belonged. After the Winter Formal that Junior had gone to with Penelope, a popular freshman girl, all the popular people went to a diner in Spokane for dinner. Junior is poor and he couldn’t afford to buy food, but he was embarrassed to tell anyone. When he finally did, Rodger said, “Man, don’t sweat it. You should have said something earlier. I got you covered.” Junior was friends with Rodger, but he was still unsure if he could tell him that he was poor. Junior was afraid that he might judge him like he had in the past. I didn’t matter to Rodger, anyway. Rodger was a good friend and could be trusted. 

          By going to an all-white school, Junior's bravery showed the rest of the Indians that they were equal to the white people. The Indians made themselves vulnerable by not fighting back when the white people did something mean. When Junior stood up for himself, he made history. He showed everyone that not only was he done with getting made fun of, but so were the rest of the people of his reservation. In the future, I predict that the Indians are no longer going to let the white people seem more important. I also predict that the white people will no longer be mean after learning from their experience with Junior. Without Junior, nothing would have changed.