The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

About The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a 2007 novel by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney, and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. It is a semi-autobiographical account of Arnold Spirit Jr. — Junior — a teenage boy growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington State. Junior was born with hydrocephalus, has had a stutter and poor eyesight since childhood, and has been beaten up so many times at school that he has developed a reputation for toughness he does not feel.

On the advice of his reservation school teacher, Junior transfers to Reardan, an all-white school in a small farm town fourteen miles away. The decision costs him nearly everything: he is immediately branded a traitor by his community, including his best friend Rowdy, and has almost no money for transportation, school supplies, or lunch. At Reardan, he is the only Indian student (except for the school mascot) and must navigate poverty, racism, and isolation to find his footing. The novel is illustrated throughout with Junior's own cartoons, which Forney renders beautifully — autobiographical drawings that say what prose sometimes cannot.

Alexie writes with humor and grief in equal proportions. The novel is genuinely funny, often; it is also searingly honest about poverty, death, identity, and the particular sorrow of leaving a place you love because it cannot give you a future. Junior loses friends and family throughout the book — to poverty, to alcoholism, to simple despair — and carries each loss with him.

Awards and Recognition

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2007. It has been widely taught in middle and high schools, praised by educators for its honest portrayal of reservation life, its depiction of the specific difficulty faced by Native students in navigating white educational institutions, and its formal innovation — the illustrated diary format gives students a model for how image and text can work together to tell a story.

Alexie is one of the most celebrated Native American writers of his generation, with a body of work in poetry, fiction, and film that spans three decades. The Absolutely True Diary remains his most widely read book and one of the most significant coming-of-age novels in the young adult canon.

Why The Absolutely True Diary Has Been Banned

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has been banned or challenged across 10 states in 66 school districts. The challenges are varied: some cite the novel's language, some its frank discussion of masturbation and sexuality, some its portrayals of violence and poverty. Some challenges have cited the book's depiction of Native American culture and its criticism of the reservation system, including a passage in which Junior reflects that the reservation creates a cycle of poverty that destroys hope.

Alexie has been unusually direct in responding to banning efforts, stating that the people most likely to want his book removed are the ones least likely to have thought carefully about what it means for a Native student to see their experience reflected honestly in school. The book's presence in classrooms is, for many readers, the first time they have encountered a Native protagonist in a school-assigned text — and its removal is particularly pointed for Native students in districts where the ban occurs.