Great Writers: Sherman Alexie, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian"

Foreword

“I was born with water on the brain.” The opening line from a masterful work by a genius storyteller. The other night I thought I’d try reading this book out loud to my nine-year-old son. The copy we have is worn and dog-eared, a first edition bought only a few days after it was published in 2007. At the time I didn’t yet have a son, and my daughter was still very young. I had bought Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for myself, having already, before it was published, heard how amazing it was. With that opening line, Alexie brought me into the world of Junior—struggling artist, ballplayer, survivor of two very different kinds of education. And inside Junior’s world, I was awakened to life on the reservation—meeting people and finding myself in situations I had never imagined.
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, who has written extensively about the importance of children’s literature, talks about how books can be both mirrors and windows—mirrors in which readers can see themselves on the pages of literature and thereby know their existence in the world is valid and true, and windows into worlds they might never have imagined. This book is a window into Junior’s world—a window Alexie pulls the curtains back from and lovingly invites us into. But it is also a mirror for the many First Nations people who have not seen themselves in literature. It is hard to read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and not find a part of yourself in its pages.
The other night, as my son and I ascended the stairs to his bedroom, I grabbed the book off the shelf—“Let’s just try it,” I said. My son, holding a comic book, said, “No.” Flatly. “Yes,” I said. “We’re going to give it a try.” I knew at once he’d love Junior and Rowdy and the many people he’d meet on the reservation. With that first line, my boy was hooked, the way I had been many years ago. The way my now-teenage daughter had been two summers ago, when she closed the book and exclaimed, “This book is so good, I cannot believe it was assigned.”
How does one author touch so many different people at so many different points in their lives? Alexie’s brilliance lies in his ability to speak truth to power with humor, grace, and love. He loves the characters he brings to the page, and, by extension, we fall in love with them, too. Two pages in, I told my son we could move on to his comic book if he wanted. “Nah,” he said. “Keep reading.” After a moment, he smiled and said, “I think this book is going to be good.”
We read long past his bedtime. For me, moving back into Junior’s world felt like visiting an old friend. For my son and for so many of you coming to this story for the first time, I know this book will be revisited often and, most of all, loved deeply. —Jacqueline Woodson (xv)

34 pages; 11,476 words; visuals