A Review of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

 Amy Huntley

Guilty.

I've long been a person who romanticizes Native Americans. Idealized versions of Native American life have been woven deeply into the fabric of our culture. What REAL experiences have I had with Native Americans and their reservation life? Only a few: met a Navajo while passing through the reservation in Arizona when I was 16. He took me into a teepee (that's right, even though Navajos were not teepee dwellers, he had one set up at a roadside area where he was selling jewelry) and told me the story of his experiences fighting in the Vietnam War. He shot a monkey in the jungle and got into trouble for going back to bury it because he considered the monkey his brother. It was a cool story. I've been to Soaring Eagle. I've visited ancient pueblo sites in New Mexico and gone to Pipestone to see where the sacred stone for peace pipes was mined. But what all these experiences have in common is that they have reinforced rather than challenged my romanticized ideals of Native Americans.

What I love about Sherman Alexie's book is that it adds a strong dose of good old Realism (yes, I mean the literary movement that followed Romanticism) to the stew of impressions I have of Native American history and modern culture. Not that there's a single Native American culture. There are many. I learned that long ago in my travels to Native American exhibits, museums and reservations. But with Part-time Indian, for one kid (the narrator, Junior), at one reservation, during the all too vulnerable teen years, I truly got to see another side of Native American culture. Junior's complex feelings about the people of his reservation remind me (in some ways) of how I felt growing up in a small, insular farming town. His frustrations with money troubles, girls, alcoholism within the family, and the high mortality rate for the people of his reservation all ring so true.  His narrative voice is poignant and real. Something any one who remembers the teen years--no matter what their background--can relate to. I walked away understanding the difficulties Junior faced without being overwhelmed by them. Junior himself faces them with grace, dignity and the best humor he can muster. I truly appreciated his story--and the way Alexie shared it.

Stalker

by Amy Huntley

The Advanced Reader Copy of my upcoming book arrived recently. I got an email on a Wednesday from my assistant editor, Ruta Rimas, telling me it was coming. She also gave me the tracking number of its package. This tracking number became the catalyst for a major personality change on my part.

I became a package stalker.

While talking to some of the younger teachers at school, I discovered that package tracking was not uncommon among the younger--and I need not say more technologically savvy--set. I have used package tracking on rare occasions before--but only when a package whose delivery date had already expired hadn't yet reached my door. But stalking a package--that was all new for me. Apparently there are people in the world who have such a difficult time waiting for deliveries that they begin tracking the package before it's delivery date.

I became one of them.

I was so looking forward to getting that package that within two minutes of the arrival of that fateful email from HarperCollins, I was at the UPS site tracking the package. For the next two days, I kept track of every city the package went through. I knew what it's arrival scan time was. What it's departure scan time was. Friday morning, I announced to my husband, "The package went out for delivery from Lansing at 6:50 this morning."  By eleven o'clock, I knew that the package had been placed on a delivery truck at 7:50. And when the package arrived at 2:45, I ran out to the delivery truck to meet the UPS man.  (Who, by the way, seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was delivering a package to me that would change my life. He did smile nicely at me, though.)

It's official. I've entered into a new technological state of personality. I may just become a regular package stalker. 

But I hope not. There should be something special that sets apart the arrival of your very first ARC from all other packages delivered in your lifetime.

Tuned On, Tuned Out

I listen to A LOT of music when I'm in the rough drafting and brainstorming stages. It sends my brain in so many creative directions. Rhythm is everything for my body when it comes to creativity.  It truly does something amazing to free up that brainstorming and allow my mind to move back and forth between day to day boring old problems and the solutions likewise to writing walls.  If I'm listening to music and working out at the same time...watch out, there's a firestorm of ideas out there. Beware to anyone who disrupts those moments for me. They probably won't recognize me as anything approaching a kind human being. Therefore, I never use music during the drafting and brainstorming process if I have to be able to switch quickly into human interaction mode. 

Confession time....the list of music that I listen to while brainstorming and drafting is eclectic and bizarre.

Synthesized Bach...yeah, he's good. Vivaldi--great. So are collections of Renaissance music (Sting has a pretty interesting one; great for fantasy writing).

And then there's all that other stuff I listen to that I don't think (as an adult who's supposed to be a role model for kids) I should admit to listening to while writing. But here it is:  Coldplay, Radio Head (pretty great stuff for creating a dead narrator), Travis, The Dave Matthews Band, Michael Jackson, Runrig, Enya, Yes, Led Zepplin, The Beatles, The Indigo Girls, U2, The Proclaimers,  Pink Floyd, Abba, Billy Joel, Cat Stevens, David Bowie, The Cure, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Indian Pop-Rock (some of that stuff is awesome; plus I can't understand the words so they don’t distract me ), R.E.M, The Talking Heads, Aqualung, Oasis, Tom Petty, The Bare Naked Ladies....okay, you get the idea. 

But during revision, I DON'T listen to music. When I'm struggling with organization, or with getting connections across sections of the text, I need to spend some time away from music, just looking at what I've brainstormed on the page, and then some time away from the page and just with music envisioning all the possibilities. I never reread my writing to see how it sounds or feels when listening to music. I can't hear the rhythm of my own language then. I'm pretty good about knowing when music is helping and when it's hindering me.  

Even Then You Were Gone

A Response to Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why
By Amy Huntley

Jay Asher’s first novel has been successful in reaching The New York Times Best Seller List. It’s also been successful in reaching a part of me that I haven’t thought about in a long time—the twenty-two year old young woman whose cousin hanged herself.

This novel centers around high school junior Clay Jensen, who receives a set of tapes following the suicide of Hannah, a girl he had a crush on for years. The tapes were recorded by Hannah just before her suicide. The story seeks to help teen readers understand the complicated dynamics of Hannah’s decision to take her own life. The tapes explore thirteen experiences that come together to explain why she has decided to kill herself.

The reader journeys back and forth between the thoughts of Hannah as recorded on tape, and those of Clay as he listens to them. He struggles to understand Hannah’s experiences and choices. He also battles complicated feelings about his peers as he learns new things about their involvement in Hannah’s life.

This all makes for compelling reading. I found myself wanting to read the next chapter, “just until I find out what person Hannah will talk about in it.” The problem was, as soon as I discovered who that person was, I wanted to know more about how that person’s story intersected with Hannah’s decision to kill herself. Of course, as soon as I knew that, I needed to read the next chapter…

This is a fascinating story concept. It allows readers to see how complicated interactions of things that are seemingly small, even if mildly cruel (like a list rating which freshmen are hot and which are not) can have devastating consequences when paired with other circumstances in a person’s life. This is a lesson I believe we all need to keep relearning, and Asher provides it in a unique way.

But none of this is really what I reacted to in the novel. As someone who was left behind when a person I loved chose to commit suicide, I appreciate the way Asher examines the thought process of the person making such a far ranging and permanent choice. Clay’s own interpretations and observations of that thought process help readers see them even more clearly.

I was twenty-two when my cousin killed herself. At twenty-two I had a lot more in common with the teenagers that Asher is trying to reach than I do with the forty-one year-old I have become. Two months after Kristen’s death, I was still struggling to name my frustration with her choices. I wrote a rather lengthy letter to her—which Asher’s book prompted me to pull out. One of the things I wrote in that letter was, “And I tell myself one hundred times a day you’re gone. But I still don’t know that because it’s the same—it’s the same as when you were alive. Even then you were gone.” Asher captures this exact feeling beautifully when his narrator says, “I would have helped her [Hannah] if she’d only let me. I would have helped her because I want her to be alive." These words are an echo of my own feelings reaching out to me across 19 years.

This is an engaging and highly charged reading experience. I recommend it not only to teens, but to their parents as well.