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Forbidden Books

February 14, 2014

What Is Diversity In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian?

What is diversity? In the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold goes through a transformation  by examining his beliefs on diversity. The transformation of Arnold takes place on a very small Spokane Indian reservation. The importance of this location is,  almost everyone on the reservation gave up on life and became an alcoholic. Arnold wants to get away from that, but he cannot do that if he doesn't first accept diversity. The reason for that is, if he leaves the reservation, he is going to come in contact with new people and if he does not accept diversity,  he will get into a lot of conflicts. When Arnold first explores diversity by leaving the reservation, he discovers that he doesn’t have to be a failure like all the other Indians expect him to be, and that he can make his own destiny and become whatever he wants. This reveals the theme of the book, which is accepting diversity and following your dreams. Throughout challenges in Arnold’s life, he eventually makes peace with diversity by putting himself in an environment with different people.

One way Arnold challenges diversity is academically. Shortly after Arnold transfers to Reardan he meets a kid named Gordy. Gordy soon becomes his best friend and teaches him that it is okay to be different and a little weird. Arnold and Gordy suddenly become friends after a small confrontation in his geology class when Arnold decides to raise his hand and answer a question. The teacher,  is surprised because, “That was the first time I’d raised my hand in his class” (84). After he answers the question, Mr. Dodge, insists that his answer is incorrect so Mr. Dodge asks Gordy, who is the genius of the school, and Gordy then states that Arnold was right after all. After class Arnold catches up to Gordy and talks to him about what happened in class. While they are chatting, Gordy tells him not to be so insecure about his smartness and kind of gives him assurance that it is okay to be smart. This is an important event because at his old school he was scared of sharing because he was bullied for being smart, and now, he has broken that barrier and is a little bit more comfortable with being smart.

A second example of a barrier Arnold breaks during his journey of making peace with  diversity  is accepting his socioeconomic status. After going to a dance at Reardan, he goes to a pancake house with his friend Roger and his crush Penelope. When they get to the pancake house, Arnold decides to order a lot of food to cover up that he has no money. In the middle of his meal, he gets nervous and runs to the bathroom and throws up. Roger walks in and asks him what's wrong Arnold tells him he left his wallet at home and then Roger tells him its okay and gives him forty dollars for the meal. After they left the pancake house Roger drives Arnold back to school, because Arnold says his dad will pick him up there. When they arrive to the school Penelope and Arnold get out of the car and Penelope Asks Arnold, “‘Are you poor?’ I couldn’t lie to her anymore. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m poor.’ I figured she was going to march out of my life right then. But she didn’t. instead she kissed me” (127). Arnold was so afraid that if people found out he was poor they would treat him badly, but after the truth came out, he was relieved that they treated him no different than before.

Finally, one of the biggest lessons Arnold learns is that, it is good to embrace other races but he also has to accept his own. During Arnold’s freshman year, he joins the Reardan basketball team and in one of the first basketball games the school has is against Spokane and the Spokane team wins. The Reardan team wins 12 more games after that before they go against the Spokane team again. The second time Reardan goes against Spokane, Reardan won by 40 points. After the game, the white kids were carrying Arnold on their shoulders and all of the sudden Arnold got sick to the stomach he thought to himself, “I was suddenly ashamed that I’d wanted so badly to take revenge on them. I was suddenly ashamed of my anger, my rage, and my pain. I jumped off my white teammates’ shoulders and dashed into the locker room. I ran into the bathroom, into a toilet stall, and threw up. And then I wept like a baby. Coach and my teammates thought I was crying tears of happiness. But I wasn’t. I was crying tears of shame. I was crying because I had broken my best friend’s heart” (196). Arnold then realized that he had gotten so caught up in winning that he had forgotten that he belonged to the Spokane tribe and that they have really hard lives and are probably going to get beaten because of losing the game, and he was ashamed that he turned his back on his tribe. He was also ashamed that he has lost sight of the fact that the Spokane Indians had a way harder life and he wanted to defeat them so bad.

The book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was first banned in April 2010 by the Stockton School Board, located in Missouri. The Stockton School Board voted to remove the book from the school library after a parent complained about the content. The American Library Association asked the school to reconsider its decision to ban the book. What ended up happening is that the School Board decided to ban the book with a vote of 5-2. Then the book was censored for the second time by  the Richland School Board, in Washington in June 2011. The school prohibited the book for all grade levels. Although the original vote was only about the appropriateness of the novel for freshman English students, the Committee decided to remove it from all grades, by a vote of 3–2. After some of the board members and district committee members actually read the book they replied that they thought the book was “outstanding” (“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”).

In conclusion, the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is an incredible book for anyone to read and should not have been censored because the language and racial comments because they were not even bad, they were just telling a story through a young boy’s eyes of what he saw in his life on the Spokane Indian reservation. Most people censored the book without even reading it and I think if they would have actually read the book they would have found that the book is incredible and actually meant no harm to any race and was just telling what happened in a young boy’s life. I do not think the book was trying to make any race bad or put a certain race down but was trying to show how one boy went through a journey of diversity and had to put himself in an environment with people that did not accept him. If anyone reads the book to the end they will see that in the end Arnold talks about how the white kids became his friend and he came to love them. The book shows the universal struggles that everyone has to go through; it wasn’t only Arnold that had to accept diversity, but everyone did.

Work Cited

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown

and Company, 2007. Print.

“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Wikipedia. 12 February 2014. Web. 25

February 2014.