Just Finished Reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

When I go to my local public library I often go to the audiobooks section, often coming across books recorded in the Playaway format.  Playaway audiobooks consist of a small cartridge resembling a large MP3 player...you supply your own earphones and AAA battery.  The other day I checked out a Playaway edition of American Indian writer Sherman Alexie's young adult novel titled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, first published in 2007.  It is told in the first person by a Spokane Indian boy, Arnold "Junior" Spirit, describing his life from his hydrocephalic condition as an infant...causing early problems and an enlarged head...and on throughout his youth in the Spokane reservation in eastern Washington state as he deals with widespread bullying and other issues.  One of his reservation school teachers notes that he is bored with the low level of education provided there and suggests he attend a "white" public school in a nearby town...Arnold does so and becomes shunned as a traitor by others in his reservation, including his best friend Rowdy.  The story continues on from there...you'll have to read it for yourself to see where it goes...

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was a very compelling and alternately funny and sad view of what it's like to grow up on a remote Indian reservation...I've since read that the author himself is part Spokane and shared much of his own life's story in the novel.  Sadly, I also read that last year some aspiring women writers came out with complaints against him for hitting on them during some writing workshops that he was involved with.  Alexie apologized for his forward behavior, but many in the literary community still have shunned him and even withdrawn past awards.  No way do I condone his past behavior, but at the same time I think that his works should stand on their own merit.  One problem I have with celebrityhood in our culture is the tendency of people to either idolize their favorites or vilify those they dislike, instead of realizing that we're all cut from the same mold and while our misdeeds deserve criticism and sometimes punishment (and sometimes severe punishment), none of us are truly perfect and blameless.  People are complex entities and there's good and bad in all of us, believe it or not.  Sherman Alexie is clearly a flawed man and he admits it...the irony of some of those who have made him into a literary pariah of sorts is that they had earlier lauded his portrayal of people in general as being flawed as well...