Questions for Discussion


Here are a few ideas to think and write about as you read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  We recommend you write down your responses in a small notebook and bring the notebook and the book with you to the college this Fall. 

Taking time to work on this over the summer will help you better use the book in your College Writing course.  Also, you will have an opportunity to meet and ask questions of the author, Sherman Alexie, on Friday, August 22, 2008 during Freshman Convocation.  Thinking about these ideas now will help you to form questions of your own to pose to him that day.  Don’t ask him these questions!  Pose your own questions using some of these ideas – the basic themes in the book – as a starting point.

  1. Make a list of the many challenges Junior faced when deciding to attend an all-white high school.  What do you think was the greatest challenge he faced?  Explain your answer.
  2. Junior’s life is an example of how a private, personal identity can sometimes conflict with a broader, social identity.  Write about an event or a time in your life when you experienced that same kind of conflict between how you saw yourself and how others saw you.  Do you believe we all have to move between a personal and a social identity at times?  What times?
  3. What are the ways in which Junior’s identity as an American Indian is both problematic and precious? 
  4. What does Junior mean when he states, “I belong to the tribe of American immigrants!”  What “tribes” do you belong to?
  5. Junior was certainly not the only person on his reservation to feel trapped and helpless/hopeless.  Why, on a reservation of people who had given up, was Junior a survivor?  What made him different from the others? 
  6. Junior’s best friend, Rowdy, is a source of both rejection and reconciliation in Junior’s life.  How can that be?
  7. Everyone has to live by the rules in their society.  Most rules are reflected in a society’s legal code but others are unwritten rules that guide human interactions on a more personal level.  Think about the way in which Indians on the rez dealt with threats from other Indians.  How did the “Indian/rez” way of dealing with threats differ from the “White” way that Arnold encountered at Rearden High School?   Why do you think there is a difference between the two? 
  8. Isolation is one of the main themes of this book.  Make a list of the various ways in which that theme emerges in the book.
  9. Identify and briefly discuss other major themes in the book.
  10. What to you think Penelope’s motivation was in developing a relationship with Junior?  Do you think Penelope was merely curious about Junior’s culture or do you think her attraction to him would have been the same if he were white?  Did she like him because he was different or was there some common quality or interest that they shared? 
  11. In what ways are Mr. P (Junior’s math teacher at Wellpinit) and the rich white man who showed up for Grandmother Spirit’s funeral (the man with the powwow costume) alike, and how do they differ?