Another Interview with Sherman ALexie on True Diary of the Part-time India

Hello everyone I found an interview with Sherman ALexie on The absolutely "True Diary of the Part-time India" when I was working on my analysis paper. He was interviewed by "Sadie Magazine" in fall 2010.

Here is the URL for those that are interested.
http://sadiemagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=237&Itemid=235


In this interview, there was a part when Sherman was asked if he had faced a lot of prejudice when growing up.

Sherman answered,” I remember once my mom and dad and my brothers and sisters and I were walking in Spokane and a truck pulled up and the guy inside leaned out and called us dirty Indians and spit on us.”
I wondered why racial slurs in Eastern Washington are less now than before? I mean it is good that is less now, but what changed people to become less racist?

CH 18: Some Indians think you become white if you try to make your life better

"some Indians think you become white if you try to make your life better, if you become successful".

I don’t understand why some Indians think that way because there are lots of successful people that aren’t white especially at overseas. Maybe in their experience and impression, whites are mostly successful in America, but isn’t successful good? Who doesn’t want to break away from poverty and who wants to fret about tomorrow’s dinner?  Since the native Indians know the meaning of “better life,” why don’t they want to achieve a better life?

If I’m an American Indian, I would tell my tribe that we must become better than the Americans and to achieve this, you must learn from the Americans. If some native Indians like to live their lives as how their ancestors had lived then they shouldn’t complain about those Indians who want to live a better life or a western life. 

CH 9-11: Junior changes everything about himself for a girl he likes.

Junior realizes that to make a "beautiful white girl" like Penelope love him, he will have to pretty much change everything about himself. 

I think Junior lost his mind in love. I wouldn’t go that far for a girl because I believe love should not be deceived by something that is temporary attractive. I like change, but if changes are too over you’ll lose your actual identity. During our life time, we may change about ourselves many times because we interact and learn from each other. But do we need to change something about ourselves to intentionally please or to attract others?  

In junior’s situation, does he think that he wasn’t attractive to Penelope because his appearance from head to toe looks different than the majority of his classmates?  If so, he finally knows the importance of blend –in. Like I mentioned in the previous blog, I changed myself to become more American to fin in the society and this is our natural talent when we want to adapt effectively at a new place.

Ch. 7-8: It is a right choice for Junior to leave his reservation

Sometimes it is a change to leave your hometown to somewhere that would give you a second chance in life or a better future. For Junior, he desperately wants to escape the reservation. He isn’t afraid of the outside world yet he knew that the outside world would bring him a better future.

Engage with a new world isn’t always for a better future. Like what most Americans think, we are here to seek for a better life. I can tell you that it’s true for a partial of people, but not all. There are many different reasons to why people who come to America; I came here to study and to see the differences between my country and America, and it is true for most international students. I believe that a person needs to learn from one another to promote oneself, if you don’t see or engage with something new, you would easily be outpaced.

While studying in America, I find that Americans lean more against isolationism because Americans don’t know a lot about the outside world or if one knows, it would only be surface knowledge. Why do I say this?  A lot of Americans believe that they are the best in everything, indeed it has the strongest military in the world so far, but what Americans don’t know is that a lot of countries are catching up or even better than America in living, health care system or even welfares. This phenomenon is the result of lack of engaging with the outside world. 

It is a right choice for Junior to leave his reservation to see new things no matter what reasons that triggered him to leave the rev. since he can always return. There will be more gain than lost  with his choice.

Ch 4-5: Best way to deal with his Native American students was to "make them give up being Indian."

In high school, Junior had a geometry teacher named, Mr. P. He says that he "hurt a lot of Indian kids when (he) was a young teacher", having been instructed that the best way to deal with his Native American students was to "make them give up being Indian". This is a tactic used widely by civilizations around the world to assimilate the minorities. It is used in China on the Tibetans as well. 

Should America allow the native Indians to form its nations? Should China allow Tibet to be independent? Do these people benefit from been assimilated or are they better off by themselves?

To give up being who you are is like raiding your real identity, but no matter how much your identity is changed, Indians would still look brown and whites would still look white. Does that solve anything? 

For Chinese-Americans, no matter how Americanized you are, one would still need to know their mother culture or at least know how to speak Chinese other than English. Any ethnic without a strong culture is their biggest weakness.

Trapped in the cycle of poverty

It is hard for anyone realizing that he/she is helplessly trapped in the cycle of poverty. This is like accepting a fate with what he/she can do to make a living and survive. We all understand education is the only way to break the poverty cycle, but it isn’t that easy as it seems in America since most high paying jobs are still occupied mostly by white-Americans.  From a different perspective, native Indians lived their lives freely before the intrusion of the Anglos. To the native Indians, it is the alien culture, language and economic system that conquered their lives yet they have to re-learn in order to survive. It is like telling Americans to learn everything about Chinese and speak in Chinese IF Chinese conquers America. That is how I felt.

In the first chapter, it seems to me that junior suffered from all sorts of medical conditions from a young age more than other ordinary kids. Junior is a down-to-earth person. He doesn’t mind speaking about the embarrassing moments that he had gone through yet he makes fun of it. Drawing is another way he likes to express himself and he believes that drawings have no communication barrier unlike languages. And by drawing, he hopes that he can escape the reservation that he lives in right now. 

I can feel that junior is determined from escaping the reservation, but if he is happy in the reservation why does he want to leave the reservation?  What is so bad living in a reservation? Besides no one is really locked at a reservation, he can always go pass the reservation if he feels melancholy.

I’m guessing that Maybe junior is actually a kind of person who hides the true feeling and expresses the opposite of how he/she really feels because he was always been teased when he was young, so to overcome the anger and pain he would just comfort himself by behaving the opposite.