Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Alexie pp. 1-66

First off what an amazing book. I started it on a quiet Friday afternoon and could not put it down until I finished it! Even when company came over I read the entire time apologizing time after time for being so into this book!

The first part of the book:

I started out with the first chapter thinking, man this has a great voice, great insight, and the same thoughts most jr. high kids share! Also it covers so many basis for thing students can relate to. He struggles with loneliness, a neurological disorder (one that a friend of mine has, and she get all sorts of crap for hers), being trapped on a rez, parents are alcoholics, and he is of the way lower class; all of this in present day. Almost every Middle Level student feels alone at some point or another, others may be poor and try to hide it (I know I was one of those), some having learning disorders, or are cast out because of their "goofy" appearance, or even their knowledge, Alexie managed to fit all of this.

Then I thought to myself, this would be a great book for a read aloud...that is until I got to the chapter about the romance novels. I love how Sherman Alexie is so honest about a 14 year olds life, he covers all the basis, but yet parents don't want their kids to know how they think for some reason. Topics like sex, masturbation, porn, struggles with religion, these would all be banned from the school. It makes me so furious to think that because of conservative, selfish parents , rather than letting their children read about it and know they are not the only ones, they force their children to hide the things they are already self-conscious about. I think on the back cover Neil Gaiman described the forseen outcome of this book best: "...I have no doubt that in a year or so it'll both be winning awards and being banned."

I would love to at least suggest this book to my students, but even that I am afraid would force me to lose my job.

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary     
of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little     
  Brown and Company, 2006. pp. 1-66.
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2 comments:

René Saldaña, Jr. said...

Jessica: there's no reason why not to make of Alexie's book a Read-Aloud still. Of course, you would have to control what you read and what you don't, which is what authors will often do depending on their immediate audience at a public reading. For 4th graders, for example, I won't read from either of my last 2 books, but for high schoolers I will; for middle schoolers I choose something in between. For boys I read a certain story or two; for girls something else. And so when a teacher comes across a work like Alexie's that we know kids should be exposed to, then we read it aloud to them and skip over parts. They'd not know if you cut out sentences at a time and rework transitions into the text. We parents have a say in what out kids should and shouldn't get at school, and so we teachers have to keep that in mind. Great that you're already envisioning yourself in front of your classroom and dealing with issues like this well in advance.

January 22, 2008 at 9:18 AM
JessJess said...

I have considered still reading it, but we want to read to our students so they can get excited and actually want to have that same book tangible in their own lives. So if these students take what I'm reading to them, then go an buy the book, and the parents see the content, of language and sexuality, I am still at risk. Maybe I worry too much, but wouldn't that be an issue as well?

January 22, 2008 at 12:36 PM

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