Arnold ‘Junior’ Spirit lives on the Spokane Indian
Reservation with his family. His parents drink and his sister has become a
hermit who lives in their basement but the family is a loving one. Junior is
happy with his life. He knows it’s not the best but none of the Indians he
knows are rich and carefree. One day Junior makes a decision that changes
everything. It changes how people treat him, including his best friend Rowdy
and it changes how he sees his life, his future and his culture. We follow
Junior for a year from just before his life changes to afterward. He has a lot
to deal with in that time and you really come to feel for him.
Junior is a character I connected with straight away. He’s a
bit of a nerd who isn’t sure what’s going on with his life, or what he wants to
happen in his life. He likes where he is but at the same time feels stifled by
it. But he has dreams, realistic dreams and he means to achieve them. He is a
brave character but he knows he is doing the right thing. While he is
definitely an Indian, he is also more than that and he comes to realise that
you can be more than one thing. You don’t have to define yourself by the boxes
you fit in to. We don’t really get to know the rest of the characters that well
except Rowdy. Despite this, Junior’s grandmother is one of the most
inspirational people in the book.
The story is well written and could easily have been written
by a fourteen year old, as Junior is. The style feels very realistic and you
can picture the scenes happening in real life. There are also plenty of
pictures in the story as Junior loves to draw cartoons. Sometimes that’s the
only way he can express how he’s feeling. The pictures are brilliant and go
perfectly with the writing, they have the same mood behind them as if they were
done by the same person. I really liked how it all came together and it was
like you were reading his diary.
The book is based on the author’s experiences when he was
growing up and you can really tell because the sentiment isn’t over done and
Junior isn’t afraid to tell it exactly like it is. I don’t know much about the
relationship between Native Americans and Americans, but the way it is
presented here is about right for a situation where any outsider turns up at an
established community. They aren’t openly hostile to him, most just sort of
ignore him or tolerate him if they need to work together. Had it been a whole
group of Indians turning up, it may have been different. The white people may
have felt more threatened.
This is a great coming of age book and I would definitely
recommend it to people in their teens and older. It does make you think how you
would react to an ‘intruder’ into your community. Would you help, hinder or
ignore? This book isn’t just about tolerance though. It’s about having the guts
to be who you want to be and to get what you want. This is the first book I’ve
read about Indians and I feel that I learnt a lot from it. When I finished
reading it I had a smile on my face. Sherman Alexie did an awesome job with the
subject matter and turning his own personal experience into a really positive
result with this book.
Overall rating 4 out of 5.
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