Sherman Alexie's True Diary: Why Schools Should Ban the Book

The Problem of Political Correctness

While there are several good reasons for why Sherman Alexie's book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian should be read in schools, the honesty and lack of political correctness with which Alexie speaks about taboo subjects make it a good candidate for banning. The book is extremely provocative for any age, but in a politically correct age it is especially dangerous as it exposes youths to unconventional modes of thought and expression that challenge orthodox American values. In short, Alexie upsets the status quo that progressive thinkers, teachers, and leaders have spent more than a century protecting.

Alexie displays with absolute candor his take on how different races really perceive one another—which in a nation that values equality is not the most sensitive way to discuss race. True, the novel exposes the reality of cultural identity and racism in America, and it does so in a way that reveals what it is like to struggle to find one's own voice; but in an age that looks to move beyond culture and race, Alexie's Diary is rather more backward-looking than forward-looking. Do we really need to be reminded via bitter anecdote of Sherman's past?

Challenging Conformity and Convention

For example, when Sherman recalls how he had to have his extra teeth pulled, he recounts, "Our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain" (2) and then calls the doctor "a bastard" in the next line. Is it frank? Yes. Is it honest? Yes. Is it politically incorrect? Yes. And that is why the book should be banned. Alexie is a non-conformist (he won't even conform to being "an Indian," thus the "part-time" status). The novel explicitly embraces this outsider identity as central to its protagonist's narrative.

In a society whose ideological values are based on conformity to political doctrine, Alexie is a dangerous man. He inspires revolt, thinking outside the box, disregard for artificial, arbitrary convention. He calls himself a "retard" (4) and later states that he "was a happy faggot!" (198) without any regard for the preferred nomenclature of today, which is "intellectually disabled" and "homosexual." Alexie throws such respectful terms back in the face of those who crafted them. He insists on being a pariah, on using words that polite society has banned.

Crossing Cultural Sensitivity Lines

And since polite society has banned such words, it only follows that a book that uses such words should be banned as well. He identifies with his friend, the "white girl from a small town" who dreams of being an architect and making something beautiful for which she will be remembered. He states that Indians and white girls from small towns "weren't supposed to dream big" (112). It is Alexie's way of dismissing the American Dream. The author refuses to participate in the collective fiction that modern society has constructed around possibility and meritocracy.

The Failure of Modern American Values

Thus, although the book is humorous, it crosses a line of cultural sensitivity that has been cultivated for decades, a line that dictates how we speak of one another, of other ethnicities, of race, of stereotypes. Alexie jokes about these things, but in schools where "respect" and "correctness" are standards of learning, giving out such a book would be like promoting rebellion from within. Alexie himself would probably prefer to see his book banned. It would register what he clearly already feels about himself—that he is an outsider.

True, the challenges that Native Americans and persons of color face in finding their own voice are made all the more complicated by the culturally sensitive rubrics that WASP America has set forth over the past. Is it a question of being accepted on one's own terms or on white America's terms? But Alexie suggests that the challenges are both external and internal, which is why he never feels comfortable in either world. He is unapologetic about this sense of non-belonging, too.

Conclusion: A Dangerous Text

In that sense, Alexie's Diary is a coming-of-age tale that fails to deliver the conventional moral of modern America, which is that everyone can succeed regardless of race, creed or color. Alexie prefers to show that "success" is largely illusory, which is why he draws so much as a child: he imagines his "cartoons are tiny little lifeboats" that will help him "to escape the reservation" (6). The genre typically affirms social values, but Alexie subverts this expectation, suggesting instead that integration and acceptance may be impossible regardless of individual effort.