Like any good piece of writing for young adults, Alexie’s novel is a page-burner that provides plenty of opportunities for reflection, discussion, and insight. The protagonist named Junior guides the reader through a web of pessimism, doubt, and injustice, but, through his perseverance and courage, he finds his way out and comes to terms with who he is. I enjoy the fact that this book is written in first person because Junior (or Alexie) is able to pause the narrative to question and challenge the reader to see the world in the same manner that he does, if only for a few pages. The captioned drawings or cartoons that show up throughout the story intensify this effect and provide a creative and expedient way to tell the necessary back-story.
Junior’s cartoons, in his own words, allow him to “understand the world” (95). He is often frustrated by not only his own personal situation, but also his family’s, friends’, and community’s, and these drawings ameliorate the despair he feels. He fights the world with humor, and satirizes serious situations. Right off the bat he wins his readers over with his wit, humor, and almost crushing honesty. Apart from the great usage of terse prose and brilliant symbolism, I might actually believe this book was written by a freshman in high school. Thus young readers would probably respond to this book very well, and I foresee myself using this book in my future classroom.
Although you would probably initially describe this book to someone as one that delves into issues in the Native community such as alcoholism, racism, and identity crisis, I might suggest that basketball is one of the most important themes present in Junior’s story. As a former player, I felt all of the same emotions as Junior – the fear, the nervousness, the need for acceptance, the unabashed seriousness of competition in a young person’s life, and the deeply personal relationship a coach and player can have. Even though Junior eventually succeeds socially at Reardon, basketball is his principle escape. It provides him an opportunity to show his courage and stand up in the face of both communities, both of which consider him merely a half member. Like his Native heritage, Junior can’t help the fact that he wasn’t born tall and strong like the white players on the team – but he rises above this fact because like all people, he possesses at least one great quality: he can shoot.
One perk to teaching this book would be the fact that in very few pages we are presented with an array of different characters with very real emotions and thoughts, all of which possess 3-D personalities. If a reader didn’t have these influences, both positive and negative, he would be a very different person. The clash between Junior, a young man of very low socio-economic status, and his white classmates at Reardon seems to merge both the “white world” and the “native world” into a common narrative. Junior learns a lot from others, but others end up learning much more from Junior.
The reason this book is teachable is the shock factor, in my opinion. From intensely sad and bleak portraits of the world to laugh out loud moments, Junior does a great job informing and entertaining his audience. There are three heart-wrenching deaths in the story, but dozens of laugh-out-loud moments. The way that Alexie handles sexuality in the story is genius in my opinion: it is a crude, artful, honest, light-winded, and comedic strategy that somehow hits the nail right on the head. All in all, this book is probably able to inform students without them ever realizing it, and entertain them by telling the truth in the true sense of the word.
No comments:
Post a Comment