MASARYK UNIVERSITY Young Adults in the Writing of Sherman Alexie

84 Pages·2011·0.68 MB·English

MASARYK UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature

Young Adults in the Writing of Sherman
Alexie

Diploma Thesis

Brno 2011

Supervisor: Author:
PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D. Bc. Hana Adámková
Prohlášení:
Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s
využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v
souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy
univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech
souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský
zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

Brno, 20 April 2011 Hana Adámková
Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Irena Přibylová, Ph.D., for her
patience, kind guidance, and valuable advice.
Table of Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6
1. Children’s literature ............................................................................................................... 9
1.1 The concept of childhood and brief history of children’s literature ............................. 9
1.1.2 Pre-modern childhood and literature .................................................................. 10
1.1.3 Age of industrialization and children’s literature .............................................. 11
1.1.4 Postmodern era and children’s literature ............................................................ 12
1.1.5 Fragmentation and refusal of meta-narratives ................................................... 13
2. Adolescence and Young Adult Novel ............................................................................... 16
2.1 Brief Account of Adolescence ........................................................................................... 16
2.2 Young Adults and Identity ............................................................................................... 17
2.2.1 Personal, Social, and Cultural Identity ................................................................ 20
2.3 Young Adult Novel ........................................................................................................... 22
2.3.1 Characteristics of Young Adult Novels ............................................................... 23
2.4 Postmodern American Bildungsroman .......................................................................... 25
3. Native American literature ................................................................................................. 27
3.1 The beginnings ................................................................................................................... 27
3.2 Native American Renaissance .......................................................................................... 28
4. Current life on reservations ................................................................................................ 30
4.1 The concept of reservations .............................................................................................. 30
4.2 Reservations at the turn of the millennium .................................................................... 32
4.3 Sports on reservations ....................................................................................................... 34
5. Identity of a Native American young adult in the novel by Sherman Alexie ............. 36
5.1 The introduction of the character and factors affecting his identity ........................... 37
5.2 Reservation as a safe home ............................................................................................... 38
5.3 Family and friends ............................................................................................................. 40
5.3.1 Identity and best friend .......................................................................................... 41
6. Challenges to identity formation ....................................................................................... 46
6.1 Prejudices ............................................................................................................................ 46
6.2 A new place ......................................................................................................................... 48
6.3 Best friend turns into enemy ............................................................................................ 51
6.4 Basketball ............................................................................................................................ 52
6.5 Traitors and outsiders ....................................................................................................... 55
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6.6 Indian boys and white girls .............................................................................................. 59
7. Achieving Autonomy .......................................................................................................... 63
7.1 No Future on the Reservation .......................................................................................... 64
8. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 67
Resume ...................................................................................................................................... 73
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 74
List of Appendices ................................................................................................................... 80
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Introduction

The aim of the thesis is to analyse a novel by a contemporary Native
American writer - Sherman Alexie. The analysis will concern a young adult
character and formation of his identity.
The period of adolescence and growing up is very complex, considering
all the processes young adults have to go through. The most important issue
which is dominant in this developmental milestone seems to be the search for
one´s identity. It becomes more complicated for individuals from ethnic
minorities.
In the thesis I will attempt to explore the identity of Junior, a literary
character who represents contemporary Native American young adult. I will
analyse a young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007)
by Sherman Alexie and will focus on factors determining Junior´s identity. The
factors are Indian reservation, Junior´s family and friends there, reservation and
white high school, white peers, and importance of sports. I will attempt to find
out how these factors affect his identity and whether and how Alexie makes
him feel Indian.
In the theoretical part of the thesis, I will discuss the development of
young adult literature and its characteristics, and will describe briefly the
period of adolescence, with emphasis on identity. Next, I will focus on Native
American literature and will also deal with current life on contemporary Indian
reservations.
In chapters on young adult literature I draw mainly on materials by
professors of English at Arizona State University Ken Donelson and Alleen
Nilsen, and on Šárka Bubíková, who teaches at the Faculty of Arts and
Philosophy at University of Pardubice, and her concept of American
postmodern bildungsroman. In the chapters on identity, I primarily used
materials from my psychology classes, and materials by professor of human
communication at California State University, William Gudykunst.
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The practical part consists of an analysis of the novel in terms of the
issues layout earlier in the introduction.
Being of Native American origin, Alexie’s work focuses on Native
Americans and Native way of life. Born in 1966, he grew up and lived in the
postmodern era. This is why I will also look at whether Alexie is influenced by
postmodernism and how he uses the means of postmodernism. This will be
only of a marginal focus in the thesis, though.
My first encounter with Sherman Alexie came through his film Smoke
Signals (1998), based on one of his short stories. Only after this film, I have
learnt more about the author, and found his novels and short stories not only
very readable, but also a brilliant source of information on current Native
American life. Alexie himself explains his literary intentions in John Purdy´s
interview: “(...) most of our Indian literature is written by people whose lives
are nothing like the Indians they're writing about. There’s a lot of people
pretending to be "traditional"... who rarely spend any time on a reservation,
writing all these "traditional" books.” (“Crossroads”)
There are several reasons why I have chosen the genre of young adult
literature with Native American themes. First, being a MU Faculty of Education
student and a future teacher, I wanted to focus the diploma thesis on a topic
connected to my field of study. Not only is it connected to English, but the
theme is also linked to my second field of study – civics, as identity is one the
issues dealt with in the Framework Education Programme.
Second, Native Americans have been paid quite a great amount of
attention from the historical point of view. Many popular novels or stories have
been about the past. I wanted to focus on current Native life, so that my future
students can possibly read and learn about their Native peers and their lives.
Being of approximately the same age, my future students will also be searching
for their identities and reading such a novel could help them with this difficult
task. Lastly, as I learnt in a children’s literature class and from my own
experience as an au-pair, the popularity of young adult literature has been
increasing considerably nowadays.
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Since I will deal mainly with Native American literary characters in the
thesis, the term “Native Americans”, as being the most politically correct, will
be used in profusion. Besides “Native Americans” you will encounter also
“American Indians”, and a less formal term to refer to the members of this
ethnic group “Indians.” For Alexie himself uses mostly the later in his writing.
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1. Children’s literature

The novel I selected for the thesis is a young adult novel. Since the
recognition of adolescence as a developmental period was admitted only at the
beginning of the twentieth century, literature aimed at young adults started to
be produced only then. As a result, children´s and young adult literatures were
treated as one genre until the first half of the 20th century.
There is not much scholarly literature on young adult literature and
whether there is, it, according to professors of English Ken Donelson and Alleen
P. Nilsen, mixes children’s and young adult literature (2007, p. 1880). Thus to
study the history of young adult literature, I needed to draw on books on
children’s literature, too.
The topic of this chapter is the definition of children’s literature. It also
aims to provide a brief history of the genre in relation to the concept of
childhood1 from the beginning to the emergence of juvenile literature.

1.1 The concept of childhood and brief history of children’s literature

Peter Hunt starts his Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism with a
straight and simple definition of children’s literature: “Children’s literature is
an amorphous, ambiguous creature; its relationship to its audience is difficult;
its relationship to the rest of literature, problematic.” (1992, p. 1) Let us have a
look on more pragmatic definition of children’s literature.
The most common definition is that children’s literature is for children.
However, children’s literature should not be confused purely with literature
about children or written by children, although these categories mingle largely
(Pokřivčáková, 2003, p. 9).
It is complicated to tell where the period of childhood ends and where
the period of adolescence begins. This assumption could be applied to literature
of these genres, too. There are no definite borders between the genres of

1 Since adolescence was not recognized until 1904 (Papalia and Olds, 1987, p. 13), the term childhood
used in chapters “Pre-modern Childhood and Literature” and “Age of Industrialization and Children’s
Literature” refers both to the period of childhood and to the period of adolescence.
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children’s and young adult literature. On the contrary, both genres share very
similar characteristics.
Since the studying of childhood had not been the main field of interest
for a long time, and started to be taken seriously only a several decades ago, the
same process could be observed within the development of children’s and
young adults literature (Bubíková, 2008, p. 10). Both issues, the concept of
childhood and the history of children’s literature, will be therefore discussed
together while following developmental phases of the society.
Children’s literature was considered a secondary branch of the “big”
literature, and was neglected by both authors and parents (Pokřivčáková, 2003,
p. 9). It is therefore regarded as quite a new genre. It is essential to realize that
literature for children has always been derived from how adults perceive
children and what position they have in the society and history. It corresponds
with an idea of Monika Vosková that children’s literature serves as “a mirror of
contemporary society.”(2002, p. 90) To better define the concept of childhood
and its development within the society, I decided to use three main phases in
the history of childhood defined by Mintz (qtd. in Bubíková, 2008, p. 14-22). The
phases are: pre-modern childhood, the age of industrialization and postmodern
society.

1.1.2 Pre-modern childhood and literature

Pre-industrial society, as Bubíková says, lasted up to the coming of
Enlightenment in the 18th century. The life in pre-industrial society was centred
at home, in the family. The children and young adults were submissive, were
considered defiant and treated as miniaturized or inchoate adults. This period
was influenced by a Puritan way of upbringing: corporal punishments, fear
invocation, no entertainment, and thinking of children’s souls as sinful (2008, p.
14). Literature written for children in this period, if any, was educational or
religious such as alphabet books, books of manners, and the Bible.
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