Native American Identity

796 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: History of bullying essay

“Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.” (Page 132) In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the protagonist, Arnold, frequently has difficulty finding the correct balance of being an individual and a member of different communities. Arnold is a Native American who has grown up on a reservation without hope. His family has lived in penury, his whole life, and he decides to pursue a better life for himself and his future family. On the reservation, he is called Junior, while at Reardan he is known as Arnold. These two names illustrate his two public personas and represent his two communities. However, bullies both on the reservation and at his new school harass …show more content…

This name change represents his two communities and how he tries to adapt to be accepted into them. And yet despite his best efforts, again he is conflicted with the balance of being independent and being part of a community when he goes to Rearden, the all white high school. On page 65 Arnold punches a boy named Roger because Roger had been bullying him. Being raised on the reservation, he was taught that how you handle your problems is with your fists, however at Reardan in the “white world” that is not how things are done. This is Arnold struggling between his individuality and how he handles situations versus how everyone else at school does. Moreover, Arnold is distraught that he lives in poverty while the rest of the school was raised in prosperity. Arnold feels pressured to conceal this feature of his life as an attempt to integrate into the school. Throughout the novel, Arnold finds himself struggling between being a member of two vastly different communities and his own …show more content…

A historical example of this is when lighter-skinned African-Americans who could pass as white would live in a white world in times of segregation and inequality. This was exceedingly stressful because they had to sacrifice parts of their lives, such as culture and being able to see their families. And all of this, so that they could fit into a different community and fit into society. Another historical example of this is with members of the LGBT+ community. Before it was socially acceptable to be LGBT+ then members of that community would be “in the closet” or “stealth” because they wanted to be able to fit into society with equal rights and opportunities. They were forced to hide that part of themselves because of threats of violence toward them, unequal rights, and various forms of bullying. They had to find a balance between being an individual, and being a member of society and their communities. To conclude, being a member of society or of a community can be very difficult when it forces you to immolate characteristics of yourself. Throughout the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Arnold finds himself struggling to cope with this balance and assimilate into his communities. Historically, minority groups also found this difficult as they had to hide

Show More
Related

  • Part-Time Indian Struggles

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    Encountering struggles in life defines one’s character and speaks volumes about their strength, ambition, and flexibility. Through struggles, sacrifice, and tragedy, Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, adapts to survive difficult situations and faces his problems head-on. As he makes life changing decisions, adapts to an unfamiliar culture, and finds himself amongst misery and heartbreak, Junior demonstrates resilience to overcome adversity and struggles.

    Read More

  • Native Identity in Welch´s Winter in the Blood, The Heartsonh of Charging Elf, and Alexie´s Flight

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    The construction of identity in Native American literature tends to be contingent on the trope of alienation. Protagonists then must come to terms with their exile/alienated condition, and disengage from the world in order to regain a sense of their pre-colonial life. In utilizing the plight of the American Indian, authors expose the effects decolonization and how individuals must undergo a process of recovery. Under these circumstances, characters are able reclaim knowledge of a tribal self that had been distorted by years of oppression. Through Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Heartsong of Charging Elk, and Alexie’s Flight, we can see how the protagonists suffer from the tensions of living on the margins of conflicting societies, and that they must overcome their alienations in order to reconnect with a native identity.

    Read More

  • Racial Identity In In Native Speaker By Henry Park

    1769 Words  | 4 Pages

    Racial and ethnic identity are crucial elements in the framework for individual and communal identity in our society. Deep values through religion and family create a sense of racial and ethnic identity and are manifested in sensible ways for many distinct minority populations in the United States. Individuals with these beliefs have different cultural values that are undesirable in mainstream American society. For others, on the other hand, especially white Americans, ethnic and racial identity are virtually invisible because societal normality is usually constructed around their ethnic, racial and cultural values. We commonly refer to them as the “standard American culture.” In Native Speaker, the protagonist, Henry Park, is unable to define himself in American society. This essay will discuss Park’s cultural self and his path to discovering himself in relationship to his family, friends, and the United States, as well as drawing in personal experiences that relate to Park’s.

    Read More

  • Second-Generation Immigration: Finding a Balance between Two Cultures

    671 Words  | 2 Pages

    The immigrant’s journey to America, as depicted throughout history, transports culture, language, beliefs and unique lifestyles from one land to the other, but also requires one to undergo an adaptation process. The children of these immigrants, who are usually American-born, experience the complexity of a bicultural life, even without completely connecting to the two worlds to which they belong. Potentially resulting is the internal desire to claim a singular rather than dual identity, for simplicity, pride and a sense of acceptance. Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American author and writer of “My Two Lives” could never classify herself as.

    Read More

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    Establishing an identity has been called one of the most important milestones of adolescent development (Ruffin, 2009). Additionally, a central part of identity development includes ethnic identity (ACT for Youth, 2002). While some teens search for cultural identity within a smaller community, others are trying to find their place in the majority culture. (Bucher and Hinton, 2010)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian chronicles Junior’s journey to discovery of self. As with many developing teens, he finds himself spanning multiple identities and trying to figure out where he belongs. “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other” (p.118). On the reservation, he was shunned for leaving to go to a white school. At Reardon, the only other Indian was the school mascot, leaving Junior to question his decision to attend school he felt he didn’t deserve. Teens grappling with bicultural identities can relate to Junior’s questions of belonging. Not only is Junior dealing with the struggle between white vs. Indian identities, but with smaller peer group identities as well. In Wellpinit, Junior is th...

    Read More

  • The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

    1336 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.

    Read More

  • Thomson Highway's The Rez Sisters

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    Identity is 'how you view yourself and your life.'; (p. 12 Knots in a String.) Your identity helps you determine where you think you fit in, in your life. It is 'a rich complexity of images, ideas and associations.';(p. 12 Knots in a String.) It is given that as we go through our lives and encounter different experiences our identity of yourselves and where we belong may change. As this happens we may gain or relinquish new values and from this identity and image our influenced. 'A bad self-image and low self-esteem may form part of identity?but often the cause is not a loss of identity itself so much as a loss of belonging.'; Social psychologists suggest that identity is closely related to our culture. Native people today have been faced with this challenge against their identity as they are increasingly faced with a non-native society. I will prove that the play The Rez Sisters showed this loss of identity and loss of belonging. When a native person leaves the reservation to go and start a new life in a city they are forced to adapt to a lifestyle they are not accustomed to. They do not feel as though they fit in or belong to any particular culture. They are faced with extreme racism and stereotypes from other people in the nonreservational society.

    Read More

  • How Does Sherman Alexie Overcome Stereotypes

    767 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that

    Read More

  • Native American Relations

    481 Words  | 1 Pages

    Native American Relations During the numerous years of colonization, the relationship between the English settlers and the Native Americans of the area was usually the same. Native Americans would initially consider the settlers to be allies, then as time passed, they would be engaged in wars with them in a struggle for control of the land. This process of friendship to enemies seemed to be the basic pattern in the majority of the colonies. When the English landed in Jamestown in 1607, the dominant tribe of the area was the Powhatan (which the English settlers named after the leader of the tribe, Powhatan).

    Read More

  • Perma Red and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: A Comparison and Analysis

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    Native Identity issues are a common theme throughout both Perma Red & The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (ATDPTI). In ATDPTI we see Arnold Spirit Junior struggle to find his place in both the reservation where he lives, and the primarily white Reardan High School where he attends school. When Arnold transferred from the school on the reservation to Reardan High his fellow tribe members from Wellpinit called him a traitor and didn’t bother to acknowledge his attempts to escape the cycle of poverty and oppression that is often associated with reservation life. They call him names like “apple” (Alexie 131), meaning he may be red-skinned on the outside, but he wants to be white on the inside.

    Read More

  • Notes Of A Native Speaker Summary

    1084 Words  | 3 Pages

    He mournfully tells his audience he has “moved away from the periphery and toward the center of American life, [he] has become white inside” (Liu 1). As a young chinese boy growing up in America, he was taught the way to assimilation was to abandon the language, culture, and traditions of his ancestors, and his essay is a remorseful reflection on the consequences of his sacrifice. Despite giving away so much, despite doing it all to ‘become white’, he will always be an outsider – race and skin color can never be the uniting factor of a community. Eric Liu goes on to talk about how “the assimilist is a traitor to his kind, to his class, to his own family” (Liu 2). Why does it need to be this way? The ‘a-word’ (assimilist) need not be a negative one, if only assimilation meant adapting to an ideology rather than one race’s culture. If that were the true meaning of assimilation, the idea that to assimilate is to betray would be eradicated. The current method of naturalization to American culture is unacceptable: The only thing that will unite Americans will be a common goal to promote good values and hard work within

    Read More

  • Growing Up with No Hope in True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

    553 Words  | 2 Pages

    Can you imagine growing up on a reservation full of people with no hope? The character Arnold in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie did. In the beginning of the book, Arnold was a hopeless Native American living on a hopeless reservation. In the middle of the book, Arnold leaves the reservation and finds out that his sister left too.

    Read More

  • Indigenous Identity Essay

    684 Words  | 2 Pages

    What is Identity? Is it what you think of yourself? Is it how others see you? Or maybe it is the way you present yourself. Stories like “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Sojourner Truth , “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, and “Indigenous Identity: What is it, and Who Really has it?” by Hilary N. Weaver give us a few examples of identity based on each one of the authors viewpoints. Both “Ain’t I a Woman?” and “The Story of an Hour”, focus on how women were viewed and placed in society before and during the suffrage movement. “The Lottery” opens our eyes to the identity issue of blindly following tradition. The author of the story “Indigenous Identity: What is it, and Who Really has it?” tells us that identity is based on; race, gender, social status, and the knowledge of one’s heritage.

    Read More

  • Identity And Social Class In The Importance Of Being Earnest By August Wilson

    873 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book, Identity and Difference by Kathyrn Woodward, she goes into depth about one’s own identity. Struggling with identity is bound to happen because one might have a different perspective of the world that was set by one’s community, ethnicity, or even social class. Furthermore, identity gives us a certain place in the world in which one can be connected with society where he live. Though much of identity is used to show the difference in each other, it can also be used to show how similar one is to another. Identity, however, can be used to set one group apart from another. In the apartheid and genocide in Rwanda, the Hutu was seen killing off of the Tutsis due to social class differences where the Tutsis was apparently wealthier, taller, and higher in the social status than the Hutus. Social class differences contributes to how one perceive another identity to the other. Much of what makes up one’s identity has to deal with culture, also because the way one’s culture shape a person is due to his/her experience. This experience of cultures is what makes each individual different from one another and also contributes to one’s own ideas and morals. Identity can be used to separate one person from another, but it can also be used to see how similar one is to

    Read More

  • Disidentification in Search Engine

    673 Words  | 2 Pages

    Can identity be a sharp weapon to overcome restrictions and oppression. Jose Munoz, a former performance studies professor at NYU argued in his article "The White to Be Angry" that identity is manipulative. According to Munoz, the manipulation of identity is called disidenticaction. Instead of rejecting society or a group wholesale, someone who disidentifies accepts some aspects of that society or group without assimilating to the dominant ideals. People, especially in minority groups, developed disdentifciation as an offensive mechanism because it allowed them to function within that group or society without becoming trapped. Munoz's theory provides a powerful analytical lens which I will use to evaluate the characters Corliss and Harlan in Sherman Alexie's Search Engine. Corliss is a Spokane Indian who aspires to evade the restriction placed on her by white and Indian society. Her motivation to evade her restrictions originates from her amour for poetry and books, which allow her to identify with literary figures such as a white Jesuit priest, Homer and Odysseus . Harlan is a Spokane Indian who was adopted and raised by white people. He attempts to define his identity as an Indian thorough writing poetry, which results in his acknowledgement as an Indian by white people. Books and poetry allow Corliss and Harlan to disidentify with their societal norms, and the opportunity to evade their society's restrictions and find humanity.

    Read More

More about Native American Identity

Open Document