The Catcher in the Rye
Annotation by ---- ------
Catcher in the Rye was written in 1951 by J. D. Salinger. The novel is told in the perspective of Holden, a teenager during the late 1940s or early 1950s. Holden is in California when he tells his story from a mental facility, although it is never revealed what happened other than he “got sick”. He uses the text as a confessional, in which he shares his story of when he left his boarding school and spent time on his own in New York City. Holden has been kicked out of multiple boarding schools all over New England, and he takes the time between when he’s expected home and when his parents find out about his expulsion to spend time on his own. From old teachers, to old friends, to a prostitute, Holden meets people that reveal his insecurities, his faults, and his potential. Through his meetings with his little sister, Phoebe, readers begin to realize that Holden’s resentment of the world is more for a resentment towards himself, something that takes a toll on him and causes him to “get sick”. However, at story’s end, he tries to remain optimistic about returning to school in the fall, and grudgingly admits he misses a lot of the people he resented in the story, showing cracks in his hard shell.
Summary by ---- -------
Holden begins telling his story at Pencey Prep, the fourth school he has been to. He has just been kicked out and is not suppose to return after Christmas Break, which is suppose to begin in a few days. Holden visits his history teacher, Old Spencer, who reminds him that, “life is a game that one plays according to the rules,” which Holden resents. Readers are also introduced to a couple of Holden’s classmates, including the greasy, nosey Ackley and narcissistic Stradlater. After getting into a fight with Stradlater, Holden has enough with Pencey and leaves with his bags to go back to New York City, where he lives. However, instead of letting his parents know he is back, he stays in multiple hotels to have some time for himself.
At the Edmont Hotel, he attempts to call Faith Cavendish, a friend’s acquaintance with a loose reputation, but plans failed. He also attempts to flirt with older women in the Lavender Room out of boredom. Holden also has a prostitute, Sunny, come up to his room, but he gets too nervous and calls it off. Other meetings, like with old friend Carl Luce and Sally Hayes, a girl he has dated, also end badly because Holden makes inappropriate remarks and offends them. Holden’s attempts at conversation and memories of dear friends and family interwoven in these stories reveal his immaturity and dread of growing up. They also reveal his distaste for “phonies”, people that essentially follow the rules and try to impress everyone. There are only a few people Holden feels are genuine, including long-time crush Jane Gallagher, little sister Phoebe, and his beloved brother Allie, who died of Leukemia.
After his failed meeting with Carl, his situation gets worse as he drinks heavily at the bar, drunk-calls Sally late at night, and wanders around the city. He eventually sneaks into his house to visit Phoebe, who is thrilled to see him, and it appears that Phoebe is more mature and in touch with reality than her big brother. Holden leaves the house to stay with an old teacher, Mr. Antolini, but leaves abruptly when Mr. Antolini makes a move on him. He ends up sleeping on a bench in Grand Central Station, and decides to leave New York for good. However, when he says goodbye to Phoebe, she insists on going with him, they argue, and he gives up his runaway plans. The action of the novel ends with Phoebe on the Central Park carousel and Holden happily watches. Holden grows to miss many of the people from his story, despite his original resentment towards them, and begins to learn not to judge people and jump to conclusions, like with Mr. Antolini. He still has a lot to learn, but he cautiously hopes life will be better once he returns to school in the fall.
Catcher in the Rye was written in 1951 by J. D. Salinger. The novel is told in the perspective of Holden, a teenager during the late 1940s or early 1950s. Holden is in California when he tells his story from a mental facility, although it is never revealed what happened other than he “got sick”. He uses the text as a confessional, in which he shares his story of when he left his boarding school and spent time on his own in New York City. Holden has been kicked out of multiple boarding schools all over New England, and he takes the time between when he’s expected home and when his parents find out about his expulsion to spend time on his own. From old teachers, to old friends, to a prostitute, Holden meets people that reveal his insecurities, his faults, and his potential. Through his meetings with his little sister, Phoebe, readers begin to realize that Holden’s resentment of the world is more for a resentment towards himself, something that takes a toll on him and causes him to “get sick”. However, at story’s end, he tries to remain optimistic about returning to school in the fall, and grudgingly admits he misses a lot of the people he resented in the story, showing cracks in his hard shell.
Summary by ---- -------
Holden begins telling his story at Pencey Prep, the fourth school he has been to. He has just been kicked out and is not suppose to return after Christmas Break, which is suppose to begin in a few days. Holden visits his history teacher, Old Spencer, who reminds him that, “life is a game that one plays according to the rules,” which Holden resents. Readers are also introduced to a couple of Holden’s classmates, including the greasy, nosey Ackley and narcissistic Stradlater. After getting into a fight with Stradlater, Holden has enough with Pencey and leaves with his bags to go back to New York City, where he lives. However, instead of letting his parents know he is back, he stays in multiple hotels to have some time for himself.
At the Edmont Hotel, he attempts to call Faith Cavendish, a friend’s acquaintance with a loose reputation, but plans failed. He also attempts to flirt with older women in the Lavender Room out of boredom. Holden also has a prostitute, Sunny, come up to his room, but he gets too nervous and calls it off. Other meetings, like with old friend Carl Luce and Sally Hayes, a girl he has dated, also end badly because Holden makes inappropriate remarks and offends them. Holden’s attempts at conversation and memories of dear friends and family interwoven in these stories reveal his immaturity and dread of growing up. They also reveal his distaste for “phonies”, people that essentially follow the rules and try to impress everyone. There are only a few people Holden feels are genuine, including long-time crush Jane Gallagher, little sister Phoebe, and his beloved brother Allie, who died of Leukemia.
After his failed meeting with Carl, his situation gets worse as he drinks heavily at the bar, drunk-calls Sally late at night, and wanders around the city. He eventually sneaks into his house to visit Phoebe, who is thrilled to see him, and it appears that Phoebe is more mature and in touch with reality than her big brother. Holden leaves the house to stay with an old teacher, Mr. Antolini, but leaves abruptly when Mr. Antolini makes a move on him. He ends up sleeping on a bench in Grand Central Station, and decides to leave New York for good. However, when he says goodbye to Phoebe, she insists on going with him, they argue, and he gives up his runaway plans. The action of the novel ends with Phoebe on the Central Park carousel and Holden happily watches. Holden grows to miss many of the people from his story, despite his original resentment towards them, and begins to learn not to judge people and jump to conclusions, like with Mr. Antolini. He still has a lot to learn, but he cautiously hopes life will be better once he returns to school in the fall.
Author Biography (---- -------)
J. D. Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 to a Jewish father and Scot-Irish mother. He had an elder sister and, like Holden, was raised in Manhattan and spent some time in prep schools. He would eventually enroll in Valley Forge Military Academy and graduated in 1936. Unlike Holden, Salinger was fairly involved in school and had fairly good grades, contributing work to his school’s literary magazine and was editor of the yearbook. He participated in the school’s choir and drama club as well. He would eventually enroll into Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, but he left after one semester because he did not like the structure and work involved, a characteristic reflected in Holden. Salinger would later take a couple courses at Columbia University, but he would never finish college. In 1942, Salinger joined the military and was in service through the end of WWII, even participated in the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge. Little is known about Salinger’s service, but he was hospitalized in Europe for a nervous breakdown. He also had a brief, eight-month marriage to a German woman named Sylvia, but little is known about the relationship.
After the war, Salinger took his writing more seriously and contributed the story, “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” to the New Yorker in 1946. This story would evolve into Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951. Catcher was slow in gaining popularity, but his Nine Stories, republished in 1953, was an instant hit. However, Salinger did not like the public attention, so he left New York that year and moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, where he lived for the rest of his life. As time went on, he gave fewer interviews and would eventually withdraw himself from the public eye entirely. In 1955, Salinger married Claire Douglas and had two children. Their isolation and Salinger’s constant changes in religious beliefs, ranging from Hindu to Christian Science, led to a lot of trouble in the relationship, leading to divorce in 1967. Various legal issues, from the publication of a biography to reproductions and adaptations of Catcher pervaded Salinger’s later years, further secluding himself from the world. Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at the age of 91.
All information from the citation below:
“J. D. Salinger Biography”. Bio.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.
After the war, Salinger took his writing more seriously and contributed the story, “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” to the New Yorker in 1946. This story would evolve into Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951. Catcher was slow in gaining popularity, but his Nine Stories, republished in 1953, was an instant hit. However, Salinger did not like the public attention, so he left New York that year and moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, where he lived for the rest of his life. As time went on, he gave fewer interviews and would eventually withdraw himself from the public eye entirely. In 1955, Salinger married Claire Douglas and had two children. Their isolation and Salinger’s constant changes in religious beliefs, ranging from Hindu to Christian Science, led to a lot of trouble in the relationship, leading to divorce in 1967. Various legal issues, from the publication of a biography to reproductions and adaptations of Catcher pervaded Salinger’s later years, further secluding himself from the world. Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at the age of 91.
All information from the citation below:
“J. D. Salinger Biography”. Bio.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.
Book Review (---- ---)
J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly
An occasional series in which The Post's book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.
Precisely how old I was when I first read "The Catcher in the Rye," I cannot recall. When it was published, in 1951, I was 12 years old, and thus may have been a trifle young for it. Within the next two or three years, though, I was on a forced march through a couple of schools similar to Pencey Prep, from which J.D. Salinger's 16-year-old protagonist Holden Caulfield is dismissed as the novel begins, and I was an unhappy camper; what I had heard about "The Catcher in the Rye" surely convinced me that Caulfield was a kindred spirit.
By then "The Catcher in the Rye" was already well on the way to the status it has long enjoyed as an essential document of American adolescence -- the novel that every high school English teacher reflexively puts on every summer reading list -- but I couldn't see what all the excitement was about. I shared Caulfield's contempt for "phonies" as well as his sense of being different and his loneliness, but he seemed to me just about as phony as those he criticized as well as an unregenerate whiner and egotist. It was easy enough to identify with his adolescent angst, but his puerile attitudinizing was something else altogether.
That was then. This is half a century later. "The Catcher in the Rye" is now, you'll be told just about anywhere you ask, an "American classic," right up there with the book that was published the following year, Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." They are two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst. Rereading "The Catcher in the Rye" after all those years was almost literally a painful experience: The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil.
Over that half-century I'd pretty much forgotten about "The Catcher in the Rye," though scarcely about Salinger, whose celebrated reclusiveness has had the effect of keeping him in the public eye. He has published no books since "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction" in 1963, but plenty has been published about him, including Ian Hamilton's decidedly unauthorized biography, "In Search of J.D. Salinger" (1988); Joyce Maynard's self-serving account of her affair with him, "At Home in the World" (1998); and his daughter Margaret A. Salinger's (also self-serving) memoir, "Dream Catcher" (2000), not to mention reams of lit crit and fanzine fawning. Rumors repeatedly make their way across the land that Salinger is busily at his writing table, that his literary fecundity remains undiminished, that bank vaults in New England contain vast stores of unpublished Salingeriana, but to date all the speculation has come to naught, for which we should -- though too many people won't -- be grateful.
If there's an odder duck in American literature than Salinger, his or her name doesn't come quickly to mind. He started out conventionally enough -- born in Manhattan in 1919, served (valiantly) in the infantry in Europe during World War II, wrote short stories that were published in respectable magazines, notably the New Yorker -- but he seems to have been totally undone by the fame that "The Catcher in the Rye" inflicted upon him. For nearly four decades he has been a semi-hermit (he married for the third time about a decade and a half ago) in his New England fastness, spurning journalists and fending off adoring fans, practicing the Zen Buddhism that seems to have become an obsession with him.
It's weird, but it's also his business. If, Garbolike, he just vants to be alone, he's entitled. But whether calculated or not, his reclusiveness has created an aura that heightens, rather than diminishes, the mystique of "The Catcher in the Rye." It isn't just a novel, it's a dispatch from an unknown, mysterious universe, which may help explain the phenomenal sales it enjoys to this day: about 250,000 copies a year, with total worldwide sales over -- probably way over -- 10 million. The mass-market paperback I bought last summer is, incredibly, from the 42nd printing; for the astonishing price of $35,000 you can buy, online, a signed copy not of the first edition -- a signed copy of that, we must assume, would be almost literally priceless -- but of the 1951 Book-of-the-Month Club edition.
Viewed from the vantage point of half a century, the novel raises more questions than it answers. Why is a book about a spoiled rich kid kicked out of a fancy prep school so widely read by ordinary Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom have limited means and attend, or attended, public schools? Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as "a symbol of purity and sensitivity" (as "The Oxford Companion to American Literature" puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow? Why do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?
That last question actually is easily answered: "The Catcher in the Rye" can be fobbed off on kids as a book about themselves. It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment (all grown-ups are phonies) and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought. Like that other (albeit marginally better) novel about lachrymose preppies, John Knowles's "A Separate Peace" (1960), "The Catcher in the Rye" touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work. It's easy for them, which makes it easy for teacher.
What most struck me upon reading it for a second time was how sentimental -- how outright squishy -- it is. The novel is commonly represented as an expression of adolescent cynicism and rebellion -- a James Dean movie in print -- but from first page to last Salinger wants to have it both ways. Holden is a rebel and all that -- "the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life," "probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw" -- but he's a softy at heart. He's always pitying people -- "I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden," "You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch," "Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes" -- and he is positively a saint when it comes to his little sister, Phoebe. He buys a record for her, "Little Shirley Beans," and in the course of moping around Manhattan he does something clumsy that gives him the chance to show what a good-hearted guy he really is:
"Then something terrible happened just as I got in the park. I dropped old Phoebe's record. It broke into about fifty pieces. It was in a big envelope and all, but it broke anyway. I damn near cried, it made me feel so terrible, but all I did was, I took the pieces out of the envelope and put them in my coat pocket. They weren't good for anything, but I didn't feel like just throwing them away. Then I went in the park. Boy, was it dark."
Me, I damn near puked. That passage is flagrantly manipulative, a tug on the heartstrings aimed at bringing a tear to the eye. Ditto for Holden's brother, Allie: "He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it."
That's just easy exploitation of the reader's emotion. Give your protagonist a dead younger brother and a cute little sister -- not to mention a revered older brother, D.B., a gifted writer who sounds a whole lot like J.D. Salinger himself -- and the rest is strictly downhill. From first page to last, "The Catcher in the Rye" is an exercise in button-pushing, and the biggest button it pushes is the adolescent's uncertainty and insecurity as he or she perches precariously between childhood, which is remembered fondly and wistfully, and adulthood, which is the great phony unknown. Indeed a case can be made that "The Catcher in the Rye" created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since. It was a short leap indeed from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "The Blackboard Jungle" to "Rebel Without a Cause" to Valley Girls to the multibillion-dollar industry that adolescent angst is today.
The cheap sentimentality with which the novel is suffused reaches a climax of sorts when Holden's literary side comes to the fore. He flunks all his courses except English. "I'm quite illiterate," he says early in the book, "but I read a lot," which establishes the mixture of self-deprecation and self-congratulation that seems to appeal to so many readers. In one of the novel's more widely quoted passages he then says:
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead."
That Ring Lardner is one of Holden's favorite writers is a considerable, if wholly inadvertent, irony. Lardner was the master of the American vernacular who, as H.L. Mencken wrote, "set down common American with the utmost precision." Salinger, by contrast, can be seen straining at every turn to write the way an American teenager would speak, but he only produces an adult's unwitting parody of teen-speak. Unlike Lardner, Salinger has a tin ear. His characters forever say "ya" for "you," as in "ya know," which no American except perhaps a slapstick comedian ever has said. Americans say "yuh know" or "y'know," but never "ya know."
"The Catcher in the Rye" is a maladroit, mawkish novel, but there can be no question about its popularity or influence. My own hunch is that the reason is the utter, innocent sincerity with which it was written. It may be manipulative, but it's not phony. A better, more cynical writer than Salinger easily could write a book about a troubled yet appealing teenager, but its artifice and insincerity would be self-evident and readers would reject it as false. Whatever its shortcomings, "The Catcher in the Rye" is from the heart -- not Holden Caulfield's heart, but Jerome David Salinger's. He said everything he had to say in it, which may well be why he has said nothing else.
Source for Professional Book review:
Yardley, Jonathan. “J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly.” Rev. of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The Washington Post 19 Oct. 2004. Web.
An occasional series in which The Post's book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.
Precisely how old I was when I first read "The Catcher in the Rye," I cannot recall. When it was published, in 1951, I was 12 years old, and thus may have been a trifle young for it. Within the next two or three years, though, I was on a forced march through a couple of schools similar to Pencey Prep, from which J.D. Salinger's 16-year-old protagonist Holden Caulfield is dismissed as the novel begins, and I was an unhappy camper; what I had heard about "The Catcher in the Rye" surely convinced me that Caulfield was a kindred spirit.
By then "The Catcher in the Rye" was already well on the way to the status it has long enjoyed as an essential document of American adolescence -- the novel that every high school English teacher reflexively puts on every summer reading list -- but I couldn't see what all the excitement was about. I shared Caulfield's contempt for "phonies" as well as his sense of being different and his loneliness, but he seemed to me just about as phony as those he criticized as well as an unregenerate whiner and egotist. It was easy enough to identify with his adolescent angst, but his puerile attitudinizing was something else altogether.
That was then. This is half a century later. "The Catcher in the Rye" is now, you'll be told just about anywhere you ask, an "American classic," right up there with the book that was published the following year, Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." They are two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst. Rereading "The Catcher in the Rye" after all those years was almost literally a painful experience: The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil.
Over that half-century I'd pretty much forgotten about "The Catcher in the Rye," though scarcely about Salinger, whose celebrated reclusiveness has had the effect of keeping him in the public eye. He has published no books since "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction" in 1963, but plenty has been published about him, including Ian Hamilton's decidedly unauthorized biography, "In Search of J.D. Salinger" (1988); Joyce Maynard's self-serving account of her affair with him, "At Home in the World" (1998); and his daughter Margaret A. Salinger's (also self-serving) memoir, "Dream Catcher" (2000), not to mention reams of lit crit and fanzine fawning. Rumors repeatedly make their way across the land that Salinger is busily at his writing table, that his literary fecundity remains undiminished, that bank vaults in New England contain vast stores of unpublished Salingeriana, but to date all the speculation has come to naught, for which we should -- though too many people won't -- be grateful.
If there's an odder duck in American literature than Salinger, his or her name doesn't come quickly to mind. He started out conventionally enough -- born in Manhattan in 1919, served (valiantly) in the infantry in Europe during World War II, wrote short stories that were published in respectable magazines, notably the New Yorker -- but he seems to have been totally undone by the fame that "The Catcher in the Rye" inflicted upon him. For nearly four decades he has been a semi-hermit (he married for the third time about a decade and a half ago) in his New England fastness, spurning journalists and fending off adoring fans, practicing the Zen Buddhism that seems to have become an obsession with him.
It's weird, but it's also his business. If, Garbolike, he just vants to be alone, he's entitled. But whether calculated or not, his reclusiveness has created an aura that heightens, rather than diminishes, the mystique of "The Catcher in the Rye." It isn't just a novel, it's a dispatch from an unknown, mysterious universe, which may help explain the phenomenal sales it enjoys to this day: about 250,000 copies a year, with total worldwide sales over -- probably way over -- 10 million. The mass-market paperback I bought last summer is, incredibly, from the 42nd printing; for the astonishing price of $35,000 you can buy, online, a signed copy not of the first edition -- a signed copy of that, we must assume, would be almost literally priceless -- but of the 1951 Book-of-the-Month Club edition.
Viewed from the vantage point of half a century, the novel raises more questions than it answers. Why is a book about a spoiled rich kid kicked out of a fancy prep school so widely read by ordinary Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom have limited means and attend, or attended, public schools? Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as "a symbol of purity and sensitivity" (as "The Oxford Companion to American Literature" puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow? Why do English teachers, whose responsibility is to teach good writing, repeatedly and reflexively require students to read a book as badly written as this one?
That last question actually is easily answered: "The Catcher in the Rye" can be fobbed off on kids as a book about themselves. It is required reading as therapy, a way to encourage young people to bathe in the warm, soothing waters of resentment (all grown-ups are phonies) and self-pity without having to think a lucid thought. Like that other (albeit marginally better) novel about lachrymose preppies, John Knowles's "A Separate Peace" (1960), "The Catcher in the Rye" touches adolescents' emotional buttons without putting their minds to work. It's easy for them, which makes it easy for teacher.
What most struck me upon reading it for a second time was how sentimental -- how outright squishy -- it is. The novel is commonly represented as an expression of adolescent cynicism and rebellion -- a James Dean movie in print -- but from first page to last Salinger wants to have it both ways. Holden is a rebel and all that -- "the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life," "probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw" -- but he's a softy at heart. He's always pitying people -- "I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden," "You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch," "Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes" -- and he is positively a saint when it comes to his little sister, Phoebe. He buys a record for her, "Little Shirley Beans," and in the course of moping around Manhattan he does something clumsy that gives him the chance to show what a good-hearted guy he really is:
"Then something terrible happened just as I got in the park. I dropped old Phoebe's record. It broke into about fifty pieces. It was in a big envelope and all, but it broke anyway. I damn near cried, it made me feel so terrible, but all I did was, I took the pieces out of the envelope and put them in my coat pocket. They weren't good for anything, but I didn't feel like just throwing them away. Then I went in the park. Boy, was it dark."
Me, I damn near puked. That passage is flagrantly manipulative, a tug on the heartstrings aimed at bringing a tear to the eye. Ditto for Holden's brother, Allie: "He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it."
That's just easy exploitation of the reader's emotion. Give your protagonist a dead younger brother and a cute little sister -- not to mention a revered older brother, D.B., a gifted writer who sounds a whole lot like J.D. Salinger himself -- and the rest is strictly downhill. From first page to last, "The Catcher in the Rye" is an exercise in button-pushing, and the biggest button it pushes is the adolescent's uncertainty and insecurity as he or she perches precariously between childhood, which is remembered fondly and wistfully, and adulthood, which is the great phony unknown. Indeed a case can be made that "The Catcher in the Rye" created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since. It was a short leap indeed from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "The Blackboard Jungle" to "Rebel Without a Cause" to Valley Girls to the multibillion-dollar industry that adolescent angst is today.
The cheap sentimentality with which the novel is suffused reaches a climax of sorts when Holden's literary side comes to the fore. He flunks all his courses except English. "I'm quite illiterate," he says early in the book, "but I read a lot," which establishes the mixture of self-deprecation and self-congratulation that seems to appeal to so many readers. In one of the novel's more widely quoted passages he then says:
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead."
That Ring Lardner is one of Holden's favorite writers is a considerable, if wholly inadvertent, irony. Lardner was the master of the American vernacular who, as H.L. Mencken wrote, "set down common American with the utmost precision." Salinger, by contrast, can be seen straining at every turn to write the way an American teenager would speak, but he only produces an adult's unwitting parody of teen-speak. Unlike Lardner, Salinger has a tin ear. His characters forever say "ya" for "you," as in "ya know," which no American except perhaps a slapstick comedian ever has said. Americans say "yuh know" or "y'know," but never "ya know."
"The Catcher in the Rye" is a maladroit, mawkish novel, but there can be no question about its popularity or influence. My own hunch is that the reason is the utter, innocent sincerity with which it was written. It may be manipulative, but it's not phony. A better, more cynical writer than Salinger easily could write a book about a troubled yet appealing teenager, but its artifice and insincerity would be self-evident and readers would reject it as false. Whatever its shortcomings, "The Catcher in the Rye" is from the heart -- not Holden Caulfield's heart, but Jerome David Salinger's. He said everything he had to say in it, which may well be why he has said nothing else.
Source for Professional Book review:
Yardley, Jonathan. “J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly.” Rev. of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The Washington Post 19 Oct. 2004. Web.
Teacher and Student Resources by ---- --- and ---- -------
1) English Companion Ning: Where English teachers go to help each other
(http://englishcompanion.ning.com/)
This website is a social networking service created by Jim Burke to help the teaching community share advice, ideas, materials, and support. There are over 23,000 members who partake in and receive from this ongoing contribution, and have created over 200 groups dedicated to various teaching areas of English. A number of ideas for this unit have been inspired by this website, such as the Catcher Playlist lesson where students use song lyrics to five different songs that have been inspired by the artist’s reading of the novel. Teachers can use this site to search supplemental materials (poems, short stories, movies, songs) that other teachers have paired with the novel, or perhaps even better, compose a question and receive the help they need.
2) PDFgeni (http://www.pdfgeni.org/fd/unit-summary-catcher-in-the-rye-pdf.html)
PDFgeni is a site that indexes PDF documents that have been uploaded on to blogs, forums and websites. Using this as a search engine, teachers can find a compilation of over forty lesson/unit plans on The Catcher in the Rye available as PDF files. Some are more useful than others, but it mostly depends on what you’re looking for. Many of the files are conceptual units on The Catcher in the Rye and offers rationales, essential questions, and unit focus quotations. Other files are actual materials that teachers have used in their classrooms; some examples include discussion questions, critical “delve-in” questions, novel test, rubrics, essay prompts, project options, and various activities that will enhance and further student understanding of the novel.
3) Free Music Video Creator Tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-1ySzhktj4)
Animoto (http://www.animoto.com/)
As an extension activity to the Catch-your Playlist lesson, students can be assigned to write songs (or poems) and create a music video to supplement their piece. This would be a good way to segue from discussing Holden’s character in relation to the novel to thinking about students’ own identities and the search for self. Further, this would be a great way to offer diverse modes through which students can express themselves (writing, music, art, technology). The two links above are free and easily usable so that even the most inexperienced filmmakers can produce a video in a relatively short amount of time. The first Youtube link is a tutorial that will inform students how to create free music videos using photos. The second link, although equally useful, will limit students to a short 30-second clip. Either animoto or Youtube can be utilized meaningfully in the classroom, but these tools should be clearly explained and modeled for students in order to make the most out of this experience.
4) Webquest (http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=60710)
The webquest link above give teachers an idea of how to incorporate technology in the
classroom. The webquest has students in groups of four explore the controversy behind
the banning of Catcher in the Rye, each having the role of teenager, historian, biographer,
or literary critic. This would be an activity we and others that may use our unit should
consider using (upon adjusting the webquest to best suit the students) if time allows.
Sources for Teacher Resources:
Animoto. Animoto, 2010. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
“English Companion: Where English teachers go help each other.” Englishcompanion.ning.com.`English Companion Ning, 2010. Web. 5 Dec,
2010.
PDFgeni. PDFGeni manual and ebook search engine iphone blog., 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
TrueMarketingSuccess. “FREE Music Video Creator for Slideshows! Mind Movie.” Youtube.com. Youtube, 17 Oct. 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
(http://englishcompanion.ning.com/)
This website is a social networking service created by Jim Burke to help the teaching community share advice, ideas, materials, and support. There are over 23,000 members who partake in and receive from this ongoing contribution, and have created over 200 groups dedicated to various teaching areas of English. A number of ideas for this unit have been inspired by this website, such as the Catcher Playlist lesson where students use song lyrics to five different songs that have been inspired by the artist’s reading of the novel. Teachers can use this site to search supplemental materials (poems, short stories, movies, songs) that other teachers have paired with the novel, or perhaps even better, compose a question and receive the help they need.
2) PDFgeni (http://www.pdfgeni.org/fd/unit-summary-catcher-in-the-rye-pdf.html)
PDFgeni is a site that indexes PDF documents that have been uploaded on to blogs, forums and websites. Using this as a search engine, teachers can find a compilation of over forty lesson/unit plans on The Catcher in the Rye available as PDF files. Some are more useful than others, but it mostly depends on what you’re looking for. Many of the files are conceptual units on The Catcher in the Rye and offers rationales, essential questions, and unit focus quotations. Other files are actual materials that teachers have used in their classrooms; some examples include discussion questions, critical “delve-in” questions, novel test, rubrics, essay prompts, project options, and various activities that will enhance and further student understanding of the novel.
3) Free Music Video Creator Tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-1ySzhktj4)
Animoto (http://www.animoto.com/)
As an extension activity to the Catch-your Playlist lesson, students can be assigned to write songs (or poems) and create a music video to supplement their piece. This would be a good way to segue from discussing Holden’s character in relation to the novel to thinking about students’ own identities and the search for self. Further, this would be a great way to offer diverse modes through which students can express themselves (writing, music, art, technology). The two links above are free and easily usable so that even the most inexperienced filmmakers can produce a video in a relatively short amount of time. The first Youtube link is a tutorial that will inform students how to create free music videos using photos. The second link, although equally useful, will limit students to a short 30-second clip. Either animoto or Youtube can be utilized meaningfully in the classroom, but these tools should be clearly explained and modeled for students in order to make the most out of this experience.
4) Webquest (http://www.zunal.com/webquest.php?w=60710)
The webquest link above give teachers an idea of how to incorporate technology in the
classroom. The webquest has students in groups of four explore the controversy behind
the banning of Catcher in the Rye, each having the role of teenager, historian, biographer,
or literary critic. This would be an activity we and others that may use our unit should
consider using (upon adjusting the webquest to best suit the students) if time allows.
Sources for Teacher Resources:
Animoto. Animoto, 2010. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
“English Companion: Where English teachers go help each other.” Englishcompanion.ning.com.`English Companion Ning, 2010. Web. 5 Dec,
2010.
PDFgeni. PDFGeni manual and ebook search engine iphone blog., 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
TrueMarketingSuccess. “FREE Music Video Creator for Slideshows! Mind Movie.” Youtube.com. Youtube, 17 Oct. 2008. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
Historical Context (---- ---)
Historical Links: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
1) Plessy v. Ferguson & Brown v. Board of Education
When The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson) mandating “separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional” (Bowling Green State University). While this decision was primarily regarding railroads, it served to justify many other state-sponsored segregation in other situations. Plessy v. Ferguson wasn’t overturned until 1954, years after Catcher was published, by the Brown v. Board of Education decision; this declared that public schools can no longer segregate black and white students—that separate educational facilities are, in fact, not equal and thus unconstitutional. That being said, the lack of diversity among characters, at Percey Prep, and throughout Catcher is perhaps linked to this “separate but equal” atmosphere that prevailed through the 40’s and early mid 50’s. Thought it can be said that Percey Prep lacks racial diversity due to the fact that it was a highly prestigious private school, this absence of diversity is continued throughout Holden’s journey to New York.
2) Stigmatized Perception of Mental Illnesses
In the 1950’s, the public was not as acutely aware as people are today about mental illnesses. According to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, people were not able to distinguish a mental illness from general unhappiness unless they observed extreme behavior. To add, the social stigma surrounding mental illnesses was severe in the 50’s—further making it difficult for anyone to admit/be recognized that they do indeed need help. This ambiguity between mental illness and general unhappiness is precisely what readers experience when reading about Holden. Although readers are led to believe that Holden is a typical yet troubled young teen (violent outbreaks, screaming in public, looking for ducks in freezing cold, etc.), there are indications that jaded cynicism isn’t the only thing responsible for Holden’s behaviors/thoughts. Through his narrative, readers learn that he had taken ‘rest’ from life to receive therapy and psychoanalysis, considered suicide, and did not really have an opportunity to grieve. Holden is never explicitly diagnosed with a mental illness, but it is questionable whether this piece of information simply mirrors the denial and unawareness of the culture in the 50’s.
3) Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud’s most widely known work is the Structural Theory, which is divided into three parts of the human’s psychic apparatus: id, supergo, and ego. The id is “the person’s instinctual desires” (The Catcher in the Rye (1951)). Examples of it are a person’s need for sleep, food, and sexual desires; instant gratification is its ultimate desire. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the superego, which counterbalances this instinctual desire, the id. It serves as structure of rules, beliefs, ideals that a person must adhere to in order to function as a normal person in society. In between these two apparatuses is the ego, which serves as the voice of reason. It induces feelings of shame and guilt, which prohibits one from acting solely based on their id. On a few different occasions, the novel presents the workings of Holden’s psychic apparatus. For one, he is unable to actually have sex with the prostitute in New York, although he is well aware that this makes his sex life “lousy” (191). Despite his emerging sexuality, Holden believes that he should only be “sexy” with a girl he likes a lot. Another direct reference to psychoanalysis appears during his conversation with Carl Luce, when he mentions to Holden that he should seek his father—a psychoanalyst, who helps you “recognize the patterns of your mind” (192). This serves to hint at the readers that through the novel, the patterns of Holden’s mind can be traced by the readers.
Sources for Historical Links:
“Plessy v. Ferguson.” Bgsu.edu. Bowling Green State University,
1997. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
“Chapter 1: Introduction and Themes.” Surgeongeneral.gov. Mental
Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, n.d. Web. 9 Dec.
2010.
“The Catcher in the Rye (1951).” Pbsworks.com. PBSWorks, n.d. Web.
9 Dec. 2010.
1) Plessy v. Ferguson & Brown v. Board of Education
When The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson) mandating “separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional” (Bowling Green State University). While this decision was primarily regarding railroads, it served to justify many other state-sponsored segregation in other situations. Plessy v. Ferguson wasn’t overturned until 1954, years after Catcher was published, by the Brown v. Board of Education decision; this declared that public schools can no longer segregate black and white students—that separate educational facilities are, in fact, not equal and thus unconstitutional. That being said, the lack of diversity among characters, at Percey Prep, and throughout Catcher is perhaps linked to this “separate but equal” atmosphere that prevailed through the 40’s and early mid 50’s. Thought it can be said that Percey Prep lacks racial diversity due to the fact that it was a highly prestigious private school, this absence of diversity is continued throughout Holden’s journey to New York.
2) Stigmatized Perception of Mental Illnesses
In the 1950’s, the public was not as acutely aware as people are today about mental illnesses. According to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, people were not able to distinguish a mental illness from general unhappiness unless they observed extreme behavior. To add, the social stigma surrounding mental illnesses was severe in the 50’s—further making it difficult for anyone to admit/be recognized that they do indeed need help. This ambiguity between mental illness and general unhappiness is precisely what readers experience when reading about Holden. Although readers are led to believe that Holden is a typical yet troubled young teen (violent outbreaks, screaming in public, looking for ducks in freezing cold, etc.), there are indications that jaded cynicism isn’t the only thing responsible for Holden’s behaviors/thoughts. Through his narrative, readers learn that he had taken ‘rest’ from life to receive therapy and psychoanalysis, considered suicide, and did not really have an opportunity to grieve. Holden is never explicitly diagnosed with a mental illness, but it is questionable whether this piece of information simply mirrors the denial and unawareness of the culture in the 50’s.
3) Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud’s most widely known work is the Structural Theory, which is divided into three parts of the human’s psychic apparatus: id, supergo, and ego. The id is “the person’s instinctual desires” (The Catcher in the Rye (1951)). Examples of it are a person’s need for sleep, food, and sexual desires; instant gratification is its ultimate desire. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the superego, which counterbalances this instinctual desire, the id. It serves as structure of rules, beliefs, ideals that a person must adhere to in order to function as a normal person in society. In between these two apparatuses is the ego, which serves as the voice of reason. It induces feelings of shame and guilt, which prohibits one from acting solely based on their id. On a few different occasions, the novel presents the workings of Holden’s psychic apparatus. For one, he is unable to actually have sex with the prostitute in New York, although he is well aware that this makes his sex life “lousy” (191). Despite his emerging sexuality, Holden believes that he should only be “sexy” with a girl he likes a lot. Another direct reference to psychoanalysis appears during his conversation with Carl Luce, when he mentions to Holden that he should seek his father—a psychoanalyst, who helps you “recognize the patterns of your mind” (192). This serves to hint at the readers that through the novel, the patterns of Holden’s mind can be traced by the readers.
Sources for Historical Links:
“Plessy v. Ferguson.” Bgsu.edu. Bowling Green State University,
1997. Web. 9 Dec. 2010.
“Chapter 1: Introduction and Themes.” Surgeongeneral.gov. Mental
Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, n.d. Web. 9 Dec.
2010.
“The Catcher in the Rye (1951).” Pbsworks.com. PBSWorks, n.d. Web.
9 Dec. 2010.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Annotation by Jason Mormolstein:
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of Junior, a Native American teenager and aspiring cartoonist. Junior was born with a variety of physical ailments and lives on a reservation where he is picked on by nearly everyone he comes into contact with. On “the rez” he is surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and death but he is determined not to become a part of the vicious cycle. To pursue a better life, Junior decides to leave the reservation and go to an all-white school in the far-off town of Reardan. Here, Junior must adjust to life amongst white students and to a culture that is very different from his own, while back at the reservation he faces hostility for “turning his back” on his own culture. While he learns to make friends at his new school and even becomes a star basketball player, Junior continues to struggle with his identity and the realities of life on the reservation. Lost in a world that is often confusing, unjust, and tragic, Junior faces life with wit, humor, and hope for the future.
Summary by ------- -------:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a story about an American Indian boy named Junior. The story begins as Junior describes his life so far on the Indian Reservation with his tribe. Early in the book, Junior decides to transfer schools to Reardan High School, a predominantly White school, located twenty miles from Junior’s home on the reservation.
Alcohol addictions are very common on the reservation—both of Junior’s parents are alcoholics. According to Junior, this addiction and a few others, are due to the low economic status of the community as a whole and their inability to escape their status. As he leaves the reservation, Junior receives much hostility from his own tribe for his “abandonment.” However, he is not welcomed with open arms at Reardan, either.
Junior leaves the reservation in hopes of finding something better than is offered to him on the reservation. The book traces his new exploration of an entirely new culture as he meets new people, encounters blatant racism, makes a few friends, and even lands himself on the basketball team at Reardan. One of the climatic moments of the novel is when Junior plays his old school’s basketball team—going head-to-head with his (old) best friend Rowdy.
Overall, the book deals with racism, alcoholism, relationships, bullying, dealing with grief, and finding a true identity as Junior attempts to blend the two worlds that he encounters. Junior has a great sense of humor throughout the novel and often depicts events in his life in his drawings that are displayed in the novel. Ultimately, he figures out how to form his own identity as he makes amends with old friends and finds new ones.
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian tells the story of Junior, a Native American teenager and aspiring cartoonist. Junior was born with a variety of physical ailments and lives on a reservation where he is picked on by nearly everyone he comes into contact with. On “the rez” he is surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and death but he is determined not to become a part of the vicious cycle. To pursue a better life, Junior decides to leave the reservation and go to an all-white school in the far-off town of Reardan. Here, Junior must adjust to life amongst white students and to a culture that is very different from his own, while back at the reservation he faces hostility for “turning his back” on his own culture. While he learns to make friends at his new school and even becomes a star basketball player, Junior continues to struggle with his identity and the realities of life on the reservation. Lost in a world that is often confusing, unjust, and tragic, Junior faces life with wit, humor, and hope for the future.
Summary by ------- -------:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a story about an American Indian boy named Junior. The story begins as Junior describes his life so far on the Indian Reservation with his tribe. Early in the book, Junior decides to transfer schools to Reardan High School, a predominantly White school, located twenty miles from Junior’s home on the reservation.
Alcohol addictions are very common on the reservation—both of Junior’s parents are alcoholics. According to Junior, this addiction and a few others, are due to the low economic status of the community as a whole and their inability to escape their status. As he leaves the reservation, Junior receives much hostility from his own tribe for his “abandonment.” However, he is not welcomed with open arms at Reardan, either.
Junior leaves the reservation in hopes of finding something better than is offered to him on the reservation. The book traces his new exploration of an entirely new culture as he meets new people, encounters blatant racism, makes a few friends, and even lands himself on the basketball team at Reardan. One of the climatic moments of the novel is when Junior plays his old school’s basketball team—going head-to-head with his (old) best friend Rowdy.
Overall, the book deals with racism, alcoholism, relationships, bullying, dealing with grief, and finding a true identity as Junior attempts to blend the two worlds that he encounters. Junior has a great sense of humor throughout the novel and often depicts events in his life in his drawings that are displayed in the novel. Ultimately, he figures out how to form his own identity as he makes amends with old friends and finds new ones.
Author Biography (Jason Mormolstein)
Sherman J. Alexie, Jr., was born in October 1966. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, he grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, WA.
Born hydrocephalic, which means with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures, throughout his childhood. In spite of all he had to overcome, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All these things ostracized him from his peers, though, and he was often the brunt of other kids' jokes on the reservation.
As a teenager, after finding his mother's name written in a textbook assigned to him at the Wellpinit school, Alexie made a conscious decision to attend high school off the reservation in Reardan, WA, about 20 miles south of Wellpinit, where he knew he would get a better education. At Reardan High he was the only Indian, except for the school mascot. There he excelled academically and became a star player on the basketball team. This experienced inspired his first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.
In 1985 Alexie graduated Reardan High and went on to attend Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, on scholarship. After two years at Gonzaga, he transferred to Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, WA.
Alexie planned to be a doctor and enrolled in pre-med courses at WSU, but after fainting numerous times in human anatomy class realized he needed to change his career path. That change was fueled when he stumbled into a poetry workshop at WSU.
Encouraged by poetry teacher Alex Kuo, Alexie excelled at writing and realized he'd found his new path. Shortly after graduating WSU with a BA in American Studies, Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1992.
Not long after receiving his second fellowship, and just one year after he left WSU, his first two poetry collections, The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses, were published.
Alexie had a problem with alcohol that began soon after he started college at Gonzaga, but after learning that Hanging Loose Press agreed to publish The Business of Fancydancing, he immediately gave up drinking at the age of 23 and has been sober ever since.
In his twenties he continued to write prolifically. His first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1993. For this story collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. In March 2005 Grove Atlantic Press reissued the collection with the addition of two new stories.
Alexie was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists and won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize for his first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995 by Atlantic Monthly Press. His second novel,Indian Killer, published in 1996, also by Atlantic Monthly Press, was named one ofPeople's Best of Pages and a New York Times Notable Book. This book was published in paperback by Warner Books in 1998.
In the past, Alexie has done readings and stand-up comedy performances with musicianJim Boyd, a Colville Indian. Alexie and Boyd collaborated to record the album Reservation Blues, which contains the songs from the book of the same name. One of theReservation Blues songs, "Small World" [WAV], also appeared on Talking Rain: Spoken Word & Music from the Pacific Northwest and Honor: A Benefit for the Honor the Earth Campaign. In 1996 Boyd and Alexie opened for the Indigo Girls at a concert to benefit the Honor the Earth Campaign.
In 1997 Alexie embarked on another artistic collaboration. Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, discovered Alexie's writing while doing graduate work at New York University's film school. Through a mutual friend, they agreed to collaborate on a film project inspired by Alexie's work.
The basis for the screenplay was "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona," a short story from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Shadow Catcher Entertainment produced the film. Released as Smoke Signals at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1998, the movie won two awards: the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy.
After success at Sundance, Smoke Signals found a distributor, Miramax Films, and was released in New York and Los Angeles on June 26 and across the country on July 3, 1998. In 1999 the film received a Christopher Award, an award presented to the creators of artistic works "which affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Alexie was also nominated for the Independent Feature Project/West (now known as Film Independent) 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
In 2002 Alexie made his directorial debut with The Business of Fancydancing. Alexie wrote the screenplay based loosely on his first poetry collection. The film was produced and distributed independently, and won numerous film festival awards.
In 1998, in the midst of releasing Smoke Signals, Alexie competed in and won his firstWorld Heavyweight Poetry Bout competition in June 1998, organized by the World Poetry Bout Association (WPBA) in Taos, New Mexico. He went up against then world champion Jimmy Santiago Baca. Over the next three years he went on to win the title, becoming the first and only poet to hold the title for four consecutive years. The WPBA closed its doors in early 2005.
Known for his exceptional humor and performance ability, Alexie made his stand-up debut at the Foolproof Northwest Comedy Festival in Seattle, WA, in April 1999, and was the featured performer at the Vancouver International Comedy Festival's opening night gala in July 1999. He continues to pursue his work in comedy.
In 1998, Alexie participated with seven others in the PBS Lehrer News Hour Dialogue on Race with President Clinton. The discussion was moderated by Jim Lehrer and originally aired on PBS on July 9, 1998. Alexie has also been featured on Politically Incorrect; 60 Minutes II; NOW with Bill Moyers, for which he wrote a special segment on insomnia and his writing process called "Up All Night;" and on The Colbert Report in October 2008 andDecember 2009.
In February 2003, Alexie participated in the Museum of Tolerance project, "Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves," an exhibit showcasing the diversity within the personal histories of several noted Americans, and celebrating the shared experiences common to being part of an American family, encouraging visitors to seek out their own histories, mentors and heroes. This project was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, "Our Big American Family," which originally aired in January 2003, on which Alexie was a guest.
Alexie, also a thought-provoking public speaker, was the commencement speaker for the University of Washington's 2003 commencement ceremony. In 2004, 2006 and 2008 he was an Artist in Residence at the university where he taught courses in American Ethnic Studies.
He was the guest editor for the Winter 2000-01 issue of Ploughshares, a prestigious literary journal, and was a 1999 O. Henry Award Prize juror.
He has been a member of a number of Independent Spirit Awards Nominating Committees, and has served as a creative adviser to the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program and the Film Independent Screenwriters Lab.
Highlights of his most recent honors include the 2010 PEN / Faulkner Award for Fictionfor War Dances, a collection of stories and poems, was released by Grove Press in October 2009; the 2009 Odyssey Award for The Absolutely True Diary audio book, produced by Recorded Books, LLC; the 2009 Mason Award; a 2008 Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award for middle grades and young adults; a 2008 Stranger Genius Award; and the 2007 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for his young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
His most recent poetry collection, Face, was published by Hanging Loose Press in March 2009 and was Small Press Distribution's best selling poetry book of 2009. Four of his books of poetry were among the top five of Small Press Distribution's best selling poetry books for 2000-2009.
Other awards and honors include the 2007 Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award and the 2003 Regents' Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington State University's highest honor for alumni. His work was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore, and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. His short story "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" was selected by juror Ann Patchett as her favorite story for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005.
Please see the books and movies pages for more details about Alexie's complete works, and please see the awards page for a complete list of his honors.
Alexie lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and two sons.
Biography Citation:
"ShermanAlexie.com: Biography."ShermanAlexie.com: The Official Site of
Sherman Alexie. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.fallsapart.com/biography.html>
Born hydrocephalic, which means with water on the brain, Alexie underwent a brain operation at the age of 6 months and was not expected to survive. When he did beat the odds, doctors predicted he would live with severe mental retardation. Though he showed no signs of this, he suffered severe side effects, such as seizures, throughout his childhood. In spite of all he had to overcome, Alexie learned to read by age three, and devoured novels, such as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, by age five. All these things ostracized him from his peers, though, and he was often the brunt of other kids' jokes on the reservation.
As a teenager, after finding his mother's name written in a textbook assigned to him at the Wellpinit school, Alexie made a conscious decision to attend high school off the reservation in Reardan, WA, about 20 miles south of Wellpinit, where he knew he would get a better education. At Reardan High he was the only Indian, except for the school mascot. There he excelled academically and became a star player on the basketball team. This experienced inspired his first young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.
In 1985 Alexie graduated Reardan High and went on to attend Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, on scholarship. After two years at Gonzaga, he transferred to Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, WA.
Alexie planned to be a doctor and enrolled in pre-med courses at WSU, but after fainting numerous times in human anatomy class realized he needed to change his career path. That change was fueled when he stumbled into a poetry workshop at WSU.
Encouraged by poetry teacher Alex Kuo, Alexie excelled at writing and realized he'd found his new path. Shortly after graduating WSU with a BA in American Studies, Alexie received the Washington State Arts Commission Poetry Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1992.
Not long after receiving his second fellowship, and just one year after he left WSU, his first two poetry collections, The Business of Fancydancing and I Would Steal Horses, were published.
Alexie had a problem with alcohol that began soon after he started college at Gonzaga, but after learning that Hanging Loose Press agreed to publish The Business of Fancydancing, he immediately gave up drinking at the age of 23 and has been sober ever since.
In his twenties he continued to write prolifically. His first collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1993. For this story collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. In March 2005 Grove Atlantic Press reissued the collection with the addition of two new stories.
Alexie was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists and won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and the Murray Morgan Prize for his first novel, Reservation Blues, published in 1995 by Atlantic Monthly Press. His second novel,Indian Killer, published in 1996, also by Atlantic Monthly Press, was named one ofPeople's Best of Pages and a New York Times Notable Book. This book was published in paperback by Warner Books in 1998.
In the past, Alexie has done readings and stand-up comedy performances with musicianJim Boyd, a Colville Indian. Alexie and Boyd collaborated to record the album Reservation Blues, which contains the songs from the book of the same name. One of theReservation Blues songs, "Small World" [WAV], also appeared on Talking Rain: Spoken Word & Music from the Pacific Northwest and Honor: A Benefit for the Honor the Earth Campaign. In 1996 Boyd and Alexie opened for the Indigo Girls at a concert to benefit the Honor the Earth Campaign.
In 1997 Alexie embarked on another artistic collaboration. Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne/Arapaho Indian, discovered Alexie's writing while doing graduate work at New York University's film school. Through a mutual friend, they agreed to collaborate on a film project inspired by Alexie's work.
The basis for the screenplay was "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona," a short story from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Shadow Catcher Entertainment produced the film. Released as Smoke Signals at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1998, the movie won two awards: the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy.
After success at Sundance, Smoke Signals found a distributor, Miramax Films, and was released in New York and Los Angeles on June 26 and across the country on July 3, 1998. In 1999 the film received a Christopher Award, an award presented to the creators of artistic works "which affirm the highest values of the human spirit." Alexie was also nominated for the Independent Feature Project/West (now known as Film Independent) 1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.
In 2002 Alexie made his directorial debut with The Business of Fancydancing. Alexie wrote the screenplay based loosely on his first poetry collection. The film was produced and distributed independently, and won numerous film festival awards.
In 1998, in the midst of releasing Smoke Signals, Alexie competed in and won his firstWorld Heavyweight Poetry Bout competition in June 1998, organized by the World Poetry Bout Association (WPBA) in Taos, New Mexico. He went up against then world champion Jimmy Santiago Baca. Over the next three years he went on to win the title, becoming the first and only poet to hold the title for four consecutive years. The WPBA closed its doors in early 2005.
Known for his exceptional humor and performance ability, Alexie made his stand-up debut at the Foolproof Northwest Comedy Festival in Seattle, WA, in April 1999, and was the featured performer at the Vancouver International Comedy Festival's opening night gala in July 1999. He continues to pursue his work in comedy.
In 1998, Alexie participated with seven others in the PBS Lehrer News Hour Dialogue on Race with President Clinton. The discussion was moderated by Jim Lehrer and originally aired on PBS on July 9, 1998. Alexie has also been featured on Politically Incorrect; 60 Minutes II; NOW with Bill Moyers, for which he wrote a special segment on insomnia and his writing process called "Up All Night;" and on The Colbert Report in October 2008 andDecember 2009.
In February 2003, Alexie participated in the Museum of Tolerance project, "Finding Our Families, Finding Ourselves," an exhibit showcasing the diversity within the personal histories of several noted Americans, and celebrating the shared experiences common to being part of an American family, encouraging visitors to seek out their own histories, mentors and heroes. This project was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, "Our Big American Family," which originally aired in January 2003, on which Alexie was a guest.
Alexie, also a thought-provoking public speaker, was the commencement speaker for the University of Washington's 2003 commencement ceremony. In 2004, 2006 and 2008 he was an Artist in Residence at the university where he taught courses in American Ethnic Studies.
He was the guest editor for the Winter 2000-01 issue of Ploughshares, a prestigious literary journal, and was a 1999 O. Henry Award Prize juror.
He has been a member of a number of Independent Spirit Awards Nominating Committees, and has served as a creative adviser to the Sundance Institute Writers Fellowship Program and the Film Independent Screenwriters Lab.
Highlights of his most recent honors include the 2010 PEN / Faulkner Award for Fictionfor War Dances, a collection of stories and poems, was released by Grove Press in October 2009; the 2009 Odyssey Award for The Absolutely True Diary audio book, produced by Recorded Books, LLC; the 2009 Mason Award; a 2008 Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award for middle grades and young adults; a 2008 Stranger Genius Award; and the 2007 National Book Award in Young People's Literature for his young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
His most recent poetry collection, Face, was published by Hanging Loose Press in March 2009 and was Small Press Distribution's best selling poetry book of 2009. Four of his books of poetry were among the top five of Small Press Distribution's best selling poetry books for 2000-2009.
Other awards and honors include the 2007 Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award and the 2003 Regents' Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington State University's highest honor for alumni. His work was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2004, edited by Lorrie Moore, and Pushcart Prize XXIX of the Small Presses. His short story "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" was selected by juror Ann Patchett as her favorite story for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005.
Please see the books and movies pages for more details about Alexie's complete works, and please see the awards page for a complete list of his honors.
Alexie lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and two sons.
Biography Citation:
"ShermanAlexie.com: Biography."ShermanAlexie.com: The Official Site of
Sherman Alexie. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.fallsapart.com/biography.html>
Book Review (Jason Mormolstein)
November 11, 2007
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Off the Rez
By BRUCE BARCOTT
Arnold Spirit Jr. is the geekiest Indian on the Spokane Reservation. He wears chunky, lopsided glasses. His head and body look like Sputnik on a toothpick. When he doesn’t stutter, he lisps. Arnold is a 14-year-old high school freshman. When he goes outside he gets teased and beaten, so he spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons. “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods,” he says, “and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”
If that line has an unexpected poetry to it, that’s because it was written by a poet. Arnold’s creator, Sherman Alexie, grew up on the Spokane Reservation in tiny Wellpinit, Wash., and made his name as a poet before expanding into short stories, novels, screenplays, film directing and stand-up comedy. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is Alexie’s first foray into the young adult genre, and it took him only one book to master the form. Recently nominated for a National Book Award, this is a gem of a book. I keep flipping back to re-read the best scenes and linger over Ellen Forney’s cartoons.
To say that life is hard on the Spokane rez doesn’t begin to touch it. “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people,” Arnold explains, “all the way back to the very first poor people.” The kid was born with 10 too many teeth, so he gets them pulled — all in a single day, because the Indian Health Service pays for major dental work only once a year. When Arnold cracks open his geometry textbook, he finds his mother’s name written on the flyleaf. “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from,” Arnold says. “That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.”
Enraged, Arnold beans his geometry teacher with the book and gets suspended from school. The targeted teacher, Mr. P., visits Arnold at home and gives him a piece of advice: Get out. Mr. P. has seen too many promising students — like Arnold’s sister, Mary Runs Away — fade year by year, beaten down by poverty and hopelessness. “The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up,” Mr. P. says.
“The Absolutely True Diary” tracks Arnold’s year of getting out. He transfers to Reardan High, 22 miles away, a gleaming campus full of wealthy white kids, with a computer room and chemistry labs. He’s the only Indian — if you don’t count the school mascot. Early on, Arnold fears being beaten up by the jocks. “I was afraid those monsters were going to kill me,” he says. “And I don’t mean ‘kill’ as in ‘metaphor.’ I mean ‘kill’ as in ‘beat me to death.’” (The comedian in Alexie pops up as often as the poet.) Arnold’s toughness soon earns him their respect, though, as well as a spot on the varsity basketball team.
What he can’t win back is the love of his neighbors at home. On the rez he’s considered a traitor. His best friend punches him in the face. When Reardan plays Wellpinit High in basketball, the Indians rain so much abuse on Arnold that a race riot nearly breaks out. Triumph and grief come in equal measure. Arnold figures out that he’s smarter than most of the white kids, and wins the heart of a white girl named Penelope. (“What was my secret?” he says. “If you want to get all biological, then you’d have to say that I was an exciting addition to the Reardan gene pool.”) Meanwhile, his father’s best friend is shot and killed, and his sister dies in a trailer fire. “I’m 14 years old, and I’ve been to 42 funerals,” Arnold says. “That’s really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.”
For 15 years now, Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of the Indian and white worlds. He’s done it through various characters and genres, but “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” may be his best work yet. Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home.
Which, by the way, Arnold doesn’t have. Unless his folks get lucky and come up with some gas money.
Bruce Barcott is a contributing editor at Outside magazine. His book “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw” will be published next year.
Review Citation:
Barcott, Bruce. “Off the Rez.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
Indian by Sherman Alexie. The New York Times 11 Nov. 2007. Web
CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Off the Rez
By BRUCE BARCOTT
Arnold Spirit Jr. is the geekiest Indian on the Spokane Reservation. He wears chunky, lopsided glasses. His head and body look like Sputnik on a toothpick. When he doesn’t stutter, he lisps. Arnold is a 14-year-old high school freshman. When he goes outside he gets teased and beaten, so he spends a lot of time in his room drawing cartoons. “I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods,” he says, “and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”
If that line has an unexpected poetry to it, that’s because it was written by a poet. Arnold’s creator, Sherman Alexie, grew up on the Spokane Reservation in tiny Wellpinit, Wash., and made his name as a poet before expanding into short stories, novels, screenplays, film directing and stand-up comedy. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is Alexie’s first foray into the young adult genre, and it took him only one book to master the form. Recently nominated for a National Book Award, this is a gem of a book. I keep flipping back to re-read the best scenes and linger over Ellen Forney’s cartoons.
To say that life is hard on the Spokane rez doesn’t begin to touch it. “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people,” Arnold explains, “all the way back to the very first poor people.” The kid was born with 10 too many teeth, so he gets them pulled — all in a single day, because the Indian Health Service pays for major dental work only once a year. When Arnold cracks open his geometry textbook, he finds his mother’s name written on the flyleaf. “My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from,” Arnold says. “That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.”
Enraged, Arnold beans his geometry teacher with the book and gets suspended from school. The targeted teacher, Mr. P., visits Arnold at home and gives him a piece of advice: Get out. Mr. P. has seen too many promising students — like Arnold’s sister, Mary Runs Away — fade year by year, beaten down by poverty and hopelessness. “The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up,” Mr. P. says.
“The Absolutely True Diary” tracks Arnold’s year of getting out. He transfers to Reardan High, 22 miles away, a gleaming campus full of wealthy white kids, with a computer room and chemistry labs. He’s the only Indian — if you don’t count the school mascot. Early on, Arnold fears being beaten up by the jocks. “I was afraid those monsters were going to kill me,” he says. “And I don’t mean ‘kill’ as in ‘metaphor.’ I mean ‘kill’ as in ‘beat me to death.’” (The comedian in Alexie pops up as often as the poet.) Arnold’s toughness soon earns him their respect, though, as well as a spot on the varsity basketball team.
What he can’t win back is the love of his neighbors at home. On the rez he’s considered a traitor. His best friend punches him in the face. When Reardan plays Wellpinit High in basketball, the Indians rain so much abuse on Arnold that a race riot nearly breaks out. Triumph and grief come in equal measure. Arnold figures out that he’s smarter than most of the white kids, and wins the heart of a white girl named Penelope. (“What was my secret?” he says. “If you want to get all biological, then you’d have to say that I was an exciting addition to the Reardan gene pool.”) Meanwhile, his father’s best friend is shot and killed, and his sister dies in a trailer fire. “I’m 14 years old, and I’ve been to 42 funerals,” Arnold says. “That’s really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.”
For 15 years now, Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of the Indian and white worlds. He’s done it through various characters and genres, but “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” may be his best work yet. Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home.
Which, by the way, Arnold doesn’t have. Unless his folks get lucky and come up with some gas money.
Bruce Barcott is a contributing editor at Outside magazine. His book “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw” will be published next year.
Review Citation:
Barcott, Bruce. “Off the Rez.” Rev. of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
Indian by Sherman Alexie. The New York Times 11 Nov. 2007. Web
Teacher and Student Resources by ------ -------
"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Setting." Shmoop: Study Guides & Teacher Resources. Shmoop University, Inc., 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.shmoop.com/absolutely-true-diary-part-time-indian/setting.html>.
(http://www.shmoop.com/absolutely-true-diary-part-time-indian/setting.html)
This website is similar to SparkNotes, but has a variety of other resources and topics of interest to both teachers and students. It could be used a review for students prior to a test or can simply be used to deepen the students’ analysis of the work. There are chapter summaries provides along with a selection of quotes that are categorized by the themes in the book. Finally, there is a great list of resources on the site for students and teachers to expand their knowledge about different aspects of the book.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alexie, Sherman. "ShermanAlexie.com: Absolutey True Diary." ShermanAlexie.com: The Official Site of Sherman Alexie. Falls Apart Productions. Web. 12
Dec. 2010. http://www.fallsapart.com/truediary.htm.
(http://www.fallsapart.com/truediary.htm)
This is Sherman Alexie’s official website and would be a wonderful resource for both teachers and students. Linked on this website are a variety of reviews and interviews, along with links to many of Sherman Alexie’s other texts, movies, and poetry. There are links to help guide teachers when discussing The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and there are links that could be of interest to students—including book lists and recent press releases.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Spokane Tribe of Indians." Children of the Sun | Spokane Tribe. Web. 12 Dec. 2010. http://www.spokanetribe.com/.
(www.spokanetribe.com)
This website is the official website of the Spokane Tribe of Indians. This website presents information on where the tribe is located along with the history of the tribe. Students may be interested in researching about the tribe and how tribes function today, while teachers may be interested in learning more about the tribe that Arnold Spirit Jr. is a part of. On the website are links to more resources including a link to the casino on the reservation and the local schools and communities.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"YouTube - Sherman Alexie Speaks." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 12 Dec. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwiQb8OQ6dY>.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwiQb8OQ6dY)
This is a YouTube video of Sherman Alexie reading a portion of his book and answering questions from a live audience. It gives both teachers and students a better view of who Sherman Alexie is and what is important to him. It also answers an important question that many students might want to know: whether or not Sherman Alexie was Arnold Spirit Jr. in the book or not!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/Downloads/Kids/TeacherGuides/TSK%20Absolutely%20True%20Diary.pdf
This is a direct link to a “Teaching Support Kit” PDF that would be of great use for teachers! In this kit are a variety of resources including summaries of the chapters, important quotes categorized by themes, and even potential essay topics and activities. This link would be a great start for a teacher planning to teach The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian or can be of interest to teachers who are making a decision about whether or not to teach the book. There is a lot of information to sift through that is very beneficial to teachers.
Historical Context by ------- -------
In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Arnold Spirit Jr. lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Before this reservation existed, the Spokane Tribe of Indians lives on over three million acres of land—fishing on the Spokane River and meeting family and friends near the Spokane Falls (Spokane Tribe of Indians). President Rutherford B. Hayes formally declared the Spokane Indian Reservation in January of 1881.
Currently, the Spokane Indian Reservation is 157,376 acres, and the tribal membership was 2441 in January of 2006. It has grown in numbers since this date (Spokane Tribe of Indians). It is unclear exactly what year The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was set in, but the readers know that Junior lives on this particular reservation. From what the readers understand, Junior’s tribe was fairly large, as it was similarly recorded in 2006.
Junior’s school on the reservation was located in Wellpinit. Currently, the “Wellpinit School District serves all students on the Spokane Indian Reservation” (About Us, The Wellpinit School District). According to the district’s website, the student body is 570, the district does not discriminate on the basis of “race, color, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, language, age or disability.” Lastly, the district currently takes pride in keeping the student up “to date with the latest advancements in education and technology” (About Us, The Wellpinit School District). As Junior was frustrated with the lack of resources available on the reservation, this book may have been set at an earlier time before the Wellpinit School District was well developed.
Works Cited:
"About Us | The Wellpinit School District." Welcome to the Wellpinit School District Website | The Wellpinit School District. Web. 12 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.wellpinit.wednet.edu/about>.
"Spokane Tribe of Indians." Children of the Sun | Spokane Tribe. Web. 12 Dec.
2010. <http://www.spokanetribe.com/>.
Currently, the Spokane Indian Reservation is 157,376 acres, and the tribal membership was 2441 in January of 2006. It has grown in numbers since this date (Spokane Tribe of Indians). It is unclear exactly what year The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was set in, but the readers know that Junior lives on this particular reservation. From what the readers understand, Junior’s tribe was fairly large, as it was similarly recorded in 2006.
Junior’s school on the reservation was located in Wellpinit. Currently, the “Wellpinit School District serves all students on the Spokane Indian Reservation” (About Us, The Wellpinit School District). According to the district’s website, the student body is 570, the district does not discriminate on the basis of “race, color, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, language, age or disability.” Lastly, the district currently takes pride in keeping the student up “to date with the latest advancements in education and technology” (About Us, The Wellpinit School District). As Junior was frustrated with the lack of resources available on the reservation, this book may have been set at an earlier time before the Wellpinit School District was well developed.
Works Cited:
"About Us | The Wellpinit School District." Welcome to the Wellpinit School District Website | The Wellpinit School District. Web. 12 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.wellpinit.wednet.edu/about>.
"Spokane Tribe of Indians." Children of the Sun | Spokane Tribe. Web. 12 Dec.
2010. <http://www.spokanetribe.com/>.
