September 3, 2010

Dear Arnold,

My name is Will. I live in Maryland. Over the summer I read your novel: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. I worked on our family farm, visited Virginia, and went to summer camp in Maryland.

I thought the novel overall had a good storyline and was well written in most parts. It seemed like your year at Reardan High School went well overall, even if the beginning was hard. I was sorry to hear that your sister, grandmother, and dad’s friend all died. You took their deaths well and used humor to distract you from the fact that they were gone. You also realized that you had to keep going to get anywhere in life, and you did.

Throughout the novel, you seemed almost cheerful all of the time. The way the author made you sound was strange because you were so upbeat about everyone you loved dying. This is something that the author may have done wrong; however, you might just be able to cope with loss very well. Regardless of that you were a very realistic character and had an interesting story.

Alcohol and racism were social issues in your book. Also just fitting in at a new school was hard for you. Despite the fact that you were so different form everyone you, still managed to fit in and have a good year eventually. At the same time, you were dealing with so many problems at home. When reading the book, I often wondered how you kept going through everything.

One thing I got from your book was that alcoholism is a problem in many Indian reservations. People have no hope and drown their troubles in booze. Then that just creates more problems and adds to the feeling of hopelessness even more. All three of the people you loved who were killed were in some way killed by alcohol. Alcoholism is a problem all over the world. Even here  I see a lot of drinking for one reason or another. People drink because they’re happy, drink because they’re sad, or for any other emotion. That’s one thing the places we live have in common even though I don’t live on a reservation. Come to think of it, there isn’t a reservation in my state. Alcoholism is almost impossible to stop. The most you can do is to try to keep the next generation away from it.

Many parts of life are hard, especially for some people more than others. Yours has been particularly hard; however, you just have to remember that whatever happens you can’t give up. When you’re depressed drinking is giving up; we both know what happens after that.

Write back,

            Will