"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" Trivia Question?

The book has been at the center of several controversies regarding the depiction of sex and violence in books written for young adults. Alexie responded to such complaints in a 2011 Wall Street Journal post entitled "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood", in which he argues that attempts to prevent school-aged children from learning about the harsher aspects of contemporary life are "way, way too late". He uses his own life as an example:

Of course, all during my childhood, would-be saviors tried to rescue my fellow tribal members. They wanted to rescue me. But, even then, I could only laugh at their platitudes. In those days, the cultural conservatives thought that KISS and Black Sabbath were going to impede my moral development. They wanted to protect me from sex when I had already been raped. They wanted to protect me from evil though a future serial killer had already abused me. They wanted me to profess my love for God without considering that I was the child and grandchild of men and women who’d been sexually and physically abused by generations of clergy.

Alexie also points out in that post that he has visited many classrooms and received many letters and messages from students who liked the book, noting that these students have had difficult experiences similar to his own—"depression, attempted suicide, gang warfare, sexual and physical abuse, absentee parents, poverty, racism, and learning disabilities"—and he notes:

"I have yet to receive a letter from a child somehow debilitated by the domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, poverty, sexuality, and murder contained in my book. To the contrary, kids as young as ten have sent me autobiographical letters written in crayon, complete with drawings inspired by my book, that are just as dark, terrifying, and redemptive as anything I’ve ever read."

Have a pleasant day.

200 years "ago"?

Here is the breakdown of "what happened" over the generations in my Native family

ggggg grandparent generation (and all prior ancestors)- endured warfare with European colonial powers and disease

gggg grandparent - endured forced removal form original territory (one of my gggg grandmother and her brother died on the forced march to Indian Territory)

ggg - had to rebuild lives in Indian Territory (my ggg grandfather lost his mother do to this genocide)

gg - had their nation dissolved and all lands allotted, then surrounded by White settlers

g - sent to Indian boarding schools (by force) and dealt with assimilation pressures, lost allotments

grandparent - faced severe poverty during the Depression and racism/anti-Indian sentiment

parent - fought to regain our culture and heritage after so much was lost. Fought to rebuild our nation.

Things have only started to "turn around" RECENTLY. And the effort still continues, because people will question our right to exist as sovereign nations and they will say, "Yeah, well that was all in 'the past,' why can't you just be American now."

The anti-Indian sentiment by many White Americans has a long legacy and it is kind of like a part of their culture. My family has experienced this on a continual basis for HUNDREDS of years. It wasn't just in the past, 200 years ago. It continued on and on...and lingers today. And one of the ways it lingers is assuming I'm an alcoholic, have health issues and live in poverty. No, I worked hard to get where I am at today and it is thanks to the struggle of my ancestors that I am here today. So, no, I don't drink or smoke (or do drugs), I have a master's degree and a high paying job, and I'm pretty damn fit. But, I will say that there are lingering issues in some families and communities. It is only natural that it takes a while to recuperate from GENOCIDE.

Could it still be affecting us now? Certainly, as Thomas pointed out the only slack we've gotten has been recent.

From the 1800s, well unlike the other ten thousand Navajos who were marched at gunpoint to go to Bosque Redondo, my family ancestors were slaves. Most likely to a wealthy Mexican household in New Mexico. Obviously they ran away eventually. The suffering didn't end there. Their children had to endure crippling poverty, starvation, abusive missionaries, and unbelievably hostile racism. Then the 20th Century rolled around. My grandmother's family got even poorer during the Depression after the Livestock Reduction Act in which all Navajo households had their livestock shot and killed. So she ended up migrating across the country looking for work. My granddad on the other hand was conscripted into military service during WW2. While a lot of Navajos were patriots regardless of the racism and joined willingly my granddad was one of the few who wasn't exactly eager to die for America. His feelings weren't unfounded after all he did go to boarding school which for Indian children was not a very pleasant experience. But he went to war, and when he came back from Europe it was still illegal for Indians to vote and even walk into a bar in the State of Arizona.

It's been barrier after barrier for them. And I envy my grandparents and ancestors for surviving through it all.

My people did not even sign a treaty until 1855.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Point_Ellio... It was not until 1872 that our main village was burned down, against our will http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_House. It was not until the 1920's that people were being forced onto the reservation.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianola,_Washington And, between 1855 and 1955, children from our tribe were taken to government institutions where they were beaten, raped, starved, medically experimented on and brainwashed. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story... http://grisham.newsvine.com/_news/2012/03/05/10582...

Above all else, I think the boarding schools were the most tramatic. My grandfather and most (not all) of his siblings survived these hell holes. And yes, they caused irreparable trauma for them. When my aunt got Alzheimer's, she relived those tramatic years. Spending two minutes listening to her whimper and cry is enough to make anybody HATE the U.S. and it's people for what they have done to us. My grandfather was little more than a baby when they took him from his mom. Whoever expects a person who was beaten, raped, burned and tortured between the ages of 3-9 to be "ok" afterward is an idiot. And yes, that generation of Natives is still alive, and so are the three sebsequent generations that followed them. ALL native american are born into the dysfunction your people created for us. And we've taken it upon ourselves to end the cycles of trauma.

Forget the fictional Character's quotes, I will use REAL quotes from survivors and their abusers.

"All goes along quietly out here," one priest wrote in 1968, with "good religious and lay faculty" at the mission. There are troublesome staffers, though, including "Chappy," who is "fooling around with little girls -- he had them down the basement of our building in the dark, where we found a pair of panties torn." Later that year, Brother Francis Chapman was still abusing children, though by 1970, he was "a new man," the reports say. In 1973, Chappy again "has difficulty with little girls."

Wright remembers an adviser hitting a student.

"Busted his head open and blood got all over," Wright recalls. "I had to take him to the hospital, and they told me to tell them he ran into the wall and I better not tell them what really happened."

A little graphic for your tastes? Try being the one it actually happened to. These are sugar-coated, and far sweeter than the reality. Yet, Natives are constantly forced to shut up about all this, because it makes you guys "uncomfortable".