While-reading-activity

Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Session 1 (pages 1-66)
1. What health problems does Junior have? How would you summarise Junior’s
attitude towards these problems?
Junior has mental problems:
He suffers from a low self-rating, and he is not confident in his self.
He has a disability:
When Junior was born, he had surgery on his brain to remove extra liquid
in the brain which could kill him. After that his body developed in the strange
way: He ends up having a small body, but at the same time head, feet and hands
are big. Also, Junior suffers from a stutter and lisp. And during a day he has a lot
of seizures. Overall, he is very weak and “different” due to this he is bullied a lot
in the rez.
He copes with his problems by making of this fun: Junior draws a lot of funny
cartoons which contain self-irony. His cartoons are his lifeboats that help him to
live further despite it happens tough staff in his life.

2. Junior relates Oscar’s death as an example of the worst thing about being poor.
What is Junior saying is the worst thing about poverty?
Oscar was Junior’s best friend therefore Junior says that Oscar was “a best
human being” in his life.
“Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance.
No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” – Junior says this because he
experienced death of his friend. And he feels himself miserable because he even did
not have money to save his friends life. And only option that was left to his friend,
was not to suffer anymore and die from bullet which cost some cents.

3. Explain Junior’s statement “..my mother and father are the twin suns around
which I orbit and my world would EXPLODE without them” (p.11)

For Junior, the family is most valuable thing in his life. His whole life spins around
his parents because they are only people in the world who cares about him, loves
him, and supports him. And he can’t imagine his life without them therefore he
says: “my world would EXPLODE without them.”

4. Describe Junior and Rowdy’s friendship.

Rowdy has tough parents therefore he’s so angry and solves all problems by
fights, but Junior is fully opposite: he is quiet and weak. Despite this they are
inseparable friends from their birth. Rowdy loves Junior’s cartoons because
they are more interesting than his life. Rowdy protects Junior from bullies and
that way he shows that he cares about his friend.
5. How does Junior react to the 30-year-old geometry book? Why does he react this
way?
He is disappointed and frustrated because he got a book which used his
mother. His dreams and hopes floated up in a mushroom cloud and exploded.
Afterwards he smashed book in the face Mr.P because somewhere inside him
refused to acknowledge this fact.
6. Mr.P explains that he and other white people on the reservation deserve to be
punished for what they have done to Indians. What does Mr.P mean when he
says, “All the Indians should get smashed in the face, too”. (p.42)

7. Why are Junior’s parents supportive of his decision to transfer to Reardan High
School? What could be negative consequences of a Native American transferring
to an all-white school?
They don’t want that their son ended up that way that they did. So, they
understand that single opportunity to escape form this horror in rez is better
education.
But at the same time, it can be extremely hard for Junior: it will be tough to
feed in the new school as an Indian kid and he will likely be bullied.
8. How does Rowdy react to Junior’s decision to attend school in Reardan? Why
does he react this way?
Rowdy was mad, so he beat up Junior because he could not acknowledge
that Junior leaves him and they will not be together anymore. For Rowdy, it
was kind of betrayal.

9. What does this mean: Junior feels like he is “slicing [himself] in half, with Junior
living on the north side of the Spokane River and Arnold living on the south”
(p.61) Why do you think he wants to be called Arnold in Reardan?