“I’m transferring to Reardan.” Rowdy’s eyes narrowed. His eyes always narrowed right before he beat the crap out of someone. I started shaking. “That’s not funny,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be funny,” I said. “I’m transferring to Reardan. I want you to come with me.”[The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Chapter: Rowdy sings the blues]

Junior tells Rowdy he’s going to a different school and Rowdy has a big reaction he says “You better quit saying that” and then states “You're getting me mad”. Because they have been so close and share everything with each other it makes Rowdy very mad that his best friend is leaving. He ends up punching Junior and giving him a black eye which Rowdy would only do if it was someone he really hated or cared about and he definitely cared about Junior. It was a step in the wrong direction for their friendship but proved how much the friendship meant even for Rowdy. Because they live on the reservation they can’t do much because they can’t afford much. Poverty is another important theme in the book.

    Poverty doesn’t define a community, but it greatly impacts them. The reservation is a close knit community, but they suffer from endless poverty impacted by race. The people struggle week by week trying to survive and helping each other. Some people are tired of being poor and drink too much, so a lot of Indians end up dying of alcoholism. Others suffer with not enough money for food, electricity, heat and air conditioning. On the reservation life is tough. You have to be able to live while suffering and not eating enough food. It is really bad that people on the reservation can’t even get medical care. They live day to day hoping they have enough food in their fridge. Racism is everywhere causing poverty to repeat for years to come. There are plenty of examples of this such as when “our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain.” (Chapter: Black Eye Of The Month Club) but this was a small example of racism and poverty because when Junior's dog was in a bad condition they didn’t have enough money and they had to kill the dog “So I heard the boom of my father’s rifle when he shot my best friend.”when they have to kill the dog  Junior said this:

But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.” (Chapter: why chicken means so much to me)

The people on the reservation don’t get the same decent life as the reardan people. They don’t get chances to become rich or get a good job. They don’t get many choices either because they live on the reservation and they have to stay on the reservation because they don’t have enough money to move away. They don't get a chance to live their dreams either. Junior’s sister moved away from the reservation and recently after that she died. Unlike regular people these people have no chance to get a good job or live their dreams, so they are stuck in an endless abyss of poverty. Junior realizes that he is stuck in poverty with no chances, so he creates his own chances to make his life better even if he has to lose his best friend.

    Even simple to read books can have deep meaningful  themes. The Absolute Diary of A Part-Time Indian challenged me to find deep themes and the purpose of this easy to read, fun, and meaningful book. While reading the book I was forced to annotate in an active way and find themes throughout the book. This engaging way of reading may have not been as enjoyable in the moment, but as I look back now on my comments throughout the book I can see the themes of the book in a more thoughtful way. This way of reading made the book more meaningful about themes that I can see in the real world as well. When I started reading the book I wasn’t that into it and it didn’t have any big themes. The more I read the more it flowed and I would just get into a reading state of mind. As I stayed in their state of mind it became easier to see the themes that kept popping up like Poverty, Friendship, and Family. I pulled out these themes by writing small notes and annotating throughout the whole book and once I finished the book and really found all the themes I realized even though it’s a sarcastic and funny book it has meaningful themes that have to do with the real world. It helped me put a better perspective on Indians and how bad alcoholism is. It also helped me realize how hard poverty is to escape. I learned I can understand the world more now that I’ve read the book. I can use my new understanding of the themes to help me talk about it in discussions and go out and try to fix some of those problems in the real world. When I started reading the book a few weeks ago, you might have heard my frustration when we got assigned a book but as I read more I really started to like the book and found interesting themes in the book. I liked the book a lot and It was worth it for all the good themes.

      The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was an amazing book that forced me to realize the adversity that modern Native Americans face.