Sherman Alexie's "Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian"

This book has been a breath of fresh air for me. As a white man having grown up in a middle class family in a predominantly white area, I have very little experience with the inner workings of most cultures outside of my own. This book has provided me with a bit of insight into a culture that is right on my doorstep, yet I have never actually encountered myself. The story does a good job of pulling the reader into the narrator's shoes, which helps to give an even more in depth experience to help readers gain an understanding of how his culture functions and what it is like to live as a part of it. The fact that it was written by a person who has dealt with these experiences themself further adds to the genuine quality of the story. Being a white man, I often hear about people dealing with struggles of race but it is extremely rare for me to have a moment which has any kind of resemblance to that. This book provides me with another tool to help me to understand what it is like for people to deal with that kind of a struggle. The differences between the experiences Junior has at the white school and the school on the reservation also help to show what it is like for people of other cultures trying to find themselves within cultures outside of their own, and the process of the mixing of cultures. The place where I live is populated mostly by people of the same or similar culture to my own, so I don't often get to experience other cultures, let alone immerse myself completely in them like Junior does.
I think this book will prove to be something that would be useful in the classroom as well. If I am able to create a unit around this book, which shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, it will provide my students with the opportunity to have the same experience I did when reading this book while still pushing them to meet quite a few Common Core State Standards.