From books to real life

For me, reading things in books or anything just doesn't seem to impact me a lot. Even if they are terrible and real things, such as reading about things revolving around my topic, alcoholism in Native American tribes. Statistics show how many indians die compared to every other race involving alcohol and Native Americans are about 75% of total deaths. Which is crazy, but to me, just a statistic. So none of these things really hit me until I hung out with my Native buddy. He has had 3 people pass away within the last few weeks in his family. Some involving alcohol. That is crazy, I have known this kid for years and I love him (no homo). So hearing this kinda hit home. He is taking it well since he is used to people close to him and bad things happening him. He is the one that shows me not only hot tough a Native Americans life can be, but also how tough a tribe member can be.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

This book was exceptional. I am not a big reader, but I was actually able to finish this book and enjoy it. Even though it was not 'absolutely true' I still think it gave me some good insight about living it tribes. Which would be a pretty tough life to live. Junior was an admirable character. What I respected about him most was that even though he was set up to fail, like most people living on reservations are, he fought to succeed. His Father was an alcoholic, his school was terriblely poor, and he was the nerdy kid. He did not have anything helping him, he only had himself. He transfered to a better school even though it would cause him to be hated by most of his people for turning against them. But he didn't want to be another alcoholic stuck on the reservation, he wanted to be something more and he did something about it.