Bound To Stay Bound

Bulletin for the Center... - 10/01/2007 “Who has the most hope?” Junior, a Spokane Indian, asks his parents. “White people” is their instantaneous and simultaneous reply, confirming for Junior what he already knew: if he is to have any hope of fulfilling his dreams, he has to leave the rez. Braving the fierce anger of his best friend, Rowdy, Junior attends a white high school twenty-two miles from his home, where he falls in love, makes a few friends, and becomes a basketball legend. His triumph is always more bitter than sweet, though, as a boy caught between two conflicting worlds of loyalty and responsibility. His sense of humor and his cartooning become his salvation as he bears the loneliness of trying to escape the life of poverty and/or alcoholism that he sees as inevitable for Indians who stay on the reservation. Meanwhile he shares the perpetual grief of his community as they bury more people in a year than his white friends have lost in their whole lives; his pain reaches a peak when he loses his sister, who made her own escape from the rez by marrying a guy she met at a casino and moving to Montana, only to get drunk and die without waking up in a trailer fire. Through these experiences, though, he begins to get a sense of who he is and where he belongs, of which affiliations he can afford to keep and which he must walk away from; most poignant is the gift of identity that Rowdy gives him as he too comes to terms with what Junior must do to survive. The grief in this narrative is enough to leave a reader gasping, with both the humor and the hope always deepened by sadness and the ever-present niggling of undeserved and impotent guilt. Nevertheless, what emerges most strongly is Junior’s uncompromising determination to press on while leaving nothing important behind. KC - Copyright 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 08/01/2007 Arnold Spirit, a goofy-looking dork with a decent jumpshot, spends his time lamenting life on the “poor-ass” Spokane Indian reservation, drawing cartoons (which accompany, and often provide more insight than, the narrative), and, along with his aptly named pal Rowdy, laughing those laughs over anything and nothing that affix best friends so intricately together. When a teacher pleads with Arnold to want more, to escape the hopelessness of the rez, Arnold switches to a rich white school and immediately becomes as much an outcast in his own community as he is a curiosity in his new one. He weathers the typical teenage indignations and triumphs like a champ but soon faces far more trying ordeals as his home life begins to crumble and decay amidst the suffocating mire of alcoholism on the reservation. Alexie’s humor and prose are easygoing and well suited to his young audience, and he doesn’t pull many punches as he levels his eye at stereotypes both warranted and inapt.  A few of the plotlines fade to gray by the end, but this ultimately affirms the incredible power of best friends to hurt and heal in equal measure. Younger teens looking for the strength to lift themselves out of rough situations would do well to start here. - Copyright 2007 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 09/01/2007 Gr 7-10-Exploring Indian identity, both self and tribal, Alexie's first young adult novel is a semiautobiographical chronicle of Arnold Spirit, aka Junior, a Spokane Indian from Wellpinit, WA. The bright 14-year-old was born with water on the brain, is regularly the target of bullies, and loves to draw. He says, "I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats." He expects disaster when he transfers from the reservation school to the rich, white school in Reardan, but soon finds himself making friends with both geeky and popular students and starting on the basketball team. Meeting his old classmates on the court, Junior grapples with questions about what constitutes one's community, identity, and tribe. The daily struggles of reservation life and the tragic deaths of the protagonist's grandmother, dog, and older sister would be all but unbearable without the humor and resilience of spirit with which Junior faces the world. The many characters, on and off the rez, with whom he has dealings are portrayed with compassion and verve, particularly the adults in his extended family. Forney's simple pencil cartoons fit perfectly within the story and reflect the burgeoning artist within Junior. Reluctant readers can even skim the pictures and construct their own story based exclusively on Forney's illustrations. The teen's determination to both improve himself and overcome poverty, despite the handicaps of birth, circumstances, and race, delivers a positive message in a low-key manner. Alexie's tale of self-discovery is a first purchase for all libraries.-Chris Shoemaker, New York Public Library Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. - Copyright 2007 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Loading...