셔먼 알렉시의 『어느 파트타임 인디언의 진짜 일기』에 나타난 인디언 주체의 서술권과 다중적 정체성

The Native American “Right to Narrate” and Multiple Identities in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a PartTime

Well-established Native American literary scholars have criticized Sherman Alexie’s relentless descriptions of the unsavory realities, such as alcoholism and violence, prevalent in the life of Indian reservation on the ground that they serve to solidify a set of stereotypes white mainstream readers have long had for Native Americans. This essay attempts to show that, instead of abandoning the idea of Indian cultural identity as some critics have alleged him to do, Sherman Alexie in his recent young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is testing a new perspective toward Native American cultural identity that could allow Indian adolescents to entertain the possibility to make peace with the white mainstream and survive, while, at the same time, maintaining their cultural sovereignty or what Homi Bhabha calls “the right to narrate.” Writing about Native American adolescents, Alexie navigates their conditions of crossover existence, adolescence and Indianness, in order to imagine their survivance in the contemporary American society. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior decides to leave the Indian reservation and transfers to an off-rez, all white highschool. In so doing, Junior regains his real name Arnold, realizing that his identity is not nomo-cultural but multi-cultural. Through the protagonist’s spacio-territorial journey for identity, Alexie points to the possibility of survivance for Native American adolescents who could claim their multiple identities as nomads beyond the guilt of being assimilated to the white world.