I read the backs of cereal boxes. I read the newspaper. I read the bulletinsposted on the walls of the school, the clinic, the tribal offices, the post office. I read junk mail
I love that he will read anything no matter what it is he will read it for its information. He truly takes the saying "never judge a book by its cover" literally.
A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wantedme to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers, for help. We were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. Most livedup to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside.
The discrimination against other students just because of who they are is so wrong. People should be treated well and have the same opportunities as any other person no matter who they are or what they look like.
I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family'shouse was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south and the Tribal School to the west. Inside ourhouse, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us.
This little detail is so cute to me because after he noticed the detail of a paragraph he took it literally and saw other things that weren't just words as paragraphs. His mind is so open and so creative. I wonder if his mind always thinks this creatively.
We were poor by most standards, butone of my parents usually managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class by reservation standards. I had a brother andthree sisters. We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.
These two sentences really set the stage of the setting with how this story would go. I see that they have many mouths to feed and a lot of hard work that goes into this family.