The difficulty for most contemporary Native American authors is how to present their work to a population that does not is entirely familiar with the modern Indian situation and way of life. How Alexie Sherman and Velma Wallis achieve this in their books The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Raising Ourselves is by presenting their stories together at the party. almost universally known of the Christmas -class, the American reader is then able to compare their own view of the holiday with Alexie and Wallis's sadder version, thus making the author's point clearer through the striking contrasts between the reader's perceptions and the author's perceptions of the same event The idea that Christmas is a peaceful holiday filled with family and good times conflicts with the Indian view that Christmas is a time of discord and alcohol abuse. Alexie and Wallis use this strategy of turning a well-known holiday into something that the general reader no longer recognizes to better show the problems faced by modern Indians, such as alcoholism and family problems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Alexie describes Christmas as an event that separates family members rather than brings them together due to the influence of alcohol. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior's father, the protagonist, leaves on Christmas Eve with the family's money, gets drunk, and doesn't return until January 2nd. After Junior tells his father that “it's okay,” he points out to the reader that “it wasn't okay. It was anything but okay. If Earth was okay, then I was on Jupiter. I don't know why I said it was okay .For some reason, I was protecting the feelings of the man who had broken my heart once again.” (Alexie 151) Junior still loves Christmas like many other children his age, and this quote expresses how hurt he is that the holiday was ruined. Repeating several times that it wasn't good shows his absolute frustration with the situation and how Junior takes the holiday seriously and didn't want it to fail. Furthermore, Junior uses several phrases that distance himself from the situation and from his father's alcoholism. He says that "It was far from okay" and "If Earth was okay, then I was on its farthest point, Jupiter is about 601 million miles from Earth Junior." he uses this example to show how distant and emotionally disconnected he is from his father. These statements serve to remove Junior from the problem that brought him to this point, alcohol, and distance him from his family on a vacation that people believe is supposed to bring the family together. Junior also uses many uncertain expressions, such as “I don't know” and “For some reason,” to show that alcohol has brought confusion and upheaval into his home life, to the point where he questions his own actions. To the average reader, the fact that Junior's father chose to abandon him at Christmas is shocking as many believe that it is not possible to have a happy Christmas without the presence of an entire family. Children are supposed to be happy and joyful at Christmas, but instead Junior is upset and gloomy. This excerpt turns what Junior expected to be a happy day into a sad mix of confusion and anger in his family. Wallis also uses Christmas to bring up the issues of alcoholism and family stress so the reader can compare the holiday to their perception. In Raising Ourselves, when Wallis talks about Christmas, she states that “Barry and I dreamed of having aMerry Christmas, which meant a sober mother and togetherness like our family once had. When things didn't work that way, we just called it a bad Christmas." (Wallis 149) Placing the terms “sober mother” and “together time” next to each other emphasizes that Wallis could not have one without the other. Furthermore, he directly attributes the Merry Christmas to a sober mother, demonstrating how the success of the holiday depended entirely on whether or not alcohol was present. Wallis also appears to blame the family's lack of cohesion on alcohol, saying "sober mother" right before talking about what her family "once had." Clearly, Wallis believes alcohol is a major reason for her family problems. For example, Wallis doesn't use terms like “Merry” or “Jolly” to describe her Christmas. He simply uses the term “Good,” which indicates that Wallis's expectations for Christmas are already quite low, even though the holidays were successful. Finally, he says that he "dreamed" of having a good Christmas, which suggests that Wallis thought that a good Christmas was something extremely difficult to achieve, and that he did not necessarily expect to get it. Additionally, this statement also draws parallels to recognizable popular culture in the form of the song "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin, which has the lyrics "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas." The song also mentions "Those I Knew", which is similar to Wallis' "Like our family once had". The title of the Wallis song is contrasting, "White Christmas", may also raise issues of race, arguing that the white version of Christmas is nothing like the Indian version. These details allow the reader to draw on their own personal notions of the holiday and therefore contrast with Wallis's. Although Alexie uses Christmas as a platform to talk about poverty, he avoids materialistic giving and instead focuses more on the thoughtfulness of the child. vacation. When the only gift he receives from his father at Christmas is a $5 bill, Junior observes that “My father must have really wanted to spend that last five dollars. Hell, you can buy a bottle of the worst whiskey for $5. He could have spent that five dollars and stayed drunk for another day or two. But he saved it for me. It was a good and bad thing." (Alexie 151) In this statement, the paltry gift of five dollars is not as important as the fact that his father thought to give it to him in the first place. Junior repeats several phrases. One of them is “five dollars”, repeated in different ways three times. Junior's repeated mention of the gift indicates how much the gift means to him, not because it is substantial, but because, given his father's alcoholic absence, he never expected to receive it. Additionally, Alexie uses phrases such as “You must have,” “You can,” and “You might have” to indicate the difficulty his father likely had in reserving that five dollars for his son. By presenting all the alternative uses of money, it makes the father's gift seem even more heartfelt because he turned down several other viable options in favor of his son, an action Junior never believed would happen. Alexie goes on to state how “It was a good and a bad thing.” Alexie pairs two words with opposite meanings to suggest that good deeds can occur among imperfect ones, similar to how his father engaged in an unexpected act of kindness during his selfish drunken episode. Speaking more about the implications of the gift rather than the gift itself, Alexie tells the reader about the Indian problem of poverty and at the same time praises the little things in life that people remember. Everything Junior.