Why am I different?

Sherman Alexie’s Novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is a book written from the viewpoint of a teenager, and illustrates the impact of social inequality and structural violence through his eyes. After discovering that students at his high school are more concerned about where to get alcohol than their education, Alexie decides to transfer to a “white” high school about 20 miles away. As his father dropped him to his new high school, he told him to never let “white” men think they are better than you. But he mention neither him or his father believed this. The book highlights the impact racial segregation had on the lives people living in the Indian reservation: poverty, hunger, alcoholism. Lack of resources is clearly evident when the author finds his mother’s name on his high school book. The fact that the students had to use the same books across generations shows the lack of resources that resides in their community.

The social segregation and the blatant racism that American Indians had to face often pushed them to alcohol as the only respite. This is similar to alcohol abuse in Russia, where tuberculosis has been a major epidemics in recent year. Tuberculosis affect the poorest in the society, who are often unemployed, alcoholic, and are in and out of prison as mentioned in Treating Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis in Tomsk Russia.  When funding cuts, these are the first to lose their Tuberculosis medication supplies. Similar to alcoholism in American Indians, Tuberculosis and alcoholism in Russia is not due to personal choice but is result of structural violence. Inequality is the root of this structural violence. Alexis is able to break the bars of structure in his society and opt out to a better school, and hence improve his future. He is an example how structural violence arising from historical factors as well as inequality are the true roots of issues such as alcoholism and tuberculosis.