7 October 2019
For Martina Myers, a high school English teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Sherman Alexie's novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" seemed too good to be true: funny, well-crafted and focused on Native American youth.
Her students at Piñon High School, many of whom struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, took to it immediately. They wrote poems in response, on native pride, addiction, self-acceptance and suicide attempts.