So when The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie’s multiple award-winning young adult novel, showed up on the ALA’s most-challenged list, coming in 2nd in 2010 and 5th in 2011, I was, to put it bluntly, pissed. Very pissed, but not surprised. Alexie has never shied away from alcoholism or sexuality, which are deemed pornographic and corruptive in all forms and treated as though they were secrets. Nor has he avoided the complexities of race, the history behind which revisionists find too knotty. Censors prefer the stale air of a stripped-down world. A world that is, even to eyes of children, false.
