If you read just one YA novel this year, make it this one. It’s humane, authentic and, most of all, it speaks.” I can’t think of a better description. Of this book, the Guardian said: “Opening this book is like meeting a friend you’d never make in your actual life and being given a piece of his world, inner and outer. They will also recognize his playful use of language, his unflinching portrayal of alcoholism, and his insistence upon telling the truth. Those familiar with Sherman Alexie will recognize that this novel, while intended to be fictional, is really fiction ish-portions of it greatly resemble his own story. With conviction, humor, and just plain fearlessness (at times), Arnold learns to navigate his way both through the hallways of Reardan High and around the reservation. His description is hyperbole, almost, meant to emphasize the difference between life on the reservation that Arnold is used to and life in the very white, very non-Indian world of Reardan. I could see the blue veins running through their skins like rivers” (56). “These kids weren’t just white,” he says. Clearly, he didn’t have a lot of prior interaction with white people until this moment. His arrival at Reardan is equally fraught with surprises.
But I had to stand eventually, and when I did, I knew that my best friend had become my worst enemy. I stupidly hoped that time would stand still if I stayed still. I stayed on the ground for a long time after Rowdy walked away. I was the kind of idiot that got punched hard in the face by his best friend. “You always thought you were better than me,” he yelled.… Rowdy stopped screaming with his mouth but he kept screaming with his eyes. They take his choice personally, especially his best friend Rowdy: He fails to realize that nearly everyone on the reservation views his choice as a defection, as a rejection of the reservation, of Indian life and culture, and of them. Realizing that he will receive a second-class education in the reservation high school, he throws his book at his teacher, and then decides to instead attend school in the nearby town of Reardan, “whose mascot was an Indian, thereby making the only other Indian in town” (56). She is a board member of ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.Fourteen-year-old Arnold Spirit (“Junior”) opens his math book on the first day of school only to find his mother’s maiden name inside the front cover. Fiona Ross holds a BA in German, a PgDip in Sanskrit and Pali, and a PhD in Indian Palaeography from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies: University of London). She is the author of The Printed Bengali Character and its Evolution (Richmond, 1999) and numerous articles on non-Latin type design and typography, and has recently co-curated two exhibitions.
More recently, as an associate designer of Tiro Typeworks, she has enjoyed working with John Hudson and Tim Holloway on a number of type design projects including ‘Adobe Arabic’ (TDC award 2006), ‘Adobe Thai’ and, for Dalton Maag, ‘Vodafone Hindi’ (TDC award 2008) Fiona is also a lecturer (part-time) in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, teaching non-Latin typeface design on the MA Typeface Design course as well as research methodology and academic writing skills to postgraduates in the Department. Since her first design collaboration with Tim Holloway on the now ubiquitous ‘Linotype Bengali’, Fiona’s typeface designs for Linotype went on to range over 12 Indian scripts:these include ‘Rohini’ (Devanagari script) with Georgina Surman, ‘Manorama’ (Malayalam script) and ‘Araliya’ (Sinhala script) with Georgina Surman and Donna Yandle. Since 1989 Fiona has worked as a consultant for clients that include Adobe, Apple Computers, Bitstream, Dalton Maag, Linotype GmbH, Monotype Imaging, Open University, and Quark. Also, in collaboration with Tim Holloway, they developed Linotype’s patented Nasta’liq system and fonts.ĭuring this period Fiona travelled extensively in South Asia for research purposes, troubleshooting, lecturing and teaching non-Latin type design. There Fiona developed with Mike Fellows the Phonetic Keyboard for Indian scripts, which was adopted by the principal Indian newspaper publishers in the 1980s, thus paving the way for Desktop publishing in the Indian sub-Continent. In 1978 she joined Linotype-Paul Limited, following in the footsteps of Walter Tracy, where, as the company’s first female manager, she became responsible for the design of Linotype’s non-Latin fonts and typesetting schemes, notably those using Arabic, Indian, and Thai scripts. Fiona’s interest in non-Latin type design and typography arose from her post-graduate studies in Sanskrit and Indian Palaeography.