Fresh Ink: An Anthology

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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“Don't Pass Me By”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Don’t Pass Me By” Summary

This story takes place in 1976 and is told from the point of view of Doobie Buckman. An Indigenous American from a reservation referred to as the “Rez,” Doobie is a student starting seventh grade. In earlier grades, he attended school with other children from the Rez but now is in a large public junior high school in which most students are white.

To Doobie’s disappointment, one of his friends from elementary school, Hayley, shows up on the first day of school looking completely different. She’s covered in makeup and has died her hair purple to appear more “white.” Doobie notes that this is a common practice for children from the Rez, who change their appearance to fit in once they move to middle school. Because of his physical “Indian” features, however, Doobie is unable to do so. Although they don’t speak at school, Hayley talks to him on the bus when no other students are around and explains that she hopes to get into the BOCES cosmetology program and has been practicing on a Barbie head.

As the weeks pass, Hayley’s “Rez Amnesia” continues, and she pretends not to know Doobie except on the bus and in private at school. The third week, in health class, the students are practicing CPR on a Resusci-Annie doll, the lifeless body of which Doobie compares to a Barbie head. Throughout the demonstration, the boys joke around, often making fun of Doobie. At one point, the teacher, Mr. Corker, notes that the students must remove any makeup that rubs off on Annie: “You want her to be normal colored for the people who come after you” (46).

On the bus that afternoon, Hayley questions Doobie about why he lets the boys bully him. He responds that he’s the “only Indian” there and then tries to correct himself by saying “guy Indian,” but Hayley has already angrily left. From that day forward, Hayley ignores Doobie, no longer speaking to him in private or sitting with him on the bus.

A couple of months later, the students split off in health class into male and female students for a sex education unit. Doobie is joined by two other boys from the Rez, Bill and Andy Crews, whom he says always do their best to avoid trouble.

Each of the male students is given an outline of a nude male, as well as two colored pencils, one “Flesh” colored and one “Burnt Sienna,” and are asked to label anatomy and color in the body, using “flesh” for the skin color and “burnt sienna” for body hair. Bill and Andy follow the instructions and scold Doobie for doing it incorrectly to “prove” that he’s Indigenous.

Doobie takes his drawing to Mr. Corker and reveals that he colored the body brown and then used a pencil to color the body hair black, even adding hair like his own. He thinks about how he made Hayley feel “gone” and regrets it because he didn’t have the words to tell her what he meant. The school makes him feel like he doesn’t fit in, and he already has a reputation as big and dumb as well as different; choosing not to fight back was an effort to change that reputation. However, it failed over and over again, so his drawing was his decision to “at least live up to the reputation [he’d] walked in with” (53).

Mr. Corker, annoyed at Doobie, tells him that the assignment was to follow what was on the screen, not to draw a “self-portrait.” Doobie responds indignantly, saying that it was a self-portrait for the white students and insisting that he did follow the instructions.

As Doobie leaves and enters the cafeteria, he fantasizes about what it would be like to approach Hayley in public. He imagines making her laugh again and then taking her back to Mr. Corker’s room to use the wipes to remove all her makeup like they did with the Annie doll and returning her to “the Indian girl [he] used to know” (54).

“Don’t Pass Me By” Analysis

The story is told in first person from Doobie’s point of view, and this perspective is vital to conveying the experiences of an Indigenous American middle school student who is forced to attend a nearly all-white public school. His thoughts give insight into the internalized racism that many children of color experience, especially Indigenous Americans in the 1970s who are forced into a situation like his. From the story’s opening lines, Doobie makes it clear that he and the other Indigenous American children at the school are “others,” and consequently, most of them try to make themselves “whiter” to fit in with the other children. When Doobie sees Hayley, who consciously decided to appear “white,” he makes the choice not to interact with her. The internal thoughts that Doobie reveals, as well as the interplay between these two characters, emphasize the harm that internalized racism can cause. Doobie, who describes himself as having “a big hawky Indian nose, thick lips, and long black hair tied back in a sneh-wheh” (39), has learned that he’ll never fit in with the other students and doesn’t even try, but he allows other Indigenous American students like Hayley to abandon him so that they can be “whiter” and gain friends. He has internalized this harmful view of himself to the point that he offhandedly refers to himself as “The Big Indian Kid” (40), allows himself to be bullied by the other students, and doesn’t even respond when his teacher refers to the Annie doll as “normal colored” (46).

Throughout the story, Doobie lacks collective support, introducing the theme of Pushing Back Against Hate and Exclusion, as he struggles to maintain his identity in the face of both external and internalized racism. He searches for himself in the Annie doll and in the chart he receives in sex education, but he finds only a monotone, white structure in which he doesn’t belong. In addition, he looks for support in his classmates from the Rez but laments that Billy, Andy, and Hayley strive desperately to abandon their culture and fit in. Holistically, the Indigenous American students lack support to stand up for themselves and hold onto their culture, largely due to the time period in which the story is set. In the story’s conclusion, Doobie imagines himself opening Hayley’s eyes in an effort to receive the support he desperately needs.

Doobie’s struggles in the story introduce The Importance of Cultural Roots as a theme. As his friends and the other students from the Rez abandon their Indigenous heritage to fit in at the white school, he’s left without friends and experiences bullying and hate for his skin color. However, he also sees the value in his cultural roots, as symbolized by the beadwork keychain that he keeps with him at school. He explains that the keychains were made for students as they moved out of elementary school and into this new school by a class of Indigenous American women. As Doobie explains, “the class members were relearning beadwork skills they’d lost, or learning stuff their own mothers had refused to teach them” (38). These beads are a part of Doobie’s Indigenous American heritage, and his other classmates from the Rez disregard theirs, so he keeps his on his bag, symbolizing his effort to keep his cultural roots with him. For most of the story, Doobie keeps to himself in an effort to make it through school. However, at the story’s climax, he makes a stand for his heritage, acknowledging that he “[is] beginning to understand how easy it [is] to be silent, to think of yourself as a vanished Indian” (53). His act of defiance and his change signal that he recognizes the racism around him that he has internalized and will no longer stand for it, as well as that he won’t erase his own cultural identity, choosing instead to depict his desire to hold onto his roots through his drawing. At the end, he imagines doing the same for Hayley (and, by extension, all children from the Rez) by making her laugh, unafraid to socialize with him, and by helping her remove her makeup to reveal her true identity as an Indigenous American.