American Indian Stories - Softcover

Zitkala-Sa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803299028 ISBN 13: 9780803299023

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1985

Synopsis

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition. Impressions of an Indian Childhood describes her first eight yeas on the Yankton Reservation, where she was born in 1876. Her schooling in Indiana revealed a gift for writing that led in 1901 to the publication of Old Indian Legends, also a Bison Book. For the rest of her rife, this Sioux was in the poignant but creative position of trying to bridge the gap between her own culture and the dominant white one, unable to return fully to the former or to enter fully into the latter. These pieces, largely autobiographical, were first collected and published in 1921. With their reissue, Zitkala-Sa takes her rightful place among such native interpreters of Sioux culture as Charles A. Eastman and Luther Standing Bear .

About this title

Synopsis:

""American Indian Stories" is an important collection because it represents one of the first attempts by a Native American woman to write her own story without the aid of an editor, an interpreter, or an ethnographer. Zitkala-ea presents...the pain and difficulty of growing up Indian in a white man's world." - Dexter Fisher. Zitkala-ea (Gertrude Bonnin) was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition. "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" describes her first eight yeas on the Yankton Reservation, where she was born in 1876. Her schooling in Indiana revealed a gift for writing that led in 1901 to the publication of "Old Indian Legends", also a Bison Book. For the rest of her rife, this Sioux was in the poignant but creative position of trying to bridge the gap between her own culture and the dominant white one, unable to return fully to the former or to enter fully into the latter. These pieces, largely autobiographical, were first collected and published in 1921. With their reissue, Zitkala-ea takes her rightful place among such native interpreters of Sioux culture as Charles A. Eastman and Luther Standing Bear.

About the Author:

Zitkala-Ša, used the white world’s education forced upon her to campaign for justice for Native Americans. A Dakota Sioux, born in 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation, she was sent at the age of eight to White's Manual Labor Institute in Indiana. Throughout the remainder of her life, she felt resentment toward those who had stripped her of native manners and dress, insisting that she accept their religion and endure second-class status in their world. Dismissed as a teacher in the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School for her critical article in HARPER'S MONTHLY, she pursued a career as a musician and as an activist for her people.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0803299028
• ISBN 13: 9780803299023
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196