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A review by gitli57
American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings by Zitkála-Šá
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
3.0
Zitkála-Ša (1876-1938) was raised on the Yankton Sioux reservation and educated at a dominant culture run boarding school where the expressed goal was the forced assimilation of Native American Indian children. She resisted assimilation, but used her training to become a writer, teacher, musician and Native Rights activist. By her mid-20's, her short stories were being published in such mainstream magazines as Harper's and Atlantic Monthly alongside work by writers like Edith Wharton and Henry James. A number of these stories are included in the title collection, "American Indian Stories", of this compilation volume. These stories still resonate. Frankly, for me as a Native American, they resonate more deeply than anything I have read from Edith Wharton or Henry James.
The collection "Old Indian Legends" was less effective for me and seems more acculturated. One of the strategies of the missionaries and others pushing for assimilation was to rewrite traditional cultural stories as sanitized and cute moralizing animal tales for children. This trivializes them and robs them of their real spiritual power. I am not Dakota and do not know the original versions of the stories Zitkála-Ša tells here, but she is clearly addressing them to children. That and the general tone suggests that they have been rewritten to make them more palatable to dominant culture readers. I may be mistaken, so if you are Dakota and can clarify, please do.
The poetry that is included is rather treacly and uninteresting, but is very early work - student work, really. The non-fiction writing is of historical interest. It documents the struggles for basic justice of many different Native American communities in the early 1900's and in so doing shows how little has actually changed in the ensuing century plus.
This Penguin Classics edition, in addition to a wide range of Zitkála-Ša's writings, includes extensive biographical information and insight's into her life and work.
The collection "Old Indian Legends" was less effective for me and seems more acculturated. One of the strategies of the missionaries and others pushing for assimilation was to rewrite traditional cultural stories as sanitized and cute moralizing animal tales for children. This trivializes them and robs them of their real spiritual power. I am not Dakota and do not know the original versions of the stories Zitkála-Ša tells here, but she is clearly addressing them to children. That and the general tone suggests that they have been rewritten to make them more palatable to dominant culture readers. I may be mistaken, so if you are Dakota and can clarify, please do.
The poetry that is included is rather treacly and uninteresting, but is very early work - student work, really. The non-fiction writing is of historical interest. It documents the struggles for basic justice of many different Native American communities in the early 1900's and in so doing shows how little has actually changed in the ensuing century plus.
This Penguin Classics edition, in addition to a wide range of Zitkála-Ša's writings, includes extensive biographical information and insight's into her life and work.