American Indian Stories
Zitkala-Ša 1921
These essays and short stories describe Dakota childhood, boarding school, and Native American struggles. In one school scene, a young girl hides under a bed to escape having her hair cut.
119 pages 2h 18m reading time
- One of the first books in which a Native American woman told her own story in her own words, now read widely in American literature and history classes.
- Argues that boarding schools meant to "civilize" Native children instead cut them off from their families, language, and sense of who they were.
- Shows a person caught between two worlds, no longer at home among her own people yet never accepted by white society.
- Stands as an early voice of Native protest writing, and its accounts of boarding school life are still widely cited in the ongoing reckoning with how those schools harmed Native families.
Angered her old school
Carlisle Indian School's founder, Richard Henry Pratt, attacked her in print after her school stories first appeared.
First printed in magazines
The childhood and school chapters first ran in The Atlantic Monthly in 1900, when she was in her twenties.
Written while teaching there
She wrote about boarding schools after working as a teacher at Carlisle, the kind of school she criticized.
A chosen pen name
She signed her work Zitkala-Ša, a name she gave herself, often translated as "Red Bird."