American Indian Stories Essay -- essays research papers

In her book American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sas central role as both an activist and drop a liner surfaces, which uniquely combines autobiography and fiction and represents an attempt to merge cultural critique with aesthetic form, especially surrounding such fundamental matters as religion. In the tradition of sentimental, autobiographic fiction, this work addresses keen issues for American Indians dilemmas with assimilation. In Parts IV and V of "School Days," for example, she vividly describes a little girls nightmares of paleface devils and delineates her bitterness when her classmate died with an open playscript on her bed. In this groundbreaking scene, she inverts the allegation of Indian religion as superstition by labeling Christianity.     Also, the book as a whole reflects her empowerment, but in like manner speaks eloquently in a conquering cultures language of what it is to have no power over your destiny or selfhood. Her integration of several competing selves led her to write this, in "The Great Spirit" "The racial lines, which once were bitterly real, now serve nothing more than marking out a living arial mosaic of human beings."     In "The Great Spirit" she demonstrates her rhetorical savvy in embedding palatably her critique of oppressive hierarchy. She evokes this theme again in "Sun leap Opera," which she composed later in life. Here and elsewhere, she illustrates that the...