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American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings book cover
American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings
2003
First Published
3.90
Average Rating
320
Number of Pages

A thought-provoking collection of searing prose from a Sioux woman that covers race, identity, assimilation, and perceptions of Native American culture Zitkala-Sa wrestled with the conflicting influences of American Indian and white culture throughout her life. Raised on a Sioux reservation, she was educated at boarding schools that enforced assimilation and was witness to major events in white-Indian relations in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Tapping her troubled personal history, Zitkala-Sa created stories that illuminate the tragedy and complexity of the American Indian experience. In evocative prose laced with political savvy, she forces new thinking about the perceptions, assumptions, and customs of both Sioux and white cultures and raises issues of assimilation, identity, and race relations that remain compelling today.

Avg Rating
3.90
Number of Ratings
733
5 STARS
27%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
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Author

Zitkala-Sa
Zitkala-Sa
Author · 12 books
Zitkála-Šá (Dakota: pronounced zitkála-ša, which translates to "Red Bird") also known by the missionary-given name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was a Sioux writer, editor, musician, teacher and political activist. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles in her youth as she was pulled back and forth between the influences of dominant American culture and her own Native American heritage, as well as books in English that brought traditional Native American stories to a widespread white readership for one of the first times. With William F. Hanson, Bonnin co-composed the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance (composed in romantic style based on Ute and Sioux themes), which premiered in 1913. She founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 to lobby for the rights of Native Americans to American citizenship, and served as its president until her death in 1938.
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