Zitkala-sa: The New Autobiography

In the scholarly journal Zitkala-Sa's Autobiographical Writings: The Problems of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity it speaks about Zitkala- Sa’s autobiographical writing in her book American Indian Stories. The journal says that Zitkala- Sa’s writing breaks the commonly used structure for autobiographical writing. The author of this journal criticizes the people who call Zitkala-Sa’s writing as improper. Through her book American Indian Stories Zitkala-Sa speaks about the ways she felt humiliated and oppressed by the white people due to her culture. Martha Cutter the author of this journal questions why do critics expect to write an autobiography using the structure of her oppressor (White Americans). Cutter says that the common American autobiography has some sort of progress. In the beginning of the autobiography the person is struggling to find themselves and by the end they find their identity.

Zitkala-Sa’s autobiography begins with the curiosity of a young girl. This young girl seems to be living in paradise until the missionaries come and speak to her of the land of red apples. She is tempted by the missionaries to go with them to this land. As Cutter states it is interesting how Zitkala-Sa uses the White men’s religion against them. She makes reference to the Judeo-Christian scene of the Garden of Eden but the irony is that the Christian missionaries symbolize the tempter also known as the serpent. The land of red apples symbolizes the forbidden fruit. Once Zitkala-Sa arrives in the land of red apples she is painfully stripped of her Native American culture and forced to adapt American customs. At the end of the book she returns to her home and she feels out of place she is not comfortable in the Native American culture or White American culture. Instead of finding her identity by the end of the book she losses her Native American identity and ends up confused. Cutter says that structurally this book does not “depict a movement from chaos to identity. The retrospective reconstruction of events--so important to autobiography as a genre--is present nonetheless. But the final chapter is a catalogue of loss, rather than a record of achievement.”

Work Cited:

Cutter, Martha J. "Zitkala-Sa's Autobiographical Writings: The Problems of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity."MELUS 19.1 (1994): 31. ProQuest. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.