American Indian Stories (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

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• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781411430891
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

American Indian Stories (1921) is remarkable for being perhaps the first literary work by a Native-American woman created without the mediation of a non-Native interpreter, or collaborator. Zitkala-Sa vividly articulates her disillusionment with the harshness of American-Indian boarding schools and the corruption of government institutions ostensibly established to help Native peoples. At the same time, Zitkala-Sas collection of autobiographical essays and short stories charts the progression of the authors estrangement from her Dakota people that her colonial education inevitably fostered. Much more than an indictment against U.S. attempts at Native deculturation, American Indian Stories portrays one Dakota womans spirited and successful efforts to resist the restrictions she felt in both reservation life and Euroamerican assimilation.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• This book should be in every home Old Indian Legends
• IMPRESSIONS OF AN INDIAN CHILDHOOD
• THE SCHOOL DAYS OF AN INDIAN GIRL
• AN INDIAN TEACHER AMONG INDIANS
• THE SOFT-HEARTED SIOUX
• AMERICA’S INDIAN PROBLEM
• ENDNOTES
• SUGGESTED READING