Reviews for American Indian Stories

The average rating for American Indian Stories based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-01 00:00:00 Andrew Borowski I am writing about American Indian Stories and Old Indian Legends together because I read them together. Discussions can be found here and here As a child, Zitkala-Sa remembers, she and her playmates would beg for stories of Iktomi. These tales are amusing and didactic, freighted with moral and spiritual instruction. Iktomi 'the trickster' is a cautionary figure, object of ridicule and disdain rather than awe. He is lazy, selfish and dishonest, and his tales seem shaped to inculcate enthusiasm for helpful activities of social reproduction, generosity and integrity treasured among the Dakota people. Iktomi is also stupid, and is regularly outwitted in his scheming The more sinister character Iya, the 'camp eater' seems to represent disaster on a large scale, while Iktomi is a kind of enemy within; an uncultivated, sociopathic person unable to share life with others. While in her memoir Zitkala-Sa speaks of eating unleavened bread, sweet roots and herbs as well as hunted animals, in the tales food is always meat! The stories almost always centre around hunger and hunting, suggesting these to be especially dramatic features of Dakota life, while the parts of the memoir among the Dakota relate more to peaceful social activities. Zitkala-Sa's account of the missionary school she attended is extremely fragmented, and she writes about the bizarre, disturbing discipline rather than the curriculum. It seems, since she elected to continue it and to become a teacher and to recruit Indians from the plains for schools herself, that she did not find the material of this education uncongenial, as opposed to the separation from her mother and culture, which was extremely upsetting to her. I was struck by her discomfort when, on arrival at the missionary school, a friendly adult picked her, a small child, up in the air and bounced her up and down. USian and UK whites would consider this behaviour a normal way of affectionately playing with a child, but the author shares this contrast 'my mother had never made a plaything of her wee daughter' to explain why she experienced this contact as a violation of her body and space. I strongly believe that my society urgently needs to build consent culture at the level of respect for children's bodily autonomy, so this comment was very thought-provoking. Zitkala-Sa's writing and translation (she herself has translated the Legends) have a formal quality that reminded me of Frederick Douglass, presumably because I have read so little American literature of the period and cannot distinguish among its authors! The way she renders speech seems very skilful and sensitive, giving enough of the original to suggest the sounds and enough explanation to make clear what is signified clear. The word 'How!' is surely beyond translation, but I was able to catch a scent of what it conveys. She also explains how words and actions fit into custom with, generally, a light and easy touch. The tales in Legends belong to a world that is shown convulsed in anguish due to the depredations of the paleface in the essays and stories of the Stories. The paleface operates without humanity: he does not respond to any attempt to rouse sympathy or moral sense. He is as heartless and stupid as Iktomi, and more disastrous than Iya. Zitkala-Sa writes visions of hope into her stories, and her brave, fighting spirit stands tall and strong from her work.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-24 00:00:00 Dave Switkowski This is a small book. My copy is 89 pages, but is, to me, a very important book. Because it tells the true words of the author's life. In very simple and elegant words, she lets us in on how it felt to be not an Indian and not a white. How she lost her simple but very happy ways, to learn to read and write in a white school. I think her the most brave, to leave her Mother at such a young age and go off with people she didn't know. It was her choice to go, but one she regretted after she left. It's about her loosing her connection to her people. It's about her striving forward and going on to college and having her own life. My over all impression is that she was very happy living the traditional way of her people when she was young, but after leaving there, she seems always sad. I understand that emotion the way she says it. Not feeling like you belong anywhere. Zitkala-Sa's explanation of getting her hair cut off was heart breaking and an eye opening look at the way the whites took all of her humanity from her. "I cried out, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit. Since the day I was taken from my mother I had suffered extreme indignities. People had stared at me. I had been tossed about in the air like a wooden puppet. And now my long hair was shingled like a coward's! In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me. Not a soul reasoned quietly with me, as my own mother used to do for now I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder." Her reference to being a "coward", she explains. "Our Mothers had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy. Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!" My first thought was, why didn't the whites learn the culture of these people before trying to "teach them". It wasn't like they couldn't find out. And I know in my heart, they didn't care to learn because taking their dignity away was the purpose all along. Thank you to Zitkala-Sa, for letting us in on her life. Your words have helped me understand what I did not before.