A groundbreaking Dakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to
assimilate into nineteenth-century white society and her mission to
preserve her culture--with an introduction by Layli Long Soldier,
winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein
Book Award for Whereas****
Bright and carefree, Zitkála-Sá grows up on the Yankton Sioux
reservation in South Dakota with her mother until Quaker missionaries
arrive, offering the reservation's children a free education. The catch:
They must leave their parents behind and travel to Indiana. Curious
about the world beyond the reservation, Zitkála-Sá begs her mother to
let her go--and her mother, aware of the advantages that an education
offers, reluctantly agrees.
But the missionary school is not the adventure that Zitkála-Sá expected:
The school is a strict one, her long hair is cut short, and only English
is spoken. She encounters racism and ridicule. Slowly, Zitkála-Sá adapts
to her environment--excelling at her studies, winning prizes for
essay-writing and oration. But the price of success is estrangement from
her cultural roots--and is it one she is willing to pay?
Combining Zitkála-Sá's childhood memories, her short stories, and her
poetry, American Indian Stories is the origin story of an activist in
the making, a remarkable woman whose extraordinary career deserves wider
recognition.
The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on
their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of
resistance.
