Gertrude Simmons Bonnin

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Gertrude Simmons Bonnin

Even before she spent "four strange summers" of her early teenage years hanging "in the heart of chaos," Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, or Zitkala-Sa, found her Native American world in 1884 at age eight compromised by her mother's tears and the hard, bitter line of her lips. Zitkala-Sa's mother's hatred of white Americans cast dark shadows over the happy days when Zitkala-Sa was clear in her vision of herself as a young Yankton Nakota girl. The biological fact that Zitkala-Sa's father was a white Indian agent, a man named Felker, who deserted Zitkala-Sa and her mother, and the historical turmoil of the cultural degeneration of the American Indians in the late nineteenth century combined to set the stage for chaos and problems of identity. Zitkala-Sa addresses the personal and historical impact of the transition of the American Indian into a white man's world in her American Indian Stories (1921), a collection of essays first published in Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly in 1900 and 1901, many of which are autobiographical. Although she wasted those "four strange summers" grieving that she "was neither a wild Indian or a tame one" (69), her book reveals that Zitkala-Sa chose not to just "hang in the heart of chaos." Zitkala-Sa chose to stand up and take action.

Zitkala-Sa confesses that she is slight, pretty, and has been taught not to intrude herself upon others. But her actions speak loudly of her courage to face the trials of the "civilizing machine" of the white educational system for American Indians and to challenge the United States government to correct its insensitive and unfair treatme...

... middle of paper ...

...p; 4 Dec. 1997. Voices from the Gaps:

Women Writers of Color. 21 Jan. 2002 http://voices.cla.umn. edu/authors/Gertrude

SimmonsBonnin.html.

Hoefel, Roseanne. "Zitkala-Sa: A Biography." Winter 1999. The Online Archive of

Nineteenth-Century U. S. Women's Writings. Ed. Glynis Carr. 16 Jan.

2002 http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gcarr/19cUSWW/ZS/rh.html.

Spack, Ruth. "Dis/engagement: Zitkala-^Sa's Letters to Carlos Montezuma, 1901-1902." MELUS

26:1 (Spring 2001): 172-204. Wilson Web. 21 Jan. 2002 http://vweb.hwwilsonweb.com/

cgi-bin/webc...%3C/A.GT.&SP.URL.P=I(FZZ7)J(0000072759)&.

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