Mastering English as Resistance to Colonization in Zitkala-Sa’s Autobiographical Writing
Mastering English as Resistance to Colonization in Zitkala-Sa’s Autobiographical Writing

Summary/Abstract: The three autobiographical essays that open Zitkala-Ša’s American Indian Stories present the Yankton Sioux narrator’s experiences in early life, focusing on major issues that have shaped her journey to adulthood, among which the most prominent is her relationship to the English language. The present study demonstrates that the American Indian subject traces an intricate process of language acquisition from the first reactions to the new idiom to the tedious learning and mastering it. Even if the imposition of English was supposed to suppress her native identity, it actually enables her to resist colonization and express herself in terms that can be understood by the mainstream public. In “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” the writer portrays the original cultural context in which the child got accustomed to specific practices and teachings in her mother tongue while in “The School Days of an Indian Girl” she deals with the boarding school education away from home and the important role English plays in the drastic shift from the native environment to the dominant culture. The narrator’s tribulations as a young woman in charge of guiding children’s minds are analyzed in “An Indian Teacher among Indians”.

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