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day 197 of drawing every UTDR character: Red Bird

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[REVIEW] American Indian Stories by Zitkála-Šá

4/5 stars (★★★★)

"The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by."

June is Indigenous History Month so I wanted to read at least one book written by a female Indigenous author. I initially read the first parts of American Indian Stories for one of my undergrad Indigenous Literatures classes. I think I got up to “An Indian Teacher Among Indians” before I had to call it quits and read my actual assigned readings, but even when I put it down back then I knew I would return to Zitkála-Šá. Her writing was electrifying. She deceives you with its nonthreatening simplicity and straightforwardness. You read her stories or poems quite easily, with robotic intensity yet little thought, but, once you finish, you look back and feel the weight of all the little details and implications you missed, so it’s a feeling similar to having the rug completely swept up from under you. Layli Long Soldier encapsulated this feeling in her introduction: “At times while reading I have to swallow, stop, and close the book. I must let her work rest, let my body rest, and enter again slowly . . . [H]er writing often stirs in me an unexplainable vulnerability and empathy.”

AIS is a small book; my copy is under 150 pages, but it took me quite a while to get through it. Mostly because I was reading three other books alongside it (due to my ravenous, selfish greed), but also because I knew I wasn’t reading historical fiction. AIS, though presented as fiction, is semi-autobiographical, and to learn of another’s life is always heavy. Using matter-of-fact and resigned language, Zitkála-Šá tells about how she lost her childhood and paid for it all her life; how her simple but happy ways were unknowingly sacrificed to learn how to read and write in a white missionary school run by Quakers. A permanent atmosphere of loss -- of constantly asking, “Why, why why?” and receiving only indifferent silence -- pervades this little book, making the stories feel remote and distant, like you’re inside her mind, but also totally and psychologically dissociated from any kind of tangible feeling. Many readers find this approach dull, disorganized, and frustratingly lacking in making up a coherent story, but I was content to take what Zitkála-Šá was giving me.

A particularly striking scene was when she was detailing the train ride to the school, and how, when they disembarked, white people at the station would gawk at them unflinchingly. In my undergrad class, I brought up this idea of the Othered brown body as spectacle and entertainment: Zitkála-Šá mentions seeing a white woman and her baby at the station; the child is shamelessly looking at her as if observing a zoo animal. I understand this feeling of alienation all too well, of being stared at yet not even considered human enough to return their gaze or match them in observational tact. You not only see them seeing you, but you also see their simultaneous cruelty and perverse wonder; in their eyes, you are a wild animal, and in yours, they are also a type of ferocious beast, but only one of you is in the actual cage.

Zitkála-Šá masterfully captured the intense confused isolation and loneliness that comes with being racially Othered. I myself am not Indigenous nor do I claim to know what she must’ve gone through, but her description of being that child on the train being stared at mercilessly reminded me of when I’d first immigrated to Canada and started elementary school with a dominantly white student body. I was the only Filipino in the class and, no matter what I did, I’d always have people’s attention on me. (Even worse, I’d committed the sin of being an unattractive, awkward, and fatally shy brown girl). It was far too much surveillance and judgement placed onto a seven-year-old; the clammy, uncomfortable feeling that settled itself on my skin those days never really left me, even when people started to look away and move on with their lives, finally bored with me and tossing me aside like detritus. It isn’t dramatic or sensational, but you internalize it anyway, and I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to put that pain down so you can start to move on too.

Another harrowing scene was when, upon arrival at the missionary school, one of the adult staff picked up Zitkála-Šá and bounced her up and down in the air. White people think this gesture is affectionate and normal, but to her it was a violation. One of the biggest culture shocks for me when I immigrated was how often white people wanted to touch me; even now, they feel entitled to lay their hands on me, and it’s just another reminder of how you’re an object by default to them. AIS really conveyed the utter horror of being manhandled, touched, and tossed around seemingly without reason by strangers -- worse, strangers who are your colonizers. Zitkála-Šá’s bodily autonomy and personal space are consistently disrespected; she’s beyond distressed and disturbed, but she can’t even understand why the things that are happening to her are happening to her. This pulsating feeling of rising befuddled, clammy dread reaches its peak when she describes what it was like getting her hair cut. She doesn’t dwell too long on the memory and instead adopts a cold, disjointed narrative style, but it haunts you nevertheless with how succinct, clinical, and matter-of-fact it is. Grief, grief, grief.

I’ve read a handful of memoirs and novels about residential schools (mostly from Canadian Indigenous writers), but what struck me the most about Zitkála-Šá’s testimony was its fragmented structure. She vaguely illustrates and hints at many unsettling things without looking them directly in the eye, like the rigorous disciplinary punishments the Indigenous students unjustly endured at the hands of the school staff, or the unforgiving daily schedule everyone had to adhere to religiously -- otherwise basic necessities like food, water, and even the warmth of safe shelter could be withheld. Zitkála-Šá isn’t graphic, but her subtlety is what really cuts.

Still, I was taken aback that she didn’t dwell too much on the specifics of her schoolgirl days. I had expected a far more comprehensive, long narrative about all the pain she suffered, but interestingly she severs her story’s chronology right in its bud and deliberately excises her later years at the school. Instead, after a few displaced and disorienting chapters, we see her as a young new teacher hoping to recruit fellow Indians to the schools. The rest of the book, along with a few vignettes of childhood memories and stories, is composed of small miniature essays/articles, political think pieces, and poetry.

The first section detailing her life with her mother and community prior to attending the residential school was the most striking. Her recollections end abruptly in the middle of the book and are quickly subsumed into her nonfiction and poetry, which were, admittedly, more opaque and difficult to grasp. The poems included in AIS aren’t my style, but I still appreciate the craftsmanship and skill they demonstrated. I wished Zitkála-Šá would’ve written more on her schoolgirl days, -- I love coming-of-age and loss-of-innocence stories -- but I know that’s asking for too much. Besides, no amount of bonus chapters would probably have achieved what that final image of a lone telegraph pole stuck in the ground pointing to an empty sky did for me. It’s been years since I first read it, but its tragic poignancy hasn’t left me.

To conclude, my copy of this book was the Modern Library Torchbearers edition. I had already gotten some context on Zitkála-Šá and her life, writing, and history from my undergrad class, but even when I read the book I felt dissatisfied with how uninvolved this edition was in providing background information. I wish Modern Library had put in more biographical and supplementary notes on her and the book. From what I’ve seen of the reviews, many readers were totally lost on the historical context and knew next to nothing about the residential school system in America, so an annotated edition would definitely get readers to appreciate Zitkála-Šá and AIS more.

"The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by."

—Zitkala-Ša, "The School Days of an Indian Girl" from American Indian Stories (1921)

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Voting ended onJun 9

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