Published Paper Details:

Native Indian writers like Zitkala-?a have written a great deal about the bad experiences and cultural unrest that occurred in boarding schools under the guise of education and civilization. As she was trained in the customs of the white culture, she had a longing for her Dakota culture. She uses the innocent story of a child, steeped in the trickster tradition, to describe the range of these feelings, evoking from her readers an unanticipated empathy. The author provides context for the broken family dynamic that left her and her mother isolated, with a strained mother-daughter bond and a troubled past. Her schooling causes her to lose her cultural connections, and she becomes distant and disinterested in her family. Her short stories in the book illustrate her sense of identity loss, discontentment, and melancholy as a result of her displacement. This research paper will provide an in-depth analysis of the compelling themes of nostalgia, melancholy, and return to childhood found in Zitkala-?a's short story collection. That these Native Indian authors of America were subjected to the brutal realities of cultural assimilation and demolition during the height of the twentieth century, shall be a significant underlying theme of the paper.