Search results for "assimilationist"

Changing Scholarly Interpretations of Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša)

2019

The Yankton Sioux writer and activist Gertrude Bonnin (1876-1938), better known by her Lakota name, Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird), was perhaps the most prominent Native American woman of the early twentieth century. In her writings, she consistently overturned conventions of language and meaning to subvert and criticize the American discourse of civilization. Bonnin’s use of English as a tool of resistance has invited misrepresentations and misunderstandings. Criticism can be distilled into three interpretive frameworks: liminal, assimilationist and bicultural. Liminal scholarship focuses on Bonnin’s 1900 semi-autobiography for the Atlantic Monthly, which laments the author’s separation from her bi…