Zitkala-Sa's Autobiographical Writings: The Problems of a Canonical Search for Language and Identity

A recent edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature includes Zitkala-Sa's (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin 1876-1938) autobiographical writing, while commenting that it satisfies none of the conventional expectations of male autobiographies (typically narratives of triumphs of the will) or of female autobiographies (typically narratives of victories of love and domesticity) (II, 864). Having canonized Zitkala-Sa, a Native American (Sioux) woman writing in 1900, the editors of the Norton Anthology then seem to feel the need to place her narrative, generically. Yet why should we expect ZitkalaSa's writing to conform to models of autobiography? As a Native American writer forced to speak and write in the language of the oppressor, why should we expect her writing to legitimate the very institutions (the English language, writing, culture, and civilization) which have suppressed her? Zitkala-Sa's writing does not, indeed, legitimate these institutions. Zitkala-Sa's work violates traditional notions of on two levels: it does not put forth a model of triumph and integration, nor does it emphasize the importance of language in the overall process of self-authentication.1 Therefore it is only when we approach Zitkala-Sa's writing in terms of how it subverts traditional modes of autobiographical and linguistic self-authentication that we can come to see its full richness and complexity, and understand the unique problem of a canonical search for language and identity in Native American writing. According to Arnold Krupat, the term autobiography was coined by Southey in 1809, and first appeared in American book titles in 1832 (22).2 Autobiographies had been written for several hundred years prior to these dates, of course, but they have only recently been studied as a literary genre. Despite publication of Anna Robeson Burr's 1909 work The Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study, substantial discussion of the generic criteria of did not