Books By Zitkala-Sa - Author

Zitkála-Šá (1876-1938) was a Yankton Dakota writer, translator, musician, teacher, and activist. Born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Zitkála-Šá—also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin—was raised by her mother following their abandonment by her German American father. Zitkála-Šá grew up on the reservation, but was taken by missionaries at the age of eight to the White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute, a Quaker school in Wabash, Indiana. There, Zitkála-Šá was forced to suppress her heritage by cutting her hair and praying as a Quaker, but she also took advantage of the opportunity to learn reading and writing, as well as to play violin. She briefly returned to the reservation in 1887 before going back to Indiana to finish her education, after which she studied at Earlham College and played violin at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. After working from 1899 to 1901 as a music teacher at the notoriously abusive Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Zitkála-Šá began to