Zitkala Sa: The Evolution of a Writer

Abstract

Zitkala Sa had every right to feel nervous about her mission to become the literary counterpart of the oral storytellers of her tribe because she felt compelled to live up to the critical expectations of her white audience. She had already become the darling of a small literary coterie in Boston whose members were enthusiastic about the autobiographical sketches and short stories she had begun to place in Harper's and The Atlantic Monthly the year before. Ginn and Company had given her a contract for Old Indian Legends which would appear in the fall of 1901 and were anxiously awaiting material for a second book that would be, in their words, . .. a fine series of Indian legends, the greatest that the world has ever known. And in its April issue of 1900, Harper's Bazar had included her in a column entitled Persons Who Interest Us: