name and identity in zitkala sa's "blue star woman"

English 437GrueszResponse Paper, #1Names and Identity in "The Blue-Star Woman"

31August 1994

comfortable abandoning her Native American roots.

Identity is an issue throughout Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories. She finds herself at odds

with her mother's staunch distaste of the white man's world, and yet she does not feel entirely

Zitkala-Sa creates, denies, andl\\ ~

manipulates various stereotypes about her native and adopted cultures, and yet resists v.Pstereotyping herself. In other words, she recognizes her own peculiar position as a bridge

between the two cultures, and perhaps feels incapable of reducing that condition as easily as-------she did the Indian and white cultures.

I think this haunts Zitkala-Sa for a number of reasons. First, she so strongly associates

herself with her facility with words ("her daughter, who could read and write"), that she is

tempted to reduce, or at least retouch, her reality so that it fits more easily between the covers

of a book.- The family dynamics depicted in the books foreword seem even more complex than

those Zitkala-Sa outlines herself, primarily because the foreword appears to be aimed at{ yt\l.M C.ir--5 ., .. . (1..(V ~{

historical, rather than spiritual or thematic, accuracy. Zitkala-Sa's adventures as an Indian ~i1,0

1school girl no doubt are interesting, but t~ey_Iall short of conveying the crisis 01 identity sh~(,M

may have been feeling, primarily because such a crisis is impossible to translate into written ()-yt

f.1...,...~:Jwords. C'\ ):

value choice for the sake of her literature and decided to flatten her mother's character

somewhat. Flattening herself in a similar manner, were it even possible, might have left the

author wondering about the validity of at least her work and at most her identity as a Native

American emigre, of sorts.

Zitkala-Sa carries this issue past the palpably autobiographical portions of her

stories into the more fictionalized tales. I believe her concern over her identity's enigmatic

nature reappears in disguise in "The Widespread Enigma Concerning Blue-Star Woman." In

Sadly, her 9Fn name does not satisfy the government; she must also prove her heritage through

this story, a woman fails to receive what as promised her as a result of her unclear heritage,

----until she makes a deal with some shady men who toe the line between paleface and Indian. I

suspect that for Zitkala-Sa, as for the Blue-Star Woman, the question "'Who am I?' had

become the obsessing riddle of her life" (159). For Blue-Star Woman, the importance of name

and identity extends beyond the Washington bureaucracy's need to know. Her name is a sign of

pride, something she speaks with confidence and in defiance of tradition when asked (160).~

jj}; it-1)1the names of her family. She is an Indian not by her own merits, but rather by those of her}r yl.yv.t-- - - .~parents. Zitkala-Sa finds herself in a similar bind, perhaps, having been treated as an alien IN' r1Y"f~o cultures, in large part because her biological heritage was, in part, out of step with her " ~ yo; tjacademicl heritage. For Blue-Star, the birthright is land; for Zitkala-Sa, a writer, perhaps it !v\~(,,,l~is a space among the contemporary literati. This may be a somewhat reductive position, but to ~~~the similarities do seem to exist. 11V> . XI"

Consider the "nephews" who claim they will aid Blue-Star in her acquisition of land.

How different are they from the editors and teachers who walk the fence between advocate

and oppor~nist? Zitkala-Sa herself seemingly sensed their dual purpose, even as a rising star

winning oratorical contests. The nephew-agents might be read as stereotyped versions of the

same people Zitkala-Sa encountered as a rising star in the literary scene. ",-, U.--The issues of Zitkala-Sa and Blue-Star paraJlel each other throughout their

respective stories and lives, and Zitkala-Sa struggles between following the Indian tradition of

"a brand-new name" for each baby, and adopting the family name of Raymond Bonnin.

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11almost want to say epistemological, or something, here. I feel ZitkaJa-Sa was asked toprove her identity in a similar way to Blue-Star, but the exact nature of the analogy is hard forme to pin down. It seems to me that many other writers published in Harper's or the Atlantic atthis time would have had some kind of peerage or precedent to point to that would have •helped them gain access to the pages of the magazine, much the same way Blue-Star needed ~ ~ \;v1heritage to get her promised land. \,.jr1;

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