Early Indigenous Literatures

Zitkala-Ša often situates food as a site of contestation

Where other moments include sanitized, bleached versions of eating full with bells designating the entire process, here we see a specific attention to one food item which is metaphoric for the resistance bubbling up in the girl. Importantly, her ability to carry out her rage is provided precisely because of the sterile setting; she is sent to the task as punishment and here notes that "I took the wooden tool that the paleface woman held out to me" (Bonnin 60). Like the school itself, she harnesses the tool directly from the white woman before utilizing it for her own means--that expression of "hot rage" lain upon the turnips.

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