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Story Summary: The Cutting of My Long Hair by ZITKALA – SA

The Cutting of My long Hair by ZITKALA – SA is a short story about racial discrimination. The story is based on true events happened with author at one point of time. The narrator recalls her difficult days in a boarding school somewhere in Europe. The narrator is a small girl with Native Indian roots, she looks different there and she doesn’t understand their language, English. She remembers that her first day there is quite a cold one…with snow all around the ground.


She is at a dining hall where she gets annoyed by constant murmur and clatter of shoes of students. Students’ activities in the boarding school are guided by bell ringing. The narrator feels uncomfortable with all this system…as she mixes up when to sit and when to eat and when to stand. Out of fear, she begins crying. She is not alone there. She sees at the opposite door a line of boys entering the dining hall and in that she sees three boys that belong to her race i.e. Native Indian. The boys too are feeling uncomfortable and out of place in this foreign land.

Among all this confusion, there is that elder lady, probably the warden; she is a pale faced woman with strange air. She has a fixed gaze on this new girl. Next day, late in the morning, her friend Judewin comes to her and says that the pale-faced woman was talking about shingling her long and heavy hair. To this, the narrator becomes upset, as she was told by her mother that short and shingled hair are meant for lost warriors and cowards. At this moment, she remembers her mother and the values taught by her. The narrator decides to give up some resistance before surrendering for the cutting of her hair.

As when people begin calling her name, she goes upstairs in a dark room and hides under a bed but to no avail. People come searching for her and drags her out and finally she has had her hair cut short. So, in this story, we see that there is colour discrimination, the narrator was brown being a Native Indian and the boarding school where she was enrolled was in Europe where mostly white people lived and ruled the land as per their protocols. Thus, she had no choice but to abide by their rules and regulations.

Loved this review, read the similar story: https://goo.gl/s7VrB1
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  1. AnonymousNovember 19, 2023 at 2:39 PM

    Monotheism and colonists mindset destroyed other cultures

    ReplyDelete

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