What is of discrimination did bama and zitkala-sa experience ? How did they respond to their respective situation .
Answers
Both the writers suffered indignities of racial discrimination from the people around when they were quite young. Both of them suffered them when they were too young to understand and react to humiliations inflicted upon them.
Zitkala being a Red-Indian was targeted at her school by her warden. Nobody at school tried to console and sympathized with her. Nor did any teacher pacify her. They rather treated her more brutally. They chased her and dragged her to cut her hair which she wore as a symbol of her cultural pride. She was maltreated at her school and by her teachers who were supposed to behave in a dignified manner.
Bama, a south Indian girl had to undergo the pain of being treated as an untouchable girl because of her caste. She saw how one of his elders from her community had to bow and carry an eatable for his boss in a particular way, not touching it, just holding it from a thread with great care; just because he was considered untouchable for being a member of a particular caste. She did not know why he was being laughed at until her brother, Anna explained to her. It infuriated her. So both the writers suffered the humiliation at an age, when they were too young to understand and react to it. Both of them reacted to it when both became writers after successfully defying and overcoming the racial limitations.