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CBSE Class 12 English★ 4-10 marks · CBSE Class 12 English Core (Vistas) Chapter 8

Memories of Childhood (Zitkala-Sa & Bama)

Two autobiographical extracts. Zitkala-Sa — a Native American girl forced into a white missionary school where her long hair is CUT against her will. Bama — a Dalit girl in Tamil Nadu who discovers the truth about caste discrimination. Two childhoods. Two cultures. One shared experience: the moment a child discovers the world's CRUELTY. CBSE Class 12 English (Vistas) Chapter 6.

⏱ 14 min readMedium difficulty✓ Free · NCERT-aligned

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By the end of this chapter you'll be able to…

1Identify BOTH accounts: 'The Cutting of My Long Hair' by Zitkala-Sa and 'We Too Are Human Beings' by Bama
2Explain what happens in each account: the forced haircut at the Carlisle Indian School (Zitkala-Sa) and the sight of the village elder carrying food by the string (Bama)
3Analyse the connecting theme: childhood awakening to systemic oppression (colonial assimilation vs caste untouchability)
4Explain what hair-cutting meant to Zitkala-Sa's Lakota culture and why the Carlisle School cut it forcibly
5Explain Bama's awakening: what she sees, why she finds it funny at first, and what her brother Annan tells her

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Why this chapter matters

Memories of Childhood is unique in the CBSE Class 12 syllabus: TWO autobiographical accounts from different continents, cultures, and centuries, placed side by side. The connecting theme — childhood encounters with systems of colonial and caste oppression — generates long-answer questions about comparison, identity, and resistance. Both accounts are also increasingly relevant in 2026 as debates about indigenous rights, caste discrimination, and educational equity dominate public discourse.

Memories of Childhood — Zitkala-Sa & Bama

"The cutting of my long hair... I moaned for my mother. No one came."

1. About the Chapter

Two EXTRACTS. Two CONTINENTS. Two INDIGENOUS/OPPRESSED cultures. ONE SHARED EXPERIENCE: the MOMENT a child realises the world is CRUEL — and that the cruelty has a NAME (racism, caste).

PART I: 'The Cutting of My Long Hair' — Zitkala-Sa

About the Author

Zitkala-Sa (1876–1938): Native American (Yankton Sioux) writer, musician, activist
She was taken from her reservation and forced to attend a white missionary boarding school — designed to 'kill the Indian and save the man'

What Happened

Zitkala-Sa (called Gertrude by the whites) arrives at the Carlisle Indian School
She is ASHAMED of the 'tight' clothes the white women make her wear. 'I felt as if I were being dragged about like a wooden puppet.'
THE INCIDENT: The school authorities decide to CUT HER HAIR. For Native Americans: LONG HAIR is sacred — a symbol of identity, strength. SHORT HAIR = MOURNING or DEFEATED WARRIOR.
She KNOWS they're coming for her hair. She HIDES. Under a bed. In a dark room. But they FIND her. They drag her out. They tie her to a chair. They CUT HER HAIR.
'I moaned for my mother. No one came. In my anguish, I cried aloud, but no one heard me.'
Her IDENTITY is LITERALLY cut from her. Her culture, her dignity, her self — CUT.

Themes

Cultural Erasure: The 'school' was designed to DESTROY Native culture and 'assimilate' Native children into white society
Resistance and Defeat: She HID. She FOUGHT (kicking, scratching). She LOST. But she REMEMBERED. And she WROTE.

PART II: 'We Too Are Human Beings' — Bama

About the Author

Bama (Faustina Mary Fatima Rani, b. 1958): Tamil Dalit writer
Her autobiographical novel 'Karukku' is a landmark of Indian Dalit literature

What Happened

Bama, a young girl, is walking home from school. She sees an ELDER from her community carrying a packet of VADAI (snacks) by the STRING — NOT touching the packet. He is holding it out, away from his body.
Bama finds this HILARIOUS. 'A big man, carrying a tiny packet by its string like that!' She runs home, laughing.
Her ELDER BROTHER explains: The elder is NOT being funny. He is DALIT. He is carrying the packet by the string because he is NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH IT — his touch would 'pollute' the food. This is UNTOUCHABILITY.
Bama's reaction: SHOCK. ANGER. HUMILIATION. 'I had thought he was being funny. But it was not funny at all. It was the most degrading thing I had ever seen.'

Her Brother's Advice — and Her Response

Her brother tells her: the ONLY WAY to escape this humiliation is EDUCATION. 'Study well. Learn all you can. If you are educated, people will come to you of their own accord.'
Bama STUDIES. Becomes a WRITER. Uses her education — exactly as her brother advised — to FIGHT the caste system through her WORDS.

Themes

Caste and Untouchability: The everyday, 'ordinary' humiliation of being Dalit. The vadais. The string. The laughter that turns to rage.
Education as Liberation: Her brother's advice. Bama's life. Knowledge IS power — especially for the oppressed.

3. Common Themes — Both Extracts

1. The Moment of Awakening

Both Zitkala-Sa and Bama experience a MOMENT when they REALISE the world is not what they thought — that their identity (Native American, Dalit) marks them as INFERIOR in the eyes of the dominant culture. This moment is the CRUEL COMING OF AGE — childhood innocence SHATTERED by racism and caste.

2. Resistance Through Memory and Writing

Zitkala-Sa DID NOT FORGET. She WROTE. Bama WENT TO SCHOOL. She WROTE. Both turned their PAIN into TESTIMONY. Writing is their RESISTANCE.

3. The Body as Site of Oppression

Zitkala-Sa's HAIR. Bama's TOUCH (the vadais carried by string). Oppression is not just LAWS and POLICIES. It is INSCRIBED ON THE BODY — what can be touched, what can be cut, how one must carry food.

4. Conclusion

Two childhoods. One shared experience:

ZITKALA-SA: Her hair — her identity — CUT from her. 'I moaned for my mother. No one came.'
BAMA: A packet of vadais. A string. A laugh that became ANGER. 'It was not funny at all. It was the most degrading thing I had ever seen.'
BOTH WROTE: Their memories are WEAPONS. Their childhood pain became literature — and literature is a form of JUSTICE.

'Memories of Childhood' — two girls. Two cultures. Two moments of awakening. One message: the oppressed REMEMBER. And they WRITE. And their words outlast their oppressors.

Key formulas & results

Everything you need to memorise, in one card. Screenshot this for revision.

Author 1: Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa (1876–1938): Native American writer, musician, and activist of the Lakota Sioux people (born on the Yankton Sioux reservation, South Dakota). Her English name was Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. 'The Cutting of My Long Hair' is from 'American Indian Stories' (1921) — a collection of autobiographical and fictional accounts of Native American experience. She was one of the first Native American women to write and publish outside the reservation, and she campaigned for Native American rights throughout her life.

MCQs ask: her tribal identity (Lakota Sioux / Yankton Sioux), the source text ('American Indian Stories', 1921), her English name (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), and that she is NATIVE AMERICAN (NOT African American, NOT Indian).

Author 2: Bama

Bama (born 1958): Tamil Dalit feminist writer from Tamil Nadu, India. Her real name is Bama Faustina Soosairaj (she is also a Christian). 'We Too Are Human Beings' is from her autobiography 'Karukku' (1992, translated from Tamil into English by Lakshmi Holmstrom). 'Karukku' means 'double-edged' (like a palmyra leaf). She is the first Dalit Tamil woman to publish an autobiography. She also writes fiction and children's books.

MCQs ask: the source autobiography ('Karukku', 1992), what 'Karukku' means (double-edged/palmyra leaf), that she is TAMIL DALIT, and that she is CHRISTIAN. Her brother's name is Annan (means 'elder brother' in Tamil — it is a common term, not necessarily a proper name).

Zitkala-Sa: The Carlisle Indian School

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School (Pennsylvania, USA) was a US government boarding school that forcibly educated Native American children with the explicit aim of ASSIMILATION: 'kill the Indian in him, and save the man' (the school's motto, attributed to founder Richard Henry Pratt). Children were removed from their families, given English names, forbidden to speak their languages, and forced to wear Western clothes and cut their hair. Zitkala-Sa describes being taken to Carlisle and having her long hair cut despite her desperate resistance.

The Carlisle School's motto is a reliable MCQ question: 'Kill the Indian in him, save the man.' The school is described as the institution of FORCED ASSIMILATION. Not all CBSE extracts will name the school — students should know it as the 'government boarding school' or 'Native American school.'

Zitkala-Sa: The Significance of Hair

In Lakota Sioux culture, CUTTING HAIR has specific meanings: shingled (short) hair is worn by MOURNERS (those who have lost someone) and by DEFEATED WARRIORS (taken prisoner). To cut a young woman's long hair is to mark her as defeated and grieving — as someone whose identity has been stripped. Zitkala-Sa knows this: 'Our mothers... had taught us that only unskilled warriors who were captured had their hair shingled by the enemy.' When the school cuts her hair, it is not merely a grooming decision — it is a deliberate act of cultural and identity destruction.

The cultural meaning of hair is the most-tested fact from Zitkala-Sa's account: why does she resist the haircut so fiercely? Because in her culture, cut hair = defeated warrior = prisoner. The school's act is deliberate symbolic subjugation. Quote: 'I lost my spirit.'

Bama: The Village Elder and the Landlord

Bama, as a child, walks home from school through the village and sees a spectacle: an elder of her community (an older man she respects) carrying a packet of food by its STRING — holding it at arm's length without touching the packet itself — and presenting it deferentially to an upper-caste landlord. To the child Bama, this is COMICAL: why would an elder carry food by the string like a performing clown? She tells her older brother Annan expecting to laugh together. ANNAN explains: it is because of UNTOUCHABILITY. If a Dalit person touches the food, it becomes 'polluted' — unusable for the upper-caste landlord. The elder carries it by the string so the food itself is not 'contaminated' by his touch.

The image of the elder carrying food by the string is the most memorable image in Bama's account and a certain MCQ question. The irony: Bama finds it funny at first — because she doesn't yet understand caste. The moment she understands, it stops being funny and becomes humiliating.

Annan's Advice — And the Chapter's Connecting Theme

When Annan explains the untouchability behind the food-carrying, Bama is shocked and angry: 'So because we are born into this community, we are treated as less than human?' Annan's advice: 'If you study and make progress, and gain a position of respect, then people will come and talk to you on their own.' EDUCATION AS THE PATH TO DIGNITY is Annan's answer to caste discrimination. CONNECTING THEME WITH ZITKALA-SA: Both accounts show children who encounter systems of oppression — Zitkala-Sa's colonial assimilation, Bama's caste untouchability — through a SPECIFIC SCENE that suddenly makes the system visible. For both, the childhood experience becomes a lifelong commitment to resistance and writing.

Annan's advice — study hard, gain respect — is both a practical response AND a partial critique: it places the burden on the Dalit individual to 'earn' dignity rather than addressing the structural injustice. CBSE questions often ask: what does Annan advise Bama? The answer is EDUCATION / STUDY HARD TO EARN RESPECT.

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Common mistakes & fixes

These are the exact errors that cost students marks in board exams. Read them once, save yourself the trouble.

WATCH OUT

✗ Writing that Zitkala-Sa is Indian (Indian subcontinent) rather than Native American

✓ Zitkala-Sa is NATIVE AMERICAN — a member of the Lakota Sioux people, from the United States. She has NOTHING to do with India. The confusion arises because the word 'Indian' is used both for Native Americans (historically) and for people from India. In this chapter, Zitkala-Sa is an AMERICAN INDIGENOUS PERSON, while Bama is from INDIA (Tamil Nadu). Never conflate the two.

WATCH OUT

✗ Saying the two accounts are about the same type of oppression

✓ The accounts are about DIFFERENT TYPES of oppression that share a structural similarity. Zitkala-Sa faces COLONIAL ASSIMILATION — an external power (the US government and its school system) trying to destroy her culture and identity. Bama faces CASTE DISCRIMINATION — an internal social hierarchy that demeans her community within her own society. The EXPERIENCE is similar (a child encountering a system that says 'you are less'); the SOURCE is different.

WATCH OUT

✗ Saying 'Karukku' means 'memories' or 'childhood'

✓ 'Karukku' is a Tamil word meaning 'double-edged' — like a palmyra leaf or a serrated blade. It evokes something sharp, cutting, dual. It is an apt title for a memoir about the double-edged experience of being Dalit and Christian in Tamil Nadu. The title does NOT mean 'memories' or 'childhood' — those are aspects of the content, not the title's meaning.

WATCH OUT

✗ Writing that Bama's brother's name is 'Annan' as a proper name

✓ 'Annan' in Tamil simply means 'elder brother' — it is a form of address, not a proper name. Bama addresses and refers to her elder brother as 'Annan' because that is what one calls an elder brother in Tamil. His actual name is not given in the extract.

NCERT exercises (with solutions)

Every NCERT exercise from this chapter — what it covers and how many questions to expect.

Reading with Insight

Questions on: why Zitkala-Sa resists the haircut (cultural significance), what happens at the Carlisle School, what Bama sees with the elder and the food, what Annan explains, and the connecting theme between the two accounts

Questions

Practice problems

Try each one yourself before tapping "Show solution". Active recall > rereading.

Q1EASY· zitkala-hair-significance

Why does Zitkala-Sa resist having her hair cut so fiercely? What does the haircut mean in her culture?

▶ Show solution

In Lakota Sioux culture, CUTTING ONE'S HAIR has a specific and painful meaning: it is what happens to MOURNERS (people who have lost someone close) and to DEFEATED WARRIORS captured by the enemy. A young woman's long hair is a symbol of her identity, dignity, and cultural belonging. To cut it is to mark her as 'defeated' — as a prisoner, as someone whose identity has been stripped. When the Carlisle Indian School forces Zitkala-Sa to cut her hair, it is not merely a hygiene or uniform rule — it is a DELIBERATE ACT OF CULTURAL DESTRUCTION, designed to erase her Native American identity and replace it with an assimilated, 'civilised' Western one. Zitkala-Sa hides under a bed, is found, and is tied to a chair for the haircut. She describes the aftermath: 'I lost my spirit.' The hair that was cut was not just hair; it was her sense of who she was.

Q2MEDIUM· bama-untouchability

What does Bama see on her way home from school? Why does she initially find it funny, and what does she learn from Annan?

▶ Show solution

WHAT BAMA SEES: Walking home from school through the village, Bama sees an elder of her community — an older man she respects — carrying a packet of food to an upper-caste landlord. The elder holds the packet by its STRING, at arm's length, without touching the packet itself, and presents it deferentially. INITIAL REACTION: To the child Bama, this is COMICAL: an elder walking awkwardly with a packet dangling from its string, like a clown. She hurries home to describe the funny scene to her elder brother Annan, expecting to laugh together. WHAT ANNAN EXPLAINS: Annan's explanation transforms the comic scene into a revelation of humiliation. He explains UNTOUCHABILITY: the elder carries the food by the string because if a Dalit (lower-caste) person's hand TOUCHES the food, the food becomes 'polluted' and unusable for the upper-caste landlord. The elder is not walking funny — he is performing an act of enforced deference, carrying the food in the only way allowed. WHAT BAMA LEARNS: The moment Annan explains, the funny scene becomes unbearable. 'Because we are born into this community, we are treated as less than human?' Annan's advice: STUDY HARD. If you gain education and a position of respect, people will come to talk to you on their own. Annan frames education as the path out of caste humiliation — the only tool available to Dalit people in a society that denies them dignity by birth.

Q3HARD· long-answer

Compare the experiences of Zitkala-Sa and Bama in 'Memories of Childhood'. What do the two accounts, taken together, say about oppression, identity, and resistance?

▶ Show solution

THE SURFACE SIMILARITIES: Zitkala-Sa and Bama were separated by over 80 years, by two continents, and by vastly different social systems — yet their accounts are placed together in this chapter because they share something essential: both are CHILDREN encountering, for the first time, a system that tells them they are lesser. THE SPECIFIC ENCOUNTERS: Zitkala-Sa is taken from her Lakota Sioux family to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, a US government boarding school whose explicit purpose is 'killing the Indian' — erasing Native American identity and replacing it with a white, Christian, English-speaking identity. The school cuts her hair: in her culture, this means she is a defeated warrior, a prisoner, a person stripped of dignity. She resists desperately, hides under a bed, is physically restrained. The outcome: 'I lost my spirit.' She has been forced, against her will and her culture, into symbolic submission. Bama encounters a different system but the same logic: CASTE UNTOUCHABILITY in Tamil Nadu tells her community that they are ritually impure — that even their touch pollutes the objects of upper-caste people. She sees an elder carrying food by a string to avoid touching it and thinks it is funny. Annan's explanation destroys the comedy: the elder is humiliating himself to deliver food to a landlord, because caste law says his touch is contaminating. Bama's awakening is not physical — no one touches her — but it is equally devastating: she realises that the social world she lives in is structured around her community's degradation. THE NATURE OF EACH OPPRESSION: Zitkala-Sa faces EXTERNAL COLONIALISM — oppression imposed by an outside power (the US government) on an indigenous people. The Carlisle School is the institution of erasure: it takes children from families, gives them English names, forbids their languages, and cuts their hair. The goal is ASSIMILATION — to produce people who are no longer Native. Bama faces INTERNAL SOCIAL HIERARCHY — oppression that comes not from outside but from within Indian society. Caste does not seek to erase Dalit identity; it seeks to keep it permanently subordinate. The elder does not need to be taken to a boarding school; he has been so thoroughly conditioned by caste hierarchy that he performs his own humiliation voluntarily. The oppression is internal, normalised, and nearly invisible — which is why the child Bama finds it funny before she understands it. WHAT WRITING DOES: Both Zitkala-Sa and Bama become WRITERS. They take the experience of oppression and turn it into testimony. 'American Indian Stories' (1921) and 'Karukku' (1992) are acts of resistance: they insist that the experience of the oppressed is WORTH RECORDING, worth reading, worth knowing. Writing breaks the silence that oppressive systems depend on. THE CHAPTER'S ARGUMENT: By placing these two accounts together, the CBSE textbook makes an argument: the experience of being told 'you are less' — whether by colonial government schools or by caste hierarchies — is a shared human experience across cultures and centuries. What changes is the mechanism; the logic (you are impure, you are inferior, you must be erased or subordinated) remains the same. And what both Zitkala-Sa and Bama demonstrate is that children who encounter this logic can grow up to resist it — not by accepting the terms offered but by writing their own terms, in their own voices, for their own communities.

5-minute revision

The whole chapter, distilled. Read this the night before the exam.

•PART I: Zitkala-Sa (1876–1938), Native American (Lakota Sioux), English name Gertrude Simmons Bonnin; 'American Indian Stories' (1921)
•Carlisle Indian School: US government boarding school; purpose = forced assimilation ('Kill the Indian, save the man'); children forbidden their languages, names, customs
•Hair-cutting significance: in Lakota culture, cut hair = mourner or defeated warrior/prisoner; Zitkala-Sa hides under a bed, is tied to a chair; 'I lost my spirit'
•PART II: Bama (born 1958), Tamil Dalit Christian writer; 'Karukku' (1992, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmstrom); 'Karukku' = double-edged (palmyra leaf)
•Bama sees an elder carrying food by its string (not touching it) to a landlord; finds it comical; elder brother Annan explains: untouchability — Dalit touch 'pollutes' food
•Annan's advice: STUDY HARD to earn education and respect; dignity must be earned through achievement because it is denied by birth
•Connecting theme: BOTH accounts = childhood awakening to systemic oppression; BOTH authors become writers as acts of resistance; colonial assimilation (Zitkala-Sa) vs caste untouchability (Bama)
•Both are AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL accounts — non-fiction, first-person, testimony-based writing

CBSE marks blueprint

Where the marks come from in this chapter — so you can plan your prep.

Typical chapter weightage: 4-10 marks

Question type	Marks each	Typical count	What it tests
Extract-based MCQ	4	1	Comprehension of either the haircut scene (Zitkala-Sa) or the food-carrier scene (Bama), vocabulary in context, or identification of the tone (anguish/shock/anger)
Short Answer	2	1	Why Zitkala-Sa resisted the haircut, what Bama sees and why it matters, Annan's advice, or source texts of each account
Long Answer	6	occasionally	Comparison of the two accounts, connecting theme of childhood oppression, what both authors do as adults (become writers), or caste vs colonial oppression

Prep strategy

Know BOTH authors clearly: Zitkala-Sa = NATIVE AMERICAN (Lakota Sioux, USA), 'American Indian Stories' (1921); Bama = TAMIL DALIT (India), 'Karukku' (1992); MCQs test these specific facts
The CULTURAL MEANING OF HAIR-CUTTING is the most-tested Zitkala-Sa fact: in Lakota culture, cut hair = defeated warrior = prisoner. Answer must name this explicitly — 'she didn't like it' is insufficient
For the comparison question: use a TWO-COLUMN structure — Type of oppression (colonial vs caste) → Specific scene → Childhood awakening → Adult response (writing as resistance) — this structure earns full marks consistently

Where this shows up in the real world

This chapter isn't just an exam topic — it lives in the world around you.

Ongoing Indigenous Rights and Dalit Rights Movements

Zitkala-Sa's account parallels ongoing campaigns for indigenous cultural rights globally — including the 2021 Canadian national reckoning with residential school deaths (residential schools = exactly the Carlisle model). Bama's account connects to contemporary India: caste-based discrimination in education and employment remains a documented issue; the Dalit students movement and debates about the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act (strengthened 2018) are direct continuations of what Annan explains to Bama.

Exam strategy

Battle-tested tips from teachers and toppers for this chapter.

Never confuse the two authors: if the question asks about 'the forced haircut', it is ZITKALA-SA; if it asks about 'the elder and the food', it is BAMA — both names and their specific scenes must be known cold
For the comparison question: NEVER write that both face 'the same oppression' — they face DIFFERENT oppressions (colonial vs caste) with a SIMILAR STRUCTURE (childhood awakening to being told 'you are less'); showing this nuance is what separates 5/6 from 4/6

Going beyond the textbook

For olympiad aspirants and curious learners — topics that build on this chapter.

Read the full 'Karukku' by Bama (translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom, 1992) — one of the most important Dalit autobiographies in Indian literature; it is simultaneously a memoir, a spiritual text, and a political statement about Dalit Christian experience in Tamil Nadu
Research Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2008–2015) and its final report on residential schools — it documents, on a national scale, exactly the kind of cultural destruction Zitkala-Sa describes; in 2021, discoveries of unmarked graves at Kamloops became global news

Where else this chapter is tested

CBSE board isn't the only one — other exams test this chapter too.

CBSE Class 12 Board (English Core)High

CUET (English)Medium

UPSC GS I (Indian Society / Social Justice)Medium

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Questions students ask

The real ones — pulled from the Q&A community and tutor sessions.

Annan's advice — 'study hard and gain respect' — is practically valuable: education is a genuine tool for social mobility, and Bama herself becomes a writer and academic. But the advice is also STRUCTURALLY LIMITED: it places the burden of change on the Dalit individual rather than on the caste system. It says 'earn dignity' rather than 'you already have dignity.' This is the tension in Annan's advice: it is both the most practical response available AND a concession that the system's terms must be accepted before they can be escaped. Exam answers that recognise both dimensions score higher.

Both accounts are FIRST-PERSON TESTIMONIES — the authors write about their own lived experiences, not imagined characters. This is significant because: (1) it establishes authority — these are not outside observers speculating about oppression, but people who lived it; (2) it makes the accounts politically meaningful — testimony by the oppressed is a form of RESISTANCE against systems that try to make their experience invisible; (3) it connects the personal (a specific child, a specific haircut, a specific elder carrying a packet) to the political (colonial assimilation, caste untouchability). The genre of autobiography as resistance is common to both Zitkala-Sa and Bama.

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