Gabriela Tovar

00118188
Think Piece # C4
14-11-2018

Blue Star Woman and a Sense of Belonging

I think we all want to feel that we belong to something; that we are not all alone in this
world. This is what came to my mind after reading Zitkala-Sa’s story. The Blue Star Woman
could not just feel part of something, because her heritage was taken away from her when her
parents died. She had no place to belong to, not even her tribe. Her tribe not caring about her
can be seen many times in the story. First, she is dying of hunger. She lives in poverty and
manages to eat some bread and drink some coffee some days, but mostly she is starving. As
she was an orphan, she did not matter. She can’t prove where she came from, so she doesn’t
really belong there and doesn’t need any help. As she has no family in which the tribe can
recognize her, she is isolated from others. Most of them don’t even know she exists until she
takes away land from the other Indians. This is actually when they notice her, and they say
she did not even belong to their tribe, so why could she take land away from them.
Blue Star Woman is denied this sense of belonging because of the parentage and
ancestry she did not have. Most of us recognize ourselves as being part of a culture, being part
of a community. This is because it was transmitted to us from our parents and family mostly.
To be Native American, Ecuadorian, Quitenian or; this comes with a set of traditions,
memories, beliefs and attitudes towards life and others that each of us practice every day.
Also, it gives us a sense to who we are; something that Blue Star Woman was really
struggling with. Blue Star Woman did not have any of this. She could not know what the
traditions were, the memories told about her people, or any sign of how she came to this
Earth. Then what happens if we lack this part of us? What do we make about our need to be
with others if we don’t know in which way we can relate to them? This is why I can see the
struggle with Blue Star Woman in the story. She was denied to be part of something: to feel
safe and guarded by others. Of course some neighbor was generous to her from time to time,
but she did not really felt part of the Sioux.
The woman was just going through life, with some symptoms of depression, surviving
each day with little she had. That’s the reason why she did what she did with her nephews.
She was denied being a Sinoux; she could not know what was expected from her as someone
in the tribe, so she just did what she needed in order to live. What was morally correct for
people in the tribe it did not matter, as she was denied the privilege of belonging to them in
the first place.

Works Cited

Zitkala-Sa. “The Widespread Enigma Concerning Blue-Star Woman”. American Literature

Compendium, 4th ed. Ed. Scott Gibson. Quito: Universidad San Francisco de Quito,
2018, 258-263.

Word Count: 517