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‘The Cutting of My Long Hair’ and ‘We too are human beings’ are two autobiographical accounts of two women who belong to two distinct and distant cultures. The author of ‘The Cutting of My Long Hair’ Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, born in 1876 was an extraordinarily talented and educated Native American Woman. She struggled and triumphed in a time when severe prejudice prevailed towards Native American culture and women.
As a writer, she adopted the penname ‘Zitkala-Sa’ and in 1900 began publishing articles. Her works criticised dogma, and her life as a Native American woman was dedicated against the evils of oppression. In this account she tells us how helpless, desperate and pathetic she felt when her hair was shingled, which was considered not only against tradition but an act of cowardice also.
In the other account, ‘We too are human beings’ another woman “Bama”, the pen-name of a Tamil Dalit woman from a Roman Catholic family, tells us how she felt when she became aware of the anguish of being an untouchable, when she was studying in the third class. The commonality of theme found in both of these stories is the fight of two distinct but downtrodden woman who dared to fight against oppression and injustice. They dared to fight against the inhuman treatment which the mighty and the powerful people of society inflicted upon them.