Class 12 English · Original EZT practice
Memories of Childhood - Zitkala-Sa and Bama (Class 12 English, Vistas, Chapter 6)
Memories of Childhood is Chapter 6 of Class 12 Vistas (pp. 63-70), pairing 'autobiographical episodes from the lives of two women from marginalised communities'. In The Cutting of My Long Hair, Zitkala-Sa hides under a bed at the Carlisle Indian school rather than give up her braids: 'No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!' In We Too are Human Beings, from Bama's autobiography Karukku, a Tamil Dalit schoolgirl understands why an elder carries vadais 'by its string' - and answers with her books. (Note: this is original practice, not a textbook exercise key.)
6 original worked examples, 6 fresh self-check questions and 4 mixed questions, with explained answers. These are not copied textbook exercises, an official chapter index or a full answer key. No affiliation with NCERT is claimed.
Official sources for topic and edition context, checked 25 October 2026:
1. The episodes at a glance
Part I, the first day: 'The first day in the land of apples was a bitter-cold one' - stiff shoes, a stripped blanket, and 'this eating by formula' to the tapping of three bells. The warning: her friend Judewin overhears the plan to cut their hair; 'Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!' The rebellion: 'No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!' - she creeps upstairs and hides under a bed in a dim room with 'dark green curtains'. The cutting: dragged out and 'tied fast in a chair', she feels 'the cold blades of the scissors against my neck' and hears them 'gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.' The loneliness: 'In my anguish I moaned for my mother, but no one came to comfort me' - 'I was only one of many little animals driven by a herder.' Part II, the long way home: a ten-minute walk stretched to an hour - the performing monkey, the snakecharmer, 'the cyclist who had not got off his bike for three days'. The packet by its string: an elder of her street delivers vadai to the landlord 'holding out the packet by its string', 'without touching it' - and the little girl wants to shriek with laughter. Annan's explanation: 'everybody believed that they were upper caste and therefore must not touch us. If they did, they would be polluted.' Her brother is not amused. The anger: 'When I heard this, I didn't want to laugh any more' - 'But we too are human beings.' The street question: a landlord's man asks Annan 'on which street do you live?' - 'if he knew on which street we lived, he would know our caste too.' The answer: 'study with care, learn all you can. If you are always ahead in your lessons, people will come to you of their own accord' - 'And I studied hard, with all my breath and being, in a frenzy almost.' She stood first in class.
2. Key details and what they signal
The book's title: 'Karukku' - palmyra leaves whose serrated edges are 'like double-edged swords', with 'karu' meaning embryo or seed: the autobiography is both blade and new growth. The bells and the bedlam: 'an undercurrent of many voices murmuring an unknown tongue' - routine replaces explanation, and the child learns she is 'securely tied' before her hair is touched. The moccasins: 'my moccasins had been exchanged for shoes' - the squeaking shoes give her away on the stairs; clothing is the first cutting. The muzzled cattle on the threshing floor: 'The animals were muzzled so that they wouldn't help themselves to the straw' - the street's order of things, shown before it is named. The comedy that turns: the walking packet is hilarious until Annan names it - the moment Bama's childhood seeing becomes understanding.
3. Theme
Two cultures, one pattern: a Native American child at Carlisle and a Tamil Dalit child in her own street meet the same machinery - humiliation administered as everyday routine. Childhood injustice, noticed early: both episodes are remembered from a child's-eye view; the insult is felt before it is understood, and understood before it is answered. Two kinds of resistance: Zitkala-Sa fights openly and is overpowered; Bama converts anger into study - dignity won 'with all my breath and being'. Education as the way out: Annan's remedy - stand first, and 'people will come to you of their own accord and attach themselves to you.'
Choose, solve, check, then try a fresh question.
Before calculating, read the method prompt and name the condition that makes it useful. Write your own attempt. Open the steps only when you need them, and use the check to catch a wrong sign, unit or interpretation. Finish with the fresh question before reading its answer.
Survive the first day
Choose the method: Cold, then bells.
EZT practice question
What is 'the land of apples', and what makes Zitkala-Sa's first day there bitter?
Show the worked solution
- The place: the Carlisle Indian school - 'The first day in the land of apples was a bitter-cold one'.
- The stripping: 'my moccasins had been exchanged for shoes', a blanket taken, stiff clothes.
- The routine: 'this eating by formula' to the tapping of three bells, in 'an undercurrent of many voices murmuring an unknown tongue'.
Answer: The Carlisle Indian school - the cold, the bells, 'this eating by formula', and the plan to cut her hair.
Check: The bitter-cold day, the bells, the eating by formula.
Watch for this: Do not treat the discomforts as ordinary homesickness - each one removes a piece of who she is before the scissors ever appear.
Now try it yourself
Why does Zitkala-Sa remember the bells and the shoes in such detail?
Check your answer
Because routine and clothing were the school's first weapons - the small humiliations taught the lesson before the haircut enforced it.
The first day is the pattern; the cutting is only its sharpest hour.
Read the meaning of hair
Choose the method: Mourners, then cowards.
EZT practice question
What did short and shingled hair mean among Zitkala-Sa's people?
Show the worked solution
- The warning: her friend Judewin overhears the plan to cut their hair.
- The meaning: 'Among our people, short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!'
- The depth: only unskilled captured warriors had their hair shingled by the enemy.
Answer: 'Short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!' - shingling marked a captured warrior.
Check: Judewin's warning, mourners, cowards, the captured warriors.
Watch for this: Do not read the haircut as discipline or fashion - in her culture it announces grief or shame, which is why she chooses to struggle first.
Now try it yourself
Why does the chapter give us Judewin's information before the cutting?
Check your answer
So we watch the scissors with Zitkala-Sa's own eyes - we already know the act is not grooming but erasure.
Forewarned, the reader cannot call it a small thing.
Hide and be taken
Choose the method: Hiding, then tying.
EZT practice question
Where does Zitkala-Sa hide, and how is she taken?
Show the worked solution
- The rebellion: 'No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!' - she creeps upstairs.
- The hiding: under a bed in a dim room with 'dark green curtains'.
- The taking: dragged out, 'tied fast in a chair', she feels 'the cold blades of the scissors against my neck' and hears them 'gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.'
Answer: Under a bed in a dim room with 'dark green curtains' - dragged out, 'tied fast in a chair', her braid gnawed off.
Check: The dark green curtains, the chair, the cold blades, the lost spirit.
Watch for this: Do not let the squeaking shoes make it comic - 'my moccasins had been exchanged for shoes' is the reason she is found; the school's own clothing betrays her.
Now try it yourself
Why does the episode end on 'Then I lost my spirit' rather than on the cutting itself?
Check your answer
Because the braid is only the visible loss - the sentence names what the school was actually cutting.
The body resists; the sentence records what resistance cost.
Watch the packet go by
Choose the method: String, then pollution.
EZT practice question
Why does the elder carry the packet of vadais by its string?
Show the worked solution
- The sight: an elder of her street delivers vadai to the landlord 'holding out the packet by its string', 'without touching it'.
- The laughter: the little girl finds it so funny she wants to shriek.
- The explanation: Annan says 'they were upper caste and therefore must not touch us. If they did, they would be polluted.'
Answer: Because 'they were upper caste and therefore must not touch us. If they did, they would be polluted.' - Bama laughs until Annan explains.
Check: The string, the untouched packet, Annan's pollution explanation.
Watch for this: Do not leave the scene funny - the comedy is the lesson's door: 'When I heard this, I didn't want to laugh any more.'
Now try it yourself
Why does Bama give us the laughter before the explanation?
Check your answer
Because that is how a child meets injustice - seen first as absurdity, understood later as humiliation.
The turn from laughter to anger is the chapter's hinge.
Hear the street question
Choose the method: Question, then caste.
EZT practice question
Why does the landlord's man ask Annan which street he lives on?
Show the worked solution
- The question: a landlord's man asks Annan 'on which street do you live?'
- The reason: 'if he knew on which street we lived, he would know our caste too.'
- The insult: address itself is made to carry caste - a name the man need not ask for directly.
Answer: 'If he knew on which street we lived, he would know our caste too.'
Check: The street question, the caste it decodes.
Watch for this: Do not read the question as politeness - it is caste asking its own name, politely, in public.
Now try it yourself
Why does the chapter include this small exchange at all?
Check your answer
To show discrimination running through ordinary speech - no drama, no scene, just a question whose answer sorts a family.
The smallest dialogue carries the largest system.
Take Annan's advice
Choose the method: Study, then standing first.
EZT practice question
What is Annan's advice, and what does Bama do with it?
Show the worked solution
- The advice: 'study with care, learn all you can. If you are always ahead in your lessons, people will come to you of their own accord'.
- The work: 'And I studied hard, with all my breath and being, in a frenzy almost.'
- The result: she stood first in her class.
Answer: 'Study with care, learn all you can' - 'And I studied hard, with all my breath and being, in a frenzy almost.' and stood first in her class.
Check: The advice, the frenzy of study, the first rank.
Watch for this: Do not read the ending as a simple success story - the dignity is won against a current: 'people will come to you of their own accord and attach themselves to you.'
Now try it yourself
How does Bama's answer differ from Zitkala-Sa's, and what do both cost?
Check your answer
Zitkala-Sa fights openly and is overpowered in the moment; Bama converts anger into years of study - one pays with her spirit, the other with her breath and being.
Two resistances, one pattern - the pairing is the chapter's point.
Try a mixed set
Choose a method or explanation before opening each answer.
1. The land of apples?
Show answer and reason
The Carlisle Indian school - 'a bitter-cold one', bells, 'this eating by formula'.
Routine is the first stripping.
2. Short and shingled hair?
Show answer and reason
'Short hair was worn by mourners, and shingled hair by cowards!'
The haircut is erasure, not grooming.
3. The packet by its string?
Show answer and reason
'They were upper caste and therefore must not touch us... they would be polluted.'
The joke turns into the lesson.
4. Annan's advice and its result?
Show answer and reason
'Study with care, learn all you can' - she stood first in class.
Anger converted into study is the chapter's answer.
Try it yourself
Work these on paper before checking any notes. Answers are deliberately not shown here.
- In two sentences, explain what 'Karukku' means - the palmyra leaf and the pun on 'karu' - and why it fits Bama's autobiography.
- Contrast Zitkala-Sa's 'No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!' with Bama's 'I studied hard, with all my breath and being' - two kinds of resistance to the same machinery.
- Explain in your own words why the elder's packet carried 'by its string' is funny to the child and unbearable to the remembering adult.
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Questions about this practice page
- Who wrote Memories of Childhood?
- It pairs two writers: Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, born 1876) wrote The Cutting of My Long Hair, and We Too are Human Beings is by Bama, the pen-name of a Tamil Dalit writer, from her 1992 autobiography Karukku.
- What is Memories of Childhood about?
- Two remembered episodes of childhood discrimination: a Native American girl forcibly shorn at a boarding school, and a Tamil Dalit girl who discovers untouchability on her own street and answers it by standing first in class.
- What does Karukku mean?
- The textbook glosses it as 'Palmyra' leaves, whose serrated edges are 'like double-edged swords'; by a felicitous pun on 'karu' - embryo or seed - it also means 'freshness, newness'.
- How do the two girls respond to injustice differently?
- Zitkala-Sa rebels in the moment - 'No, I will not submit! I will struggle first!' - and is overpowered; Bama takes Annan's advice to 'study with care, learn all you can' and turns anger into coming first in class.
- Where is Memories of Childhood in the Class 12 book?
- Chapter 6 of Vistas, the Class 12 English supplementary reader (pp. 63-70), by Zitkala-Sa and Bama.