In Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” and Zitkala-Ša’s “Impressions of an Indian Childhood”, the concept of “double consciousness” and how one’s identity is defined by the societal hierarchy of race. In Dunbar’s poem it displays the idea of how the African Americans would wear a mask in order to fit the framework of the stereotypes of their race to be able to function peacefully within the society dictated by the “higher” race. This idea of “double consciousness” is similarly found in Zitkala-Ša’s “Impressions of an Indian Childhood”. In the work there is a section in which the narrator leaves her mother and the Native American reservation with “paleface” missionaries to get an education she said “I felt suddenly weak, as if I might
