The Significance of the Title

On the surface the phrase 'Memories of Childhood' promises the sweet, nostalgic recollections most people associate with being young. The irony is deliberate. What these two women remember is not innocent play but the sharp moment when childhood innocence was broken by the discovery of prejudice. In the first account, a Native American girl is stripped of the things that made her herself when she is admitted to a boarding school run by settlers; the cutting of her long hair, done against her will, stands for the wider attempt to erase her culture and identity. In the second account, a young Tamil girl watches a member of her own so-called 'low' caste bow and shrink before an upper-caste landlord, carrying a small food packet in a comically careful way, and she slowly grasps that this humiliating posture is demanded by the cruel logic of untouchability. …