CBSE Class 12 English Chapter 6 PDF Notes on Memories of Childhood | 2026-27

Class 12 English Chapter 6 Notes on “Memories of Childhood” cover both accounts in this chapter — Zitkala-Sa’s “The Cutting of My Long Hair” and Bama’s “We Too are Human Beings.” You get a full summary, character analysis, a glossary of tricky words, MCQs, PYQ-style questions, and answers to the textbook’s own Reading with Insight section, all in one place.

This chapter often confuses students because it isn’t one story — it’s two separate autobiographical accounts, written decades apart, in different countries, joined only by their shared theme. Once you see how the two connect, the chapter becomes one of the easier ones to score full marks in.

Quick jump: Chapter Overview · Summary · Character Analysis · Themes · Glossary · Reading with Insight Answers · MCQs · Quick Revision · PYQ-Style Questions · FAQs

Chapter Overview

“Memories of Childhood” is Chapter 6 of the Vistas supplementary reader for CBSE Class 12 English. It brings together two separate autobiographical extracts under one title, because both writers look back at a childhood memory that revealed the unfairness of the world around them.

The first extract, “The Cutting of My Long Hair,” is written by Zitkala-Sa, born Gertrude Simmons Bonnin in 1876. She was a Native American woman who later became a writer and activist, publishing articles that criticised the Carlisle Indian School and the way it treated Native children. The extract is taken from her memoir and describes her first day at a residential school built for white American ideas of “civilising” Indigenous children.

The second extract, “We Too are Human Beings,” comes from Bama’s autobiography Karukku, published in 1992. Bama is the pen name of a Tamil Dalit woman raised in a Roman Catholic family in rural Tamil Nadu. The word Karukku means the serrated edges of palmyra leaves, and it doubles as a pun on the Tamil word for “freshness” — a title that hints at both pain and renewal.

Placing these two accounts side by side is a deliberate editorial choice by the NCERT panel. One writer faces racial and cultural erasure in North America in the 1880s; the other faces caste-based untouchability in South India roughly a century later. Different geography, different century, same underlying pattern: a child notices injustice long before she has the words for it.

Get free Class 12 English Chapter 6 PDF Notes on Memories of Childhood

Full Summary

Part I: The Cutting of My Long Hair — Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa’s account opens on her first morning at the boarding school, in bitter cold weather, with a loud bell calling the students to breakfast. The unfamiliar noise, the strange clothing, and the crowd of unfamiliar faces overwhelm her immediately — she describes feeling as though her spirit was tied down, unable to move freely.

At breakfast she is confronted with a routine she has no way of understanding. A first bell means the pupils are meant to pull out their chairs; she sits down at once, only to realise everyone else is still standing. A second bell means everyone sits together; she is caught mid-rise and has to scramble back down, embarrassed. A third bell finally signals that eating can begin. Watched by a stern-looking staff member the whole time, she ends the meal in tears — not from hunger, but from the sheer weight of doing everything wrong in front of strangers.

Worse news follows later that morning. Her friend Judewin overhears that the staff plan to cut the girls’ long hair. In their shared culture, this is no small matter: only unskilled warriors who had been captured by an enemy had their hair shingled, and short hair was otherwise worn only by people in mourning. To Zitkala-Sa, losing her hair means losing her dignity, not just her length.

She refuses to accept this quietly. When Judewin argues that resistance is pointless because the school authorities are too powerful, Zitkala-Sa disagrees and decides to hide. She slips away unnoticed, creeps upstairs, and crawls under a bed in an empty room, holding her breath as she listens to her name being called through the halls.

She is eventually found, dragged out despite her struggle, carried downstairs, and tied to a chair. The moment the scissors touch her braid, something in her gives way — not just her hair, but her resistance. She describes herself afterward as feeling like one of many animals driven by a herder, stripped of any individual identity. It’s one of the most quoted lines from the chapter for a reason: it captures, in a single image, the entire purpose of institutions built to erase a culture rather than educate a child.

Part II: We Too are Human Beings

Bama’s account begins gently, almost playfully. She was in the third grade, and though she had not yet heard adults openly discuss untouchability, she had already felt its effects without understanding what they meant. Her walk home from school, which should take ten minutes, regularly stretches to thirty or sixty because she stops to watch every small spectacle along the way — a performing monkey, a snake charmer, a cyclist who hadn’t gotten off his bike in three days for a stunt, street plays, coffee-stall waiters pouring tea between tumblers, and the seasonal fruit stalls.

One day, distracted as usual, she notices an elder from her own community carrying a small food packet in an unusual way — holding it out by its string, without letting it touch his palm. She finds this funny, almost theatrical, and assumes the wrapping might come loose. She watches him bow low and hand the packet to a landlord, who then opens it and eats without a second thought.

She goes home and tells her older brother the story as a joke. He doesn’t laugh. He explains, plainly, that the man had to carry the packet that way because their community is treated as untouchable — if he had let his skin touch the parcel, the upper-caste landlord would have considered it “polluted.” The vadais inside were already double-wrapped, first in a banana leaf and then in paper, and it still wasn’t considered clean enough.

The explanation changes everything for Bama. What had looked like a funny mannerism is revealed as a daily act of enforced humiliation. She feels a surge of anger — not embarrassment, but rage — and wonders aloud why people who have simply “scraped four coins together” believe they’ve earned the right to treat others as less than human.

Her brother, who is studying at a university, shares a second incident: while walking home along an irrigation tank, a stranger stopped him and asked not just his name but which street he lived on — a question designed purely to identify his caste. Rather than let this defeat him, her brother turns it into a lesson: he tells Bama that since they are denied dignity by birth, the only way to reclaim it is through education. If they excel, people will seek them out on their own.

Bama takes this to heart with visible intensity — she studies “in a frenzy almost,” in her own words, and eventually stands first in her class. That academic success brings her something she didn’t have before: peers who choose to be around her, not out of pity, but respect.

Character Analysis

Zitkala-Sa’s account is written from inside the moment of loss — the chapter ends on defeat, not triumph, which is precisely what makes it powerful. Bama’s account, by contrast, is written with the benefit of an adult’s hindsight; even the humour in the opening paragraphs is a deliberate contrast to the anger that follows. Reading them back to back shows two different timelines of resistance: one immediate and physical, one slower and intellectual.

Themes

Discrimination faced by marginalised communities. Both accounts describe children who are treated as less than fully human — Zitkala-Sa is compared to “an animal driven by a herder,” and Bama’s community is treated as a source of “pollution.” The chapter asks readers to notice how casually cruelty can be normalised into a “routine.”

The early awakening of a resisting spirit. Neither girl is taught to rebel — both arrive at resistance on their own, simply because the unfairness is impossible to ignore once it is seen clearly. This is the chapter’s central argument: injustice does not escape the notice of children, even when adults assume it does.

Education and self-respect as instruments of change. Bama’s story in particular frames literacy and academic success not as a personal ambition but as a form of resistance — a way to force respect that birth alone had denied her.

Loss of identity versus reclaiming of dignity. Zitkala-Sa’s hair-cutting scene is about forced loss; Bama’s study-hard resolution is about active reclaiming. Together, the two stories show both directions injustice can push a person — toward despair, and toward determination.

Glossary of Difficult Words

• Shingled (hair): cut very short, in a style; in Zitkala-Sa’s culture, associated with mourning or captured warriors
• Bedlam: a scene of uproar and confusion
• Paleface: an old term (used here from the narrator’s point of view) for a white person
• Moccasins: soft leather shoes traditionally worn by Native Americans
• Untouchability: the caste-based practice of treating certain communities as “polluting” if touched
• Vadai / bhajji: South Indian fried snacks made from lentils or banana, referenced in Bama’s account
• Annan: Tamil word for “elder brother,” used by Bama for her brother throughout the extract
• Narikkuravan: a member of a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer community traditionally seen at Tamil bazaars
• Threshing floor: the open ground where grain is separated from straw, referenced in the village scene
• Indignities: treatment that causes a person to feel a loss of self-respect

Reading with Insight — Answers

Q1. The two accounts are set in two distant cultures. What is the common theme found in both? Both accounts describe children from marginalised communities who face early, direct experiences of discrimination — Zitkala-Sa because of her Native American identity, Bama because of her caste. Despite the distance in geography and time, both stories show how unfair treatment shapes a child’s understanding of the world and, eventually, how they choose to respond to it.

Q2. Do you agree that injustice cannot escape being noticed even by children? Yes. Both writers describe becoming aware of injustice long before anyone explained it to them in words. Zitkala-Sa senses something is deeply wrong the moment her hair is threatened, even without being told why it matters culturally. Bama initially finds the packet-carrying incident funny, but the discomfort she feels — enough to remember and retell it — shows she had already registered that something was off, even before her brother named it.

Q3. Bama is a victim of the caste system. What discrimination does Zitkala-Sa’s experience depict, and what are their responses? Zitkala-Sa’s experience depicts racial and cultural discrimination — the forced erasure of Native American identity through appearance, language, and daily ritual at a residential school. Her response is physical resistance in the moment (hiding, struggling) followed, later in life, by public activism through writing. Bama’s response is different in shape: she channels her anger into disciplined effort, using education as the tool to earn the respect that caste denied her by birth.

MCQs for Practice

1. What is the name of the school Zitkala-Sa attends? a) Vistas School b) Carlisle Indian School c) Karukku School d) Dakota Residential School
2. According to Zitkala-Sa’s culture, who traditionally wore shingled hair? a) Chiefs b) Unskilled captured warriors c) Teachers d) Newly married women
3. What is the title of Bama’s autobiography referenced in the chapter? a) We Too are Human Beings b) Karukku c) Sangati d) Kisumbukkaaran
4. Why does the elder in Bama’s village carry the food packet by its string? a) It is too hot to hold b) He is playing a game c) To avoid “polluting” it by touch, due to caste belief d) It was tied that way by the shop
5. What does Bama’s brother tell her is the way to overcome the community’s lack of dignity? a) Move to a city b) Protest publicly c) Study hard and gain education d) Change their surname

Quick Revision Box

• Chapter has two parts: Zitkala-Sa’s account (racial/cultural discrimination) + Bama’s account (caste discrimination)
• Zitkala-Sa’s turning point: forced hair-cutting after hiding and resisting
• Bama’s turning point: brother’s explanation of the packet-carrying incident
• Common theme: children notice injustice early, even without being taught to
• Zitkala-Sa’s response: resistance, later activism; Bama’s response: education, academic success
• Key line to remember: Zitkala-Sa felt like “one of many little animals driven by a herder”
• Key term: Karukku = palmyra leaves = pun on “freshness/embryo” in Tamil

PYQ-Style Questions

• In about 120–150 words, describe how Zitkala-Sa’s first day at school shaped her understanding of loss of identity. (5 marks)
• “Injustice, once seen, cannot be unseen.” Discuss this statement with reference to Bama’s account. (5 marks)
• Compare the responses of Zitkala-Sa and Bama to the discrimination they faced. Which response do you find more effective, and why? (6 marks, value-based)
• What role does Bama’s brother play in shaping her outlook on caste and education? (3 marks)

Featured Snippet Answer

Memories of Childhood, Chapter 6 of Class 12 English Vistas, combines two autobiographical accounts — Zitkala-Sa’s “The Cutting of My Long Hair” and Bama’s “We Too are Human Beings” — that both explore how children from marginalised communities experience discrimination early in life, and how that early experience shapes their later response, whether through resistance, as with Zitkala-Sa, or through education, as with Bama.

A Common Mistake to Avoid

Many students accidentally swap details between the two stories in exams — attributing Bama’s brother’s advice to Zitkala-Sa, or saying Zitkala-Sa faced caste discrimination instead of racial discrimination. A simple way to keep them straight: Zitkala-Sa’s story is about a faraway institution stripping away identity; Bama’s story is about her own neighbourhood revealing a hidden social rule. One is institutional, one is domestic — and that difference is usually what examiners are testing when they ask you to “compare” the two accounts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the theme of Memories of Childhood Class 12? The chapter explores how children from marginalised communities experience discrimination early in life — Zitkala-Sa faces the loss of her Native American identity at a boarding school, while Bama discovers caste-based untouchability in her own village. Both accounts show that injustice, once noticed in childhood, can become the reason a person later resists it.

Who are Zitkala-Sa and Bama? Zitkala-Sa, born Gertrude Simmons Bonnin in 1876, was a Native American writer who wrote against the mistreatment of Native children in American boarding schools. Bama is the pen name of a Tamil Dalit woman whose autobiography Karukku, published in 1992, describes her experience of caste discrimination in rural Tamil Nadu.

Why did Zitkala-Sa’s hair get cut? The school staff cut her hair to force her to conform to Euro-American appearance standards. In her own culture, long hair was a mark of dignity, and short or shingled hair was worn only by mourners or by warriors who had been captured, so the act felt like a deep personal humiliation, not a haircut.

What discrimination did Bama face as a child? Bama witnessed caste-based untouchability when she saw an elder from her community carry a food packet by its string, without touching it, so as not to “pollute” an upper-caste landlord. Her brother later explained that this humiliating gesture existed only because their community was treated as untouchable.

What lesson did Bama’s brother teach her? Bama’s brother, Annan, told her that their community was denied honour and dignity simply because of their birth, but that education could change how others treated them. He urged her to study hard so people would respect her on their own merit, and Bama went on to top her class.

To Sum Up

Memories of Childhood asks you to hold two very different childhoods in your head at once — one on a snowy American campus, one in a sunlit Tamil Nadu bazaar — and notice that both girls arrive at the same recognition: that they are, in Bama’s own words, human beings too, and deserving of dignity regardless of race or caste. For your Class 12 English Chapter 6 notes, remember the chapter less as two separate summaries to memorise and more as one argument told twice, from two different angles.

More Notes You Might Need

• Vistas Chapter 5 — On the Face of It, Class 12 Notes
• Vistas Chapter 7 — Should Wizard Hit Mommy?, Class 12 Notes
• Class 12 English Vistas — Full Chapter Notes Index

Author Bio

Written and reviewed by the Nextoper Editorial Team — CBSE English educators who prepare chapter-wise notes aligned with the current NCERT syllabus for Class 9–12 students.

Last updated: September 2026, for CBSE Session 2025-26, based on the NCERT 2026-27 reprint of Vistas.