Conversations With Leslie Marmon Silko

Contains sixteen interviews that provide insight into the thinking and writing of twentieth-century Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko.

An exciting collection of new essays on the work of the outstanding American Indian woman writer.

Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremny that defeats the most virulent of afflictions—despair.

A highly original and poetic self-portrait from one of America's most acclaimed writers. Leslie Marmon Silko's new book, her first in ten years, combines memoir with family history and reflections on the creatures and beings that command her attention and inform her vision of the world, taking readers along on her daily walks through the arroyos and ledges of the Sonoran desert in Arizona. Silko weaves tales from her family's past into her observations, using the turquoise stones she finds on the walks to unite the strands of her stories, while the beauty and symbolism of the landscape around her, and of the snakes, birds, dogs, and other animals that share her life and form part of her family, figure prominently in her memories. Strongly influenced by Native American storytelling traditions, The Turquoise Ledge becomes a moving and deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world-of what these creatures and landscapes can communicate to us, and how they are all linked. The book is Silko's first extended work of nonfiction, and its ambitious scope, clear prose, and inventive structure are captivating. The Turquoise Ledge will delight loyal fans and new readers alike, and it marks the return of the unique voice and vision of a gifted storyteller.

Leslie Marmon Silko, a Laguna Pueblo Native American was raised in a culture with a strong oral tradition. She also grew up in a household where books were cherished and reading at the dinner table was not deemed rude, but instead was encouraged. In his examination of Silko's literature, the author explores the complex dynamic between the spoken story and the written word, revealing how it carries over from Silko's upbringing and plays out in her writings. Focusing on critical essays by and interviews with Silko, the author argues that Silko's storytelling is informed not so much by oral Laguna culture as by the Marmon family tradition in which writing was internalized long before her birth. In Silko's writings, this conflicted desire between the oral and the written evolves into a yearning for a paradoxical written orality that would conceivably function as a perfect, nonmediated language. The critical focus on orality in Native literature has kept the equally important tradition of Native writing from being honored. By offering close readings of stories from Storyteller and Ceremony, as well as passages from Almanac of the Dead and Gardens in the Dunes, the author shows how Silko weaves the oral and the written, the spirit and the flesh, into a new vision of Pueblo culture. As he asserts, Silko's written word, rather than obscuring or destroying her culture's oral tradition, serves instead to sharpen it.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Münster (Englisches Seminar), course: Contemporary American and Canadian Fiction, 23 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Oral storytelling is a tradition inherent to all cultures. By definition, its genre is determined by its original oral transmission; many of the world's greatest literary classics such as El Cid, La Chanson de Roland, Beowulf or the Odyssey were originally orally transmitted. In most cases the author is unknown and the story has undergone many modifications in the course of the telling processes; still they are today's primary testimonies for language, history, culture and people of the past. In this paper, a definition of oral storytelling will be provided along with an introduction in order to define the subject matter as well as the significance of putting oral storytelling into writing as Silko did in Ceremony. Leslie Marmon Silko was brought up in the Laguna Pueblo community in New Mexico, a Native American tribe where storytelling plays an important cultural role . For Silko, the process of writing her novel Ceremony was not only a way of staying sane - as she states herself - but also to identify with her Native American origins. In this novel, she points out the opposition between the Native stories about reciprocity with nature and Euro-American stories of dominion. This confrontation is a conflict of two paradigms reflecting the protagonist's, Tayo's, inner state of mind; he has to reconstruct stories to reestablish an agreement with both cultures - for himself. The main focus will therefore be on the forms and functions of storytelling in the novel itself. Hereby, crucial aspects revolving around the cultural differences between Native American and Euro-American culture, the clash of cultures and both sides' impact on the individual will be in the center of discussion. The conclusion summarizes the paper's

Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony: The Recovery of Tradition is a study of the embedded texts that function as the formal and thematic backbone of Leslie Marmon Silko's 1977 novel. Robert M. Nelson identifies the Keresan and Navajo ethnographic pretexts that Silko reappropriates and analyzes the many ways these texts relate to the surrounding prose narrative.

A Study Guide for Leslie Marmon Silko's "Love Poem", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Studentsfor all of your research needs.