Presentation for class.

1. An Overview of My
Research on Leslie
Marmon Silko’s
Ceremony

2. Leslie Marmon Silko

3. Early Years
◦ Leslie Marmon Silko was born March 5,
1948 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
◦ She is mixed with Laguna Pueblo, white,
and Mexican ancestry.
◦ Silko grew up on a Laguna Pueblo
reservation.
◦ She graduated from the University of New
Mexico with honors in 1969.
◦ She went to law school for a short time
before abandoning that to pursue a
graduate degree in English.
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4. Writing
Career
◦ Silko drew inspiration for her writing from
Laguna stories that she heard while growing up.
◦ She combines Laguna culture and myths with
the contemporary struggles of Native
Americans.
◦ Her first publication, Laguna Woman (1974), was
a collection of short stories and poetry.
◦ From the early 1970s into the 2000s, Silko has
published many novels, essays, and short story
and poetry collections including Ceremony
(1977), Storyteller (1981), Almanac of the Dead
(1991), and The Turquoise Ledge: A memoir (2010)
just to name a few.
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5. Inspiration
and
Achievements
◦ Silko’s work focused primarily on the alienation
of Native Americans in contemporary white
society.
◦ She emphasizes the importance of Native
American community and tradition.
◦ She is considered to be a major contributor to
the Native American Renaissance that began in
the late 1960s.
◦ Silko has won many awards throughout her
career including the Pushcart Prize for Poetry,
the MacArthur “Genius” Award, and the New
Mexico Endowment for the Humanities “Living
Cultural Treasure” Award.
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6. The Making of
Ceremony

7. The
Beginning
◦ In 1973, when Silko was around 25 or 26 years old,
she was given a book contract.
◦ Her family had recently moved from her home in
New Mexico up to Alaska where there was very
little sunshine and almost continuous rain.
◦ Silko was effected by the lack of sunshine and
said that she began experiencing migraines and
nausea similar to Tayo in the novel.
◦ While in Alaska, Silko began working on what
she thought was going to be a funny short story
about Harley—a drunkard who always found his
way to booze.
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8. The Middle
◦ As she continued writing, the character Tayo entered
the story. She realized that this was not going to be a
funny short story after all.
◦ As a child, Silko always wondered why some of her
relatives came back from WWII and were okay while
others were not.
◦ The short story that she had at first began writing
became longer and longer until she realized that she
was writing a novel.
◦ Silko says that, just like Tayo, writing about Laguna
Pueblo and the myths and traditions were healing to
her as she struggled to adapt to the new climate in
Alaska.
◦ Silko describes writing Ceremony as a kind of
ceremony for herself because it helped to “save [her]
life.”
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9. “Gradually as I started working on the novel, I
noticed that I was starting to feel better… For
me, writing is a wonderful way to transcend
place and time…When I was writing about the
landscape around Laguna Pueblo … I would put
myself in the place where my characters were
and I was escaping that alien landscape.
-Leslie Marmon Silko
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10. The End
◦ Ceremony became a full length novel that
was published in 1977 by Penguin.
◦ It follows a young Laguna Pueblo man
named Tayo as he struggles to cope with
PTSD after coming home from WWII.
◦ After being unable to heal with the help of
white doctors, he turns to medicine men
and begins a ceremony.
◦ Through this process of connected back to
the myths and traditions of his people, he
is finally able to find healing and peace.
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11. Scholarship

12. Critical Race
Theory: An
Introduction
◦ This book was cowritten by Richard Delgado and Jean
Stefancic.
◦ The first chapters works to breakdown the basic tenets of
Critical Race Theory as well as the people who worked to
create the theory in the first place.
◦ Critical Race Theory “not only tries to understand our social
situation, but to change it; it sets out not only to ascertain
how society organizes itself along racial lines and
hierarchies, but to transform is for the better” (Delgado and
Stefancic 3).
◦ The authors emphasize a few key points of Critical Race
Theory:
◦ Racism is a normal part of our society.
◦ The idea that our society is colorblind is not only
incorrect, but it actively delegitimizes the experience
of people of color.
◦ Race is a societal construct that was put into place by
the people in power (white males).
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13. Listening for
Stories in All
the Right
Places:
Narrative and
Racial
Formation
Theory
◦ This article was written by Charles Lawrence III and it is a
reflection on Professor Laura Gomez’s presidential address.
◦ It begins by addressing racial formation theory which looks at
race as construction of society rather than something
biological.
◦ He stresses the importance of treating racism “as the focus
of…inquiry rather than as a background factor” (Lawrence 248).
◦ He discusses how people of color, like Prof. Gomez, have to play
a role so that they are taken seriously.
◦ “We alter our language, our clothes, our food to
accommodate, to camouflage ourselves in the company
of the Master, but we also wear our masks to resist—to
subvert oppressive forces, ideologies, and constructions”
(Lawrence 255)
◦ We are not a colorblind society and because of this race is a
crucial factor when attempting to understand a person.
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14. Language
and
Literature
from a
Pueblo
Indian
Perspective
◦ This piece was written by Leslie Marmon Silko.
◦ Like the title suggests, it explores the ways that
Pueblo people utilizes language and literature
and how that differs from the typical Western
experience.
◦ She speaks on how there is never just one story
and that a Pueblo persons identity is made up of
multiple stories-–their own, their ancestor’s, and
their tribe’s.
◦ Stories provide healing because they make
people feel that they are not alone. They find
comfort in the stories of others.
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15. How and
What to
Recollect:
Political and
Curative
Storytelling
in Silko’s
Ceremony
◦ This article was written by Jin Man Jeong.
◦ It focuses on Silko’s usage of nonlinear, circular
time in Ceremony and the socio-political
significance that has.
◦ The article explores how it is essential for Tayo to
remember his past in order to heal.
◦ He has to not only remember what happened
while he was at war, but also the Laguna Pueblo
traditions and stories that he was told to forget
by his Indian school teachers.
◦ Jeong argues that the cyclical nature of time in
the novel means that Tayo cannot abandon his
individual or historical past because it is a part of
who he is.
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16. Pulling
Silko’s
Threads
Through
Time: An
Exploration
of
Storytelling
◦ This article was written by Alanna Kathleen Brown.
◦ Brown focuses on the power of storytelling through
the lens of Silko’s novel, Ceremony.
◦ She breaks down how every part of Tayo’s story, even
those that seem random in the moment, are
necessary for us to see to full picture.
◦ Brown approaches Native American culture from an
outside perspective.
◦ ”Moreover, my culture has created a hierarchy
of relative importance for living beings and
value distinctions between living forms and
dead matter” (Brown 1).
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17. My Argument

18. What I
Would Like
to Explore
◦ Storytelling is essential not only in Native American
culture, but in sharing the experience of all people of
color.
◦ People of color “tell stories to ‘fight off illness and
death’—to oppose and talk back to white supremacy’s
stories; to recover, or foreground, stories of violence,
degradation, and exclusion that others cannot or will not
tell” (Lawrence 251).
◦ “These stories are always bringing us together… there is
this constant pulling together to resist the tendency to
run and hide or separate oneself” (Silko 81).
◦ “Perhaps most importantly, we learn that, through
stories, people thrive. Ceremony, in particular, shows us
how no one heals alone. It takes care from within and
without to greet the sunrise” (Brown 5).
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19. What I
Would Like
to Explore
Continued
◦ Native American stories “evolve out of a richly textured oral
tradition. Written words are merely the extension of that
tradition, not a reflection of a higher form of culture or
sophistication” (Brown 3). Therefore, I’m interested in looking
into the way Silko utilizes Native American storytelling
techniques in her novel.
◦ For example, she uses nonlinear time throughout the novel.
The past, present and future seem to blend together.
◦ “Native Americans view the present not as a mechanical
cycle of the past, but as a ‘forever becoming’, an
incessant, retroactive transformation and re-creation of
the past in a deferred way” (Jeong 2).
◦ Another example is that Tayo’s story only seems to be one of
many stories.
◦ “This perspective on narrative—of story within story, the
idea that one story is only the beginning of many stories,
and the sense that stories never truly end—represents an
important contribution of Native American culture to the
English language” (Silko 79).
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20. What I
Would Like
to Explore
Continued
◦ In utilizing these techniques, Silko seems to be
attempting to create a myth of her own.
◦ Through characters like Betonie, we can see that
Laguna myths are constantly evolving and changing.
◦ “But after the white people came, elements in
the world began to shift; and it became
necessary to create new ceremonies. I have
made changes in the rituals” (Silko, Ceremony
126)
◦ I believe that Silko is pointing out the dangers of
forced assimilation through Tayo’s experience at
Indian school and his experience during WWII.
◦ This distance created between himself and tradition
are what cause him to be unable to heal.
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21. What I
Would Like
to Explore
Continued
◦ The other veterans we see in the novel are examples of
those who have turned their back on tradition and envy
white men for what they have.
◦ “See these dumb Indians thought these good
times would last. They didn’t ever want to give up
the cold beer and the blond cunt… The war was
over, the uniform gone. All of a sudden that man at
the store waits on you last, makes you wait until all
the white people bought what they wanted” (Silko
42).
◦ This quote also lends itself to critical race theory as
it argues that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational”
(Delgado and Stefancic 7). The men think that their
done with racism only to return home and be place
back in the same position they were in before.
◦ They have fallen for the “witchery” and can never be
completely healed.
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22. What I
Would Like
to Explore
Continued
◦ Tayo is only able to find healing and peace once
he reconnects with his people.
◦ While Tayo is the main character, “he is not really
the main focus of the novel. He is merely the lens
we use to see the whole” (Brown 5).
◦ Native American stories “have little of what we
call ‘character development.’ Their purpose is to
explain a world, not an ego” (Brown 5). Therefore,
Silko is using Tayo as a means to explain the new
world in which Native Americans are oppressed
by whites.
◦ The lessons Tayo learns can be utilized by other
Native Americans.
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23. Working
Thesis
This essay will argue that Leslie
Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony,
functions as a new myth as Tayo’s
struggle to heal serves to expose
the damaging effects of forced
assimilation and the curative
power of community and
tradition.
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24. Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Leslie Marmon
Silko.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc., 1 Mar. 2019, www.britannica.com/
biography/Leslie-Marmon-Silko
Brown, Alanna Kathleen. “Pulling Silko’s Threads Through Time:
An Exploration of Storytelling.” American Indian
Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 171–179.
EBSCOhost, doi:10.2307/1185166.
Bruce, Heather E. “Hoop Dancing: Literature Circles and
Native American Storytelling.” The English Journal,
vol. 93, no. 1, 2003, pp. 54–59. JSTOR, www.jstor.org
/stable/3650571.
Delgado, Richard. “Introduction.” Critical Race Theory: An
Introduction, edited by Jean Stefancic, New York
University Press, 2017, pp. 1–8.
Jeong, Jin Man. "How and What to Recollect: Political and
Curative Storytelling in Silko’s Ceremony." Mosaic: an
interdisciplinary critical journal, vol. 49 no. 3, 2016, pp.
1-17. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/630341.
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25. Works Cited
Continued
Lawrence, Charles. “Listening for Stories in All the Right
Places: Narrative and Racial Formation
Theory.” Law & Society Review, vol. 46, no. 2, 2012,
pp. 247–258. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23252275.
Learner, Annenberg, director. In Search of Novel, Leslie
Marmon Silko. YouTube, YouTube, 26 Aug. 2013,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV1S7pWKr74.
Leeann Hunter , 1979, www.leeannhunter.com/gender/wp-
content/uploads/ 2012/11/SilkoLanguage
Literature.pdf.
“Leslie Marmon Silko.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leslie-marmon-
Silko.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Books, 1986.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. “Language and Literature from a
Pueblo Indian Perspective .”
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