Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko

Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9781578063017

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


The Turquoise Ledge

The Turquoise Ledge

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2010-10-07

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1101464585

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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.


Ceremony

Ceremony

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2020-08-27

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0141992638

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'An exceptional novel ... a cause for celebration' Washington Post 'The most accomplished Native American writer of her generation' The New York Times Book Review Tayo, a young Second World War veteran of mixed ancestry, is coming home. But, returning to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, he finds himself scarred by his experiences as a prisoner of war, and further wounded by the rejection he finds among his own people. Only by rediscovering the traditions, stories and ceremonies of his ancestors can he start to heal, and find peace. 'Ceremony is the greatest novel in Native American literature. It is one of the greatest novels of any time and place' Sherman Alexie


Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-04-30

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1439128324

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Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit is a collection of twenty-two powerful and indispensable essays on Native American life, written by one of America's foremost literary voices. Bold and impassioned, sharp and defiant, Leslie Marmon Silko's essays evoke the spirit and voice of Native Americans. Whether she is exploring the vital importance literature and language play in Native American heritage, illuminating the inseparability of the land and the Native American people, enlivening the ways and wisdom of the old-time people, or exploding in outrage over the government's long-standing, racist treatment of Native Americans, Silko does so with eloquence and power, born from her profound devotion to all that is Native American. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit is written with the fire of necessity. Silko's call to be heard is unmistakable—there are stories to remember, injustices to redress, ways of life to preserve. It is a work of major importance, filled with indispensable truths—a work by an author with an original voice and a unique access to both worlds.


Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko

Author: Louise K. Barnett

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780826326751

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


Storyteller

Storyteller

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 2012-09-25

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0143121286

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Storyteller blends original short stories and poetry influenced by the traditional oral tales that Leslie Marmon Silko heard growing up on the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico with autobiographical passages, folktales, family memories, and photographs. As she mixes traditional and Western literary genres, Silko examines themes of memory, alienation, power, and identity; communicates Native American notions regarding time, nature, and spirituality; and explores how stories and storytelling shape people and communities. Storyteller illustrates how one can frame collective cultural identity in contemporary literary forms, as well as illuminates the importance of myth, oral tradition, and ritual in Silko's own work.


Almanac of the Dead

Almanac of the Dead

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1992-11-01

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 0140173196

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“To read this book is to hear the voices of the ancestors and spirits telling us where we came from, who we are, and where we must go.” —Maxine Hong Kingston From critically acclaimed author Leslie Marmon Silko, an epic novel about people caught between two cultures and two times: the modern-day Southwest, and the places of the old ones, the native peoples of the Americas In its extraordinary range of character and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on the grand scale, a brilliant, haunting, and tragic novel of ruin and resistance in the Americas. At the heart of this story is Seese, an enigmatic survivor of the fast-money, high-risk world of drug dealing—a world in which the needs of modern America exist in a dangerous balance with Native American traditions. Seese has been drawn back to the Southwest in search of her missing child. In Tuscon, she encounters Lecha, a well-known psychic who is hiding from the consequences of her celebrity. Lecha's larger duty is to transcribe the ancient, painfully preserved notebooks that contain the history of her own people—a Native American Almanac of the Dead. Through the violent lives of Lecha's extended familiy, a many-layered narrative unfolds to tell the magnificent, tragic, and unforgettable story of the struggle of native peoples in the Americas to keep, at all costs, the core of their culture: their way of seeing, their way of believing, their way of being.


The Man to Send Rain Clouds

The Man to Send Rain Clouds

Author: Kenneth Rosen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1992-12-01

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 014017317X

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Fourteen stories about the strength and passion of today’s American Indian—including six from the acclaimed Leslie Marmon Silko. Anthropologists have long delighted us with the wise and colorful folktales they transcribed from their Indian informants. The stories in this collection are another matter altogether: these are white-educated Indians attempting to bear witness through a non-Indian genre, the short story. Over a two-year period, Kenneth Rosen traveled from town to town, pueblo to pueblo, to uncover the stories contained in this volume. All reveal, to varying degrees and in various ways, the preoccupations of contemporary American Indians. Not surprisingly, many of the stories are infused with the bitterness of a people and a culture long repressed. Several deal with violence and the effort to escape from the pervasive, and so often destructive, white influence and system. In most, the enduring strength of the Indian past is very much in evidence, evoked as a kind of counterpoint to the repression and aimlessness that have marked, and still mark today, the lives of so many American Indians.


Silko

Silko

Author: Brewster E. Fitz

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2005-07-30

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780806137254

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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.


Storytelling in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

Storytelling in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony

Author: Berenice Walther

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2007-01-30

Total Pages: 24

ISBN-13: 3638604837

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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, 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 assessment of the results attained.