Silko, Leslie 1948–

(Leslie Marmon Silko)

PERSONAL: Born March 5, 1948, in Albuquerque, NM; daughter of Lee H. Marmon (a photographer); children: two sons. Education: University of New Mexico, received B.A. (summa cum laude), 1969.

ADDRESSES: Home—8000 West Camireo Del Certo, Tucson, AZ 85705.

CAREER: Novelist, poet, and essayist; schoolteacher, Keresan cultural historian; teacher, Navajo Community College, Tsaile, AZ; was associated with the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM; former assistant professor of English and fiction writing at University of Arizona, Tucson; founder, Laguna Film Project.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grant from National Endowment for the Arts and poetry award from Chicago Review, both 1974; Rosewater Foundation grant; Pushcart Prize for poetry, 1977; American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1980, for Ceremony; National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 1980; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation genius grant, 1983; Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award, 1994; named a Living Cultural Treasure, New Mexico Humanities Council; Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, 2000.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Ceremony, Viking (New York, NY), 1977.

Almanac of the Dead, Simon & Shuster (New York, NY), 1991.

Gardens in the Dunes, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

POETRY

Laguna Woman, Greenfield Review Press (Greenfield Center, NY), 1974.

Storyteller (includes short stories), Seaver Books (New York, NY), 1981.

Voices under One Sky (poems) Crossing Press (Freedom, CA), 1994.

Rain (poems), Library Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art and Grenfell Press (New York, NY), 1996.

OTHER

(With Frank Chin) Lullaby (a play adaptation of a story by Silko), produced in San Francisco, 1976.

Arrowboy and the Witches (film), Video Tape Co. (North Hollywood CA), 1980.

(With James A. Wright) Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright, Graywolf Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1985.

Yellow Woman (criticism), edited by Melody Graulich, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1993.

Sacred Water: Narratives and Pictures, Flood Plain Press (Tuscon, AZ), 1993.

Rooster and the Power of Love (correspondence), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko, edited by L. Arnold, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2000.

(With Vine Deloria, Jr., and George E. Tinker), God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th Anniversary Edition, Fulcrum Publishing (Golden, CO), 2003.

Author of stories, including "Bravura," "Humaweepi, the Warrior Priest," "Laughing and Loving," "Lullaby," "Private Property," and "Tony's Story." Work represented in anthologies, including The Man to Send Rain-clouds, Viking (New York, NY), 1974, and Norton Anthology of Women's Literature, 5th edition, second volume, W.W. Norton, (New York, NY), 1998. Contributor to periodicals, including New York Times Book Review. Almanac of the Dead has been translated into German.

SIDELIGHTS: As a novelist, poet, and essayist, Leslie Silko has earned acclaim for her writings about Native Americans. Although her first book published was the 1974 volume of poems called Laguna Woman, Silko received wide and substantial critical attention in 1977 with her novel Ceremony. Her novels, as well as her poems, are shaped by her Native American heritage. In her writings, Silko draws from many of the traditional oral stories that she heard growing up at Laguna Pueblo Indian reservation in northern New Mexico. Her works primarily focus on the alienation of Native Americans in a white society and on the importance of native traditions and community in helping them cope with modern life. She has been noted as a major contributor to the Native American literary and artistic renaissance, which began in the late 1960s.

In Ceremony, Silko tells of a half-breed war veteran's struggle for sanity after returning home from World War II. The veteran, Tayo, has difficulties adjusting to civilian life on a New Mexico Indian reservation. He is haunted by his violent actions during the war and by the memory of his brother's death in the same conflict. Deranged and withdrawn, Tayo initially wastes away on the reservation while his fellow Native American veterans drink excessively and rail against racism. After futilely exploring Navajo rituals in an attempt to discover some sense of identity, Tayo befriends a wise old half-breed, Betonie, who counsels him on the value of ceremony. Betonie teaches Tayo that ceremony is not merely formal ritual but a means of conducting one's life. With the old man's guidance, Tayo learns that humanity and the cosmos are aspects of one vast entity, and that ceremony is the means to harmony within that entity.

With its depiction of life on the Indian reservation and its exploration of philosophical issues, Ceremony established Silko as an important Native American writer and marked her as the first Native American woman novelist. Charles R. Larson, writing in Washington Post Book World, called Ceremony a novel "powerfully conceived" and attributed much of the book's success to Silko's incorporation of Native American elements. "Tayo's experiences may suggest that Ceremony falls nicely within the realm of American fiction about World War II," Larson wrote. "Yet Silko's novel is also strongly rooted within the author's own tribal background and that is what I find especially valuable here." Similarly, Frank MacShane wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Silko skillfully incorporates aspects of Native American storytelling techniques into Ceremony. "She has used animal stories and legends to give a fabulous dimension to her novel," he declared. MacShane added that Silko was "without question … the most accomplished Indian writer of her generation."

Some critics considered Ceremony a powerful confirmation of cosmic order. Elaine Jahner, who reviewed the novel for Prairie Schooner Review, wrote that the book "is about the power of timeless, primal forms of seeing and knowing and relating to all of life." She observed that the Native American storytelling tradition provided the novel with both theme and structure and added that Tayo eventually "perceives something of his responsibilities in shaping the story of what human beings mean to each other." Peter G. Beidler focused on the importance of storytelling in Ceremony by writing in American Indian Quarterly that the novel is both "the story of a life [and] the life of a story." Beidler called Ceremony "a magnificent novel" that "brings life to human beings and makes readers care about them."

After the publication of Ceremony, Silko received greater recognition for her earlier short stories. Among her most noteworthy stories were "Lullaby," "Yellow Woman," and "Tony's Story." "Lullaby" is an old woman's recollection of how her children were once taken away for education and how they returned to a culture that no longer seemed familiar or comfortable. Writing in the Southwest Review, Edith Blicksilver called "Lullaby" Silko's "version of the Native American's present-day reality." This story was included in Norton Anthology of Women's Literature, with Silko being the youngest writer to be included in this work. "Yellow Woman" concerns a Navajo woman who is abducted by a cattle ranger; she begins to believe that she is both herself and acting in the role of the mythical Yellow Woman, while the stranger is also whom she suspects to be the embodiment of a ka'tsina spirit. In MELUS A. LaVonne Ruoff wrote that "'Yellow Woman' is based on traditional abduction tales, [but] it is more than a modernized version." Ruoff attributed the difference to Silko's emphasis on "the character's confusion about what is real and what is not." "'Tony's Story'" is about an Indian who kills a vicious policeman. In MELUS, Ruoff noted Silko's ability to equate the murder with the Pueblo exorcism ritual. "Tony's Story," Ruoff declared, "deals with the return to Indian ritual as a means of coping with external forces."

Some of Silko's stories were included in the anthology The Man to Send Rainclouds, which derives its title from Silko's humorous tale of conflict between a Catholic priest and Pueblo Indians during a Native American funeral. Silko also included some of her early stories in her 1981 collection Storyteller, which features her poetry as well. In the New York Times Book Review, N. Scott Momaday called Storyteller "a rich, many-faceted book." Momaday acknowledged Silko's interests in ritual and the Native American storytelling tradition and her ability to portray characters and situations. "At her best," Momaday contended, "Leslie Silko is very good indeed. She has a sharp sense of the way in which the profound and the mundane often run together." James Polk gave similar praise in Saturday Review when he wrote that Silko's "perceptions are accurate, and her style reflects the breadth, the texture, the mortality of her subjects."

In 1983 Silko received an award from the prestigious MacArthur Foundation for her small but influential body of work. The award—for 176,000 dollars—was particularly appreciated by Silko, who produced most of her writings while also working as an English professor. Acknowledging her cash prize, she told Time that she was now "a little less beholden to the everyday world." Indeed, Silko used that money to work on an epic novel, Almanac of the Dead, that eventually took ten years to complete. Published in 1991, the novel "ranges over five centuries of the struggle between Native Americans and Europeans and focuses upon a half-breed Tucson family voyaging to Africa and Israel," noted John Domini in the San Francisco Review of Books. In addition to its wide scope, the novel contains a multitude of original, colorful characters. As Bloomsbury Review contributor M. Annette Jaimes explained, "Throughout the book, this entire wondrous and seedy spectrum of humanity parades itself endlessly across the knotted tightrope of a world gone hopelessly, splendidly, and quite believably mad."

Some reviewers of Almanac of the Dead felt that this array of characters was the novel's weakest aspect. Writing in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Paul West remarked that the author's "myth remains unforgettable, whereas her characters—too many, introduced too soon and then abandoned for long stretches—remain invisible and forgettable." Silko herself acknowledged that she experimented with characterization in the novel. In an interview with Linda Niemann for the Women's Review of Books, Silko commented: "I was trying to give history a character. It was as if native spirits were possessing me, like a spell…. I knew I was breaking rules about not doing characters in the traditional way, but this other notion took over—and I couldn't tell you rationally why. I knew it was about time and about old notions of history, and about narrative being alive." While West called the book "an excellent work of myth and a second-rate novel," Jaimes concluded, "Almanac must be ranked as a masterpiece."

Silko's third novel, Gardens in the Dunes, directly contrasts the traditional world of Native Americans with the European and American upper-class culture through the story of Sister Salt and Indigo, members of the ancient Sand Lizard tribe. After witnessing a miraculous and disturbing appearance of the Messiah along with his Holy Mother and eleven children, the girls are eventually separated. After running away from a government school, Indigo is taken in by a white couple, who take Indigo to New York and then to Europe. The surrogate mother, Hattie, is rebellious of the staid Victorian culture yet tries to bring Indigo up as a well-bred white American child. But Indigo's world-view is still steeped in her native American culture, and Hattie has as much to learn from Indigo as the young girl does from her. As another plot device, Indigo saves the seeds and roots that she gathers from around the world, leading to, as Donna Seaman noted in Booklist, "musings on the cultivation of plants and the exploitation of the earth." A contributor to Publishers Weekly said that Silko "soars beyond the simpler categorizations that might circumscribe her virtuosic and visionary work." The reviewer also noted, "Silko's integration of glorious details into her many vivid settings and intense characters is a triumph of the storyteller's art." In Booklist Seaman called the novel "an intricate, mesmerizing, and phantasmagorical tale, rooted in Silko's passionate involvement with history, deep thinking about the spiritual consequences of our ravaging of the planet, and astoundingly fertile imagination."

Silko began writing poetry based on traditional stories and legends she learned from her family. For example, in the poem "Bear Story," she uses characters from Laguna and other Southwestern Indian stories to tell the tale of how bears can bring people to them and help them become bears. Her poems highlight many of the same themes found in her prose, including the Native Americans' non-Western sense of time, the strength of women, and the need for change.

Silko's other works include Delicacy and Strength of Lace, which features correspondence between Silko and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Wright. Writing a review in the journal Standards, Emmanuela de Léon noted that the two "shared a personal admiration for one another's work, as well as a kinship developed through shared experiences of their individual employment as lecturers … and their struggles with health and family matters. When these simple commonalities are expressed in the form of an ongoing epistolary exchange between two of our greatest literary talents, the private dialogue becomes a source of true literary enrichment." Silko self-published her multi-genre book Sacred Water: Narratives and Pictures under her own imprint (Flood Plain Press). As a result, she was able to experiment with the text's physical form and the use of handmade materials. Her collection of essays Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today, focuses on the spirit and voice of Native Americans, from her exploration of literature and language in Native American heritage to the wisdom of her ancestors to the racist treatment of Native Americans.

Silco was also a contributor to the thirtieth anniversary edition of God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, whose main author is Vine Deloria, Jr. This book compares Christianity to the nature-oriented religions of Native Americans and reminds us, "… we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world," as summarized by its publisher, Fulcrum Publishing. The book is considered by many critics to be a classic. An Awke:kon Journal review called the work "a trenchant and often witty critique on non-Native religion through Native eyes." In a review of the second edition of this work for The American Indian Quarterly, George Tinker called this work "a critical reflection on western thought and culture."

Considered by many as one of the most important contemporary Native American writers, Silko has received the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and was named a Living Cultural Treasure, by the New Mexico Humanities Council. As a writer who bridges cultures, Silko had this to say, "I see myself as a member of the global community," Silko told Thomas Irmer for an interview in the Write Stuff. "My old folks who raised me saw themselves as citizens of the world. We see no borders. When I write I am writing to the world, not to the United States alone. I do believe that the things I am talking about will finally, maybe not in my lifetime … turn out."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Allen, Paula Gunn, editor, Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course Designs, Modern Language Association of America, 1983, pp. 127-33.

Barnard, Anja, and Anna Sheets Nesbitt, editors, Short Story Criticism, Volume 37, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 23, 1983, Volume 74, 1993, Volume 114, 1999, pp. 282-344.

Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 143: American Novelists since World War II, Third Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994, Volume 175: Native American Writers of the United States, 1997.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Native North American Literature, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

Patraka, Vivian, and Louise A. Tilly, editors, Feminist Re-Visions: What Has Been and Might Be, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1983, pp. 26-42.

Riggs, Thomas, editor, Reference Guide to American Literature, 4th Edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.

Scholer, Bo, editor, Coyote Was Here: Essays on Contemporary Native American Literary and Political Mobilization, Seklos, 1984, pp. 116-23.

Seyerstad, Per, Leslie Marmon Silko, Boise State University, 1980, pp. 45-50.

Velie, Alan R., Four American Indian Literary Masters: N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor, University of Oklahoma Press, 1982, pp. 106-21.

PERIODICALS

American Indian Quarterly, winter, 1977–78, Peter G. Beidler, review of Ceremony; fall, 1988, pp. 313-28; fall, 1990, pp. 367-77; spring, 1990, pp. 155-59; George Tinker, review of God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, fall, 1994, p. 546; summer, 1999, p. 24; winter, 2000, p. 1.

Arizona Quarterly, spring, 1988, pp. 86-94.

Bloomsbury Review, April/May, 1992, M. Annette Jaimes, review of Almanac of the Dead, p. 5.

Booklist, February 15, 1996, p. 988; February 1, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Gardens in the Dunes, p. 942; December 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Gardens in the Dunes, p. 787.

Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1991, p. 30.

College Literature, fall, 2000, p. 88; winter, 2001, review of Almanac of the Dead and Storyteller, p. 29.

Critique, spring, 1983, pp. 158-72.

Denver Quarterly, winter, 1980, pp. 22-30.

Explicator, fall, 2001, p. 54.

Genre, fall, 1988, pp. 307-19.

Harper's, June, 1977.

Journal of the Southwest, autumn, 1988, pp. 281-316.

Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1992, pp. E1, E3.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 4, 1987; February 2, 1992, Paul West, review of Almanac of the Dead, p. 8.

MELUS, winter, 1978; summer, 1981; winter, 1983, pp. 37-48; spring, 1985, pp. 25-36 and 65-78; spring, 1988, pp. 83-95; summer, 1993, pp. 47-60.

Ms., July, 1981.

New Leader, June 6, 1977.

Newsweek, July 4, 1977, pp. 73-4; November 18, 1991, p. 84.

New York Times, May 25, 1981.

New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1977, Frank MacShane, review of Ceremony; May 24, 1981, N. Scott Momaday, review of Storyteller; December 22, 1991, p. 6; April 18, 1999, review of Gardens in the Dunes, p. 31.

Prairie Schooner Review, winter, 1977–78, Elaine Jahner, review of Ceremony.

Publishers Weekly, March 1, 1999, review of Gardens in the Dunes, p. 59.

San Francisco Review of Books, fall, 1992, John Domini, review of Almanac of the Dead, p. 18.

Saturday Review, May, 1981.

Southern Folklore, no. 2, 1989, pp. 133-46.

Southwest Review, spring, 1979, Edith Blicksilver, review of "Lullaby."

Time, August 8, 1983; May 3, 1999, review of Gardens in the Dunes, p. 78.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, November, 1991, pp. 17-18.

Washington Post Book World, April 24, 1977, Charles R. Larson, review of Ceremony.

Western American Literature, February, 1994, pp. 301-12; spring, 1999, review of The Delicacy and Strength of Lace, p. 48.

Women's Review of Books, July, 1992, Linda Niemann, interview with Silko, p. 10.

ONLINE

Fulcrum Publishing Web site, http://www.fulcrum-books.com/ (August 8, 2004), "God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th Anniversary Edition."

Internet Public Library Web site, http://www.ipl.org/div/ (August 8, 2004), "Native American Authors Project;" "Online Literary Criticism Collection."

Lannan Foundation Web site, http://www.lannan.org/literary/fiction.htm/ (August 8, 2004), "Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships for Fiction."

Lopez Bookseller Web site, http://www.lopezbooks.com/ (August 8, 2004), "Leslie Marmon Silko."

Pace University Web site, http://csis.pace.edu/amlit/proj1d/silko.htm/ (August 8, 2004), "A Native Struggle, Short Summary of Leslie Silko's Lullaby."

Standards, http://www.colorado.edu/journals/standards/ (January 28, 2003), Volume 6, Emmanuela de Làon, review of Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters between Leslie Marmon Silko and James Wright.

Student Books Online Web site, http://studentbooksonline.net/ (August 8, 2004), "God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th Anniversary Edition."

University of Richmond Web site, http://oncampus.richmond.edu/∼rnelson/ (August 8, 2004), "Leslie Silko, Storyteller."

Voices from the Gaps, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ (October 9, 2002), "Biography-Criticism" of Leslie Marmon Silko.

Write Stuff, http://www.altx.com/interviews/ (October 9, 2002), Thomas Irmer, "An Interview with Leslie Marmon Silko."