Download or read book Ceremony written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Storytelling in Leslie Marmon Silko s Ceremony written by Berenice Walther and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-11 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Storyteller written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Leslie Marmon Silko s Ceremony written by Allan Chavkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-01-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, the most important novel of the Native American Renaissance, is among the most most widely taught and studied novels in higher education today. In it, Silko recounts a young man's search for consolation in his tribe's history and traditions, and his resulting voyage of self-discovery and discovery of the world. The fourteen essays in this casebook include a variety of theoretical approaches and provide readers with crucial information, especially on Native American beliefs, that will enhance their understanding and appreciation of this contemporary classic. The collection also includes two interviews with Silko in which she explains the importance of the oral tradition and storytelling, along with autobiographical basis of the novel.
Download or read book The Turquoise Ledge written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Leslie Marmon Silko s Ceremony written by Allan Chavkin and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Along with Louise Erdrich's "Love Medicine", Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony" is one of the two most widely taught and studied Native American literature texts. In "Ceremony" Silko recounts a young man's search for consolation in his tribe's history and traditions, and his resulting voyage of self-discovery and discovery of the world. This casebook includes a variety of theoretical approaches and provides readers with crucial information, especially on Native American beliefs, that will enhance their understanding and appreciation of this contemporary classic. This collection also includes two interviews with Leslie Marmon Silko in which she explains the importance of oral tradition and storytelling, along with the autobiographical basis of the novel.
Download or read book Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Leslie Marmon Silko s Ceremony written by Robert M. Nelson and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Storyteller written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A rich, many-faceted book." -- The New York Times A classic work of Native American literature by the bestselling author of Ceremony Leslie Marmon Silko's groundbreaking book Storyteller, first published in 1981, blends original short stories and poetry influenced by the traditional oral tales that she 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. This edition includes a new introduction by Silko and previously unpublished photographs.
Download or read book Yellow Woman written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ambiguous and unsettling, Silko's "Yellow Woman" explores one woman's desires and changes--her need to open herself to a richer sensuality. Walking away from her everyday identity as daughter, wife and mother, she takes possession of transgressive feelings and desires by recognizing them in the stories she has heard, by blurring the boundaries between herself and the Yellow Woman of myth.
Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Download or read book Conversations with Leslie Marmon Silko written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains sixteen interviews that provide insight into the thinking and writing of twentieth-century Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko.
Download or read book On Beauty written by Zadie Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-09-13 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth "In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
Download or read book Living in between The Search for Identity in Leslie Marmon Silko s Ceremony written by Ariane Peters and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2004-04-07 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3 (A), Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institute for Anglistics/American Studies), language: English, abstract: Although Leslie Marmon Silko’s complete works have received exemplary reviews, Ceremony seems to be the most talked about and recognized for its literary achievement. One reason for this large attention is the strange narrative form due to the combination of the Indian “storytelling”, myth, poetry and a plot that takes place in a modern western1 environment. Another reason for the remarkable success of this novel is Silko’s way to show the negative repercussions on Native Americans caused by racism, alcoholism, dislocation, poverty as well as the industrial exploitation of the land. In this paper I will discuss one of the principal themes presented in Leslie Silko’s Ceremony: the issue of Native American identity. In the first part I will briefly introduce the characters of Tayo and Rocky, two Native Americans who grew up on a reservation for the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. After that I will examine the similarities between these two young men who both take part in the Second World War and make horrible experiences. In the main part of this paper I will try to find out the differences between Tayo and Rocky in order to explain their different ways of searching their own identity. Furthermore I will explore the sources of Tayo’s selfdestructive behaviour and his problem of alienation. Therefore I will have to ponder on the following questions: How does the white culture influence these characters? Do both men suffer from the loss of Indian self-esteem? What are the effects of internalized racism and colonization on the health of Tayo? Why is Tayo able to return to the community to lead a stable and productive life? In the final comment there will be a concluding assessment and a summary of the theme.
Download or read book Gardens in the Dunes written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping, multifaceted tale of a young Native American pulled between the cherished traditions of a heritage on the brink of extinction and an encroaching white culture, Gardens in the Dunes is the powerful story of one woman’s quest to reconcile two worlds that are diametrically opposed. At the center of this struggle is Indigo, who is ripped from her tribe, the Sand Lizard people, by white soldiers who destroy her home and family. Placed in a government school to learn the ways of a white child, Indigo is rescued by the kind-hearted Hattie and her worldly husband, Edward, who undertake to transform this complex, spirited girl into a “proper” young lady. Bit by bit, and through a wondrous journey that spans the European continent, traipses through the jungles of Brazil, and returns to the rich desert of Southwest America, Indigo bridges the gap between the two forces in her life and teaches her adoptive parents as much as, if not more than, she learns from them.
Download or read book The Man to Send Rain Clouds written by Kenneth Rosen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1992-12-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Ceremony written by Leslie Marmon Silko and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-12-26 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit More than thirty-five years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power. The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition contains a new preface by the author and an introduction by Larry McMurtry. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
