Ceremony (Paperback)

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Staff Reviews


Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is her classic novel set in New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo Reservation. Tayo returns from WWII with tormenting memories.  He has seen and felt much pain, the violent death of fellow soldiers, the Baatan Death March, the horrific end of the war with Japan, things no one should endure.  White medicine only deadens his senses.  Back on the reservation he seeks that numbness in alcohol along with other Native American Soldiers.  His home has changed while he was away, too, and now he must reckon with this new situation.  Eventually Tayo will seek the help of a Shaman to perform a ceremony and help restore balance to their world.  Native American legends are part of the story.  Tayo has many adventures, including a hair raising cattle drive.  If you are interested in Native America literature, this is a beautifully written novel of great power.

 

— Deon Stonehouse

Description


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.

About the Author


Leslie Marmon Silko was born in 1948 to a family whose ancestry includes Mexican, Laguna Indian, and European forebears. She has said that her writing has at its core the attempt to identify what it is to be a half-breed or mixed-blood person. As she grew up on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, she learned the stories and culture of the Laguna people from her great-grandmother and other female relatives. After receiving her B. A. in English at the University of New Mexico, she enrolled in the University of New Mexico law school but completed only three semesters before deciding that writing and storytelling, not law, were the means by which she could best promote justice. She married John Silko in 1970. Prior to the writing of Ceremony, she published a series of short stories, including The Man to Send Rain Clouds. She also authored a volume of poetry, Laguna Woman: Poems, for which she received the Pushcart Prize for Poetry. In 1973, Silko moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, where she wrote Ceremony. Initially conceived as a comic story abut a mother s attempts to keep her son, a war veteran, away from alcohol, Ceremony gradually transformed into an intricate meditation on mental disturbance, despair, and the power of stories and traditional culture as the keys to self-awareness and, eventually, emotional healing. Having battled depression herself while composing her novel, Silko was later to call her book a ceremony for staying sane. Silko has followed the critical success of Ceremony with a series of other novels, including Storyteller, Almanac for the Dead, and Gardens in the Dunes. Nevertheless, it was the singular achievement of Ceremony that first secured her a place among the first rank of Native American novelists. Leslie Marmon Silko now lives on a ranch near Tucson, Arizona. "
Product Details
ISBN: 9780140086836
ISBN-10: 0140086838
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: March 4th, 1986
Pages: 262
Language: English