Leslie Marmon SilkoRecensioni

Ceremony is the story of Tayo, a half white, half Navajo veteran of World War II who, after a stay in a California hospital being treated for PTSD (although that term was not in vogue when the novel was written—1977) returns to his childhood home, the Laguna Pueblo reservation in New Mexico. The book is also an allegory of Tayo’s people, both the Navajo of the American Southwest in particular, and of Native Americans more generally (called “Indians” in the novel).

In the war, Tayo fought on an unnamed Pacific island where it rained constantly. His home (just west of Albuquerque) on the other hand, is in the midst of a long term severe drought. Tayo feels some guilt because he prayed for and performed ceremonies to end the rain in the Pacific, and he fears that his efforts may have brought the drought to his home.

Tayo’s childhood friends, who also fought in the war, spend much of their time reminiscing about how much respect they got while they were in uniform. That respect contrasts dramatically with the way they are treated now, and they find themselves devolved into an almost constant state of drunkenness. Their fate inspires Tayo think about the tremendous discrimination Native Americans face at the hands of the whites, whom they nevertheless seem to admire.

The narrative oscillates from Tayo’s pre-war youth to the war and to his current situation. Always present is Tayo’s efforts to influence events through prayers and ceremonies. The characters face a constant tension between the Christianity forced upon them by the whites and the ancient stories and beliefs of their ancestors. It Is not clear to me whether the author wants the reader to believe (for purposes of the story) in the efficacy of the ceremonies as actual causes of the events in the novel, but it is very clear that the characters believe in them. It is also clear that Ms. Silko doesn’t put much faith in the whites’ religion, either in the novel or in her own life.

The story takes some unusual turns, and the conclusion is more than a little bizarre. Tayo’s efforts to end the drought have not been successful, and so he believes he must do something extra to complete his ceremony. That something is to incorporate an element of white culture into his rite. He decides that he needs to spend a night in a local abandoned uranium mine and the ceremony will be complete.

Unfortunately, some of his “friends,” one of whom is an avowed enemy from childhood, have their own notions of ceremony that involve a ritual killing of a tribe member, presumably Tayo. The “friends” come looking for Tayo, but can’t find him in the mine. So they decide to kill Tayo’s best friend! From his hiding place, Tayo watches them torture his real friend to death, but, knowing the trouble he would incur, restrains himself from killing their leader in order to save his friend. The white authorities investigate the murder, but are unable to prove a case against the leader. However, the FBI agent investigating the crime knows enough to tell the leader to leave New Mexico and never return. The leader goes off to California, which is significant because that is where Tayo had spent his time recovering in the VA hospital.

In the end, the drought is broken. The reader is left to decide whether the correlation of Tayo’s ceremony was the cause of the end of the drought.

In this summary, the story seems more than a little kooky. However, the book is very well written, including numerous short poems that bring Indian lore to life. In addition, I can attest that its descriptions of the land is very accurate. I read this book in conjunction with Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, a collection of non-fiction essays by the same author. The two together provide a bittersweet depiction of Native American life today.

(JAB)½

This book had long been on my list of "books I need to read someday," and when I found this lovely used copy of the 30th anniversary edition at my local bookstore, it got upgraded to books I need to read soon. But what did I know about it, going into it? Hardly anything. Just that it is a modern classic, and written by a Native American woman.

How do I explain why I loved this so deeply? Even when it was sometimes confusing often painful, a slow and tangled read. But the challenge is the point. There are no straight roads back to wholeness, not when things are as broken as they are.

I found this spell-binding. I am thankful to have crossed paths with this book.

Main character is Native American, was released after imprisonment after WWII and returns home

Her writing is lyrical, suspenseful, and matter of fact, by turns. I first came across her short story "Lullaby" in college lit class, and was floored by it.

Yes, her approach moves seamlessly between time periods and various events so the reader must remain alert. But what of it? This reads like a dream, only the harshness is the lives of Native Americans who populate this novel. Just read it.½

A prescient and complex tale of interconnected criminal and American Indian families around Tuscon Arizona, 'city of thieves'. A theme of the book is European injustice and violence towards Indians, and a prophesied end of European influence in the Americas.

Written in 1991 there are references to cybercrime, increasing natural disasters, ecoterrorism, water shortages and economic depression, the absolute callousness of the rich to the poor, increasing psychosis among white people. It could have been written about today (2023); if anything it has become more relevant over time.

This was not my kinda book. I listened to about two thirds of it and then rejected it because it was just repetitive and unbelievable. the publisher says "...becomes a moving and deeply personal contemplation of the enormous spiritual power of the natural world..." She had me at multiple snakes on the property, but then when she began to converse with bees and two dogs with pet mouse and a talking one legged parrot, I just lost confidence with credibility and more of the book. When she complained to the county about disturbing the rocks, I thought that they must think her nutty. DNF.

Good, if confusing, novel of a war veteran native american from Laguna pueblo in NM. Non linear storyline about Tayo, who manages to restore himself, after all he had experienced. Very poetic at times. Worthwhile.

like my last reading, i'm not sure i have much to say here, even though there is so much to think about. so much of it is over my head, and i know that. but what i do understand, is beautifully wrought. she does something really special here, even though i can't speak to all of it, or maybe even most of it.

but this idea that you're sick if you don't accept the white devastation, that you're sick if you try to reconnect with your past and your history and your culture and with what made your community what it has become - it's powerful. tayo is so sick, physically and otherwise, but he's the one in this book that is doing his best to understand how to live in the present while not completely losing the past and his heritage. he's the one that wants to honor the old ways while making a new way - the ceremony of the title, which must adhere to old traditions but also morph and change with time or it no longer has any meaning. he is the ceremony, he is the salvation of the community. but he is seen as sick, as insane, as disposable. and until he truly reconnects with his culture, he really is sick, because he doesn't fit in the world around him.

i wish i understood more of this because it is so full of ache and beauty and i know, i just know, that it is even so much better than i see it. and i already see it as something amazing.

"Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the war. They blamed themselves for losing the new feeling; they never talked about it, but they blamed themselves just like they blamed themselves for losing the land the white people took. They never thought to blame white people for any of it; they wanted white people for their friends. They never saw that it was the white people who gave them that feeling and it was white people who took it away again when the war was over."

"He wanted to yell at the medicine man, to yell the things the white doctors had yelled at him -- that he had to think only of himself, and not about the others, that he would never get well as long as he used words like 'we' and 'us.' But he had known the answer all along, even while the white doctors were telling him he could get well and he was trying to believe them: medicine didn't work that way, because the world didn't work that way. His sickness was only part of something larger, and his cure would be found only in something great and inclusive of everything."

"'The people nowadays have an idea about the ceremonies. They think the ceremonies must be performed exactly as they have always been done, maybe because one slip-up or mistake and the whole ceremony has to be stopped and the sand painting destroyed. That much is true. They think that if a signer tampers with any part of the ritual, great harm can be done, great power unleashed....That much can be true also. But long ago when the people were given these ceremonies, the changing began, if only in the aging of the yellow gourd rattle or the shrinking of the skin around the eagle's claw, if only in the different voices from generation to generation, singing the chants. You see, in many ways, the ceremonies have always been changing....At one time, the ceremonies as they had been performed were enough for the way the world was then. But after the white people came, elements in this world began to shift; and it became necessary to create new ceremonies. I have made changes in the rituals. The people mistrust this greatly, but only this growth keeps the ceremonies strong.

She taught me this above all else: things which don't shift and grow are dead things. They are things the witchery people want. Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth. But it has always been necessary, and more than ever now, it is. Otherwise, we won't make it. We won't survive. That's what the witchery is counting on: that we will cling to the ceremonies the way they were, and then their power will triumph, and the people will be no more.'"

"'Look,' Betonie said, pointing east to Mount Taylor towering dark blue with the last twilight. 'They only fool themselves when they think it is theirs. The deeds and papers don't mean anything. It is the people who belong to the mountains.'"

"Then they grow away from the earth/then they grow away from the sun/then they grow away from the plants and animals./They see no life/When they look/they see only objects./The world is a dead thing for them/the trees and rivers are not alive/the mountains and stones are not alive./The deer and bear are objects/they see no life./They fear/They fear the world./They destroy what they fear./They fear themselves."

"He knew then he had learned the lie by heart -- the lie which they had wanted him to learn: only brown-skinned people were thieves; white people didn't steal, because they always had the money to buy whatever they wanted.

The lie. He cut into the wire as if cutting away at the lie inside himself. The liars had fooled everyone, white people and Indians alike; as long as people believed the lies, they would never be able to see what had been done to them or what they were doing to each other....If the white people never looked beyond the lie, to see that theirs was a nation built on stolen land, then they would never be able to understand how they had been used by the witchery; they would never know that they were still being manipulated by those who knew how to stir the ingredients together: white thievery and injustice boiling up the anger and hatred that would finally destroy the world: the starving against the fat, the colored against the white. The destroyers had only to set it in motion, and sit back to count the casualties. But it was more than a body count; the lies devoured white hearts, and for more than two hundred years white people had worked to fill their emptiness; they tried to glut the hollowness with patriotic wars and with great technology and the wealth it brought. And always they had been fooling themselves, and they knew it."

"He wanted to scream at Indians like Harley and Helen Jean and Emo that the white things they admired and desired so much -- the bright city lights and loud music, the soft sweet food and the cars -- all these things had been stolen, torn out of Indian land: raw living materials for the ck'o'yo manipulation.The people had been taught to despise themselves because they were left with barren land and dry rivers. But they were wrong. It was the white people who had nothing; it was the white people who were suffering as thieves do, never able to forget that their pride was wrapped in something stolen, something that had never been, and could never be, theirs. The destroyers had tricked the white people as completely as they had fooled the Indians, and now only a few people understood how the filthy deception worked; only a few people knew that the lie was destroying the white people faster than it was destroying Indian people. But the effects were hidden, evident only in the sterility of their art, which continued to feed off the vitality of other cultures, and in the dissolution of their consciousness into dead objects: the plastic and neon, the concrete and steel. Hollow and lifeless as a witchery clay figure. And what little still remained to white people was shriveled like a seed hoarded too long, shrunken past its time, and split open now, to expose a fragile, pale leaf stem, perfectly formed and dead."

"He cried the relief he felt at finally seeing the pattern, the way all the stories fit together -- the old stories, the war stories, their stories -- to become the story that was still being told. He was not crazy; he had never been crazy. He had only seen and heard the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distances and time."

4.5 stars

from feb 2009:

"Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the war. They blamed themselves for losing the new feeling; they never talked about it, but they blamed themselves just like they blamed themselves for losing the land the white people took. They never thought to blame white people for any of it; they wanted white people for their friends. They never saw that it was the white people who gave them that feeling and it was white people who took it away again."

"Then they grow away from the earth/then they grow away from the sun/then they grow away from the plants and animals./They see no life/When they look/they see only objects./The world is a dead thing for them/the trees and rivers are not alive/the mountains and stones are not alive./The deer and bear are objects/they see no life."

"Every day they had to look at the land, from horizon to horizon, and every day the loss was with them; it was the dead unburied, and the mourning of the lost going on forever. So they tried to sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief with war stories about their courage, defending the land they had already lost."

"He wanted to scream at Indians like Harley and Helen Jean and Emo that the white things they admired and desired so much - the bright city lights and loud music, the soft sweet food and the cars - all these things had been stolen, torn out of Indian land: raw living materials for their ck'o'yo manipulation. The people had been taught to despise themselves because they were left with barren land and dry rivers. But they were wrong. It was the white people who had nothing; it was the white people who were suffering as thieves do, never able to forget that their pride was wrapped in something stolen, something that had never been, and could never be, theirs."½

Disjointed until I figured out there were different timelines--before the 2nd world war, during it where the main character is in the Philippines and comes home with PTSD [or battle fatigue as the condition was called in those days] and afterwards when he returns home. The novel describes his return to normality through traditional Native American ceremonies. I enjoyed descriptions of Indian practices, the telling of legends and the nature descriptions did not put me off. Writing style was beautiful. The lot of the Indian was depressing.

The plot of Leslie Marmon Silko's book, Ceremony, depicts the return of a WW II Native American Veteran with what was then called "combat fatigue" but is now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In telling the story, Silko presents a vivid picture of the impact of war and its atrocities upon the minds and psyches of those compelled to go fight in it. Everyone who goes to war dies in that war. Those who physically survive combat return home as deeply and irrevocably changed people, the person who went off to fight the battles never returns.
Tayo, the main character in Ceremony, returns to a world of poverty, deprivation, drunkenness, desperation, and shortened life spans juxtaposed with the characters' strong family bonds and reverence for all things natural. The brigandry and deceit of the caucasian peoples who have so ruthlessly deprived Indigenous Peoples of anything of value while simultaneously practicing a kind of genocide become apparent in everything Tayo faces when he returns to his home. The entire novel presents a picture of hopelessness that is nonetheless overcome through the strength of the Indigenous People's beliefs and traditions. Those beliefs, seen by the "white" as superstitions, become the medicines of Tayo's rehabilitation and salvation.
The incredible beauty of this novel is not in its plot, storyline, or theme, however. It is in the subtlety of what its Inginenous American author reveals in her writing. Every single 'action item' or plot element that occurs in the novel to move the story forward falls within descriptions of nature, natural surroundings, and traditional Indian beliefs and practices. Whether Silko knew it, planned it, or merely came upon it naturally, her storytelling flows across the pages in descriptions that a writer from mainstream America could not have produced. When her characters take any actions, the author describes the action by including the motive for that action and the harmony or disharmony with nature that the motive represents. People commit violent or criminal actions because their hearts are not right and they have come under the spells of witchery that separate them from their natural better selves.
This book is not uplifting, full of hope, or even of renewal. At every turn, it depicts heartbreaking desperation and destitution that have become the norms for the marginalized Indigenous population of America.
It is strong medicine and a worthwhile read.

A classic must-read.

I had difficulty engaging with this book, had a hard time reading it (took forever!), but after finishing it, I found myself frequently thinking about it. It is definitely a book that would reward rereading.

Tayo, a mixed race Laguna Pueblo Indian has returned to the reservation a damaged soul after World War II. He has been traumatized by his experiences as a POW of the Japanese, where he witnessed the harrowing death of his best friend/"brother" Rocky, with whom he was raised. Even before the war, he has spent his entire life feeling like an outcast--not fully Indian on the reservation, and not fully "white" in the wider world. He is clearly suffering from PTSD and survivor's guilt. Stays in the VA hospital do not seem to be helping, and Tayo begins seeking help in traditional Native American practices.

The book is difficult. The chronology is jagged jumping from Tayo's childhood to his war experiences to his return to the reservation, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and I frequently had to reread passages to figure out what time period we were in (and sometimes to figure out what character was paramount at that time). And interspersed throughout the narrative are long poetic and prose passages delineating Native American myths. But in the end, it all went together, and as I said it will reward rereading.

And the dual themes of PTSD and racism are absolutely contemporary for a book published more than 40 years ago. Unfortunately, these themes still resonant strongly today, with tragically little progress having been made.

I haven't read a lot of Native American literature, and this has been described as one of the greatest Native American novels. I can't disagree.

Recommended.
4 stars

Most of the reviews on LT about this book all mention the length, and the disconnectedness of the narrative - both criticisms are on the money, but shouldn't keep you from reading the book. Length shouldn't matter if the book is good enough. The disconnectedness of the narrative did feel taxing about midway through the book, as I wasn't invested in some of the characters and stories - the early story, which loops back in is easily the best. But Silko is so far underappreciated in the literary world that I didn't waver in my conviction to continue. And, even in the darkest and most difficult pages, Silko always rewards the convicted reader with something. The mystical air and social justice foundation is evocative, especially as it's set in the Hispanic and Native communities, which is relatively unusual. The narrative follows different strands of those communities, spiraling back into the historical context of each.

I read this for my graduate course in Native American Lit., and then again for the Lit. Theory class. I wrote a paper on it for the Lit. Theory class. Yet, it was so long ago, I'd have to look up the file to see what I actually wrote, something dealing with icons in the novel according to my journal.

I'm sad to say I gave up on this book about 100 pages in -- it was too depressing, and didn't have enough of a hook for me.

Indian returns from drunkeness to the ways of the people, interwoven with legends qnd ceremonies of the Pueblo

It took me a while to get to Ceremony but I'm sorry it did, really a fantastic read. I enjoyed Silko's use of folklore and poetry in the text and even points where the narrative bleeds into the poetic form embodies the idea that these stories are all living and interconnected. Her vision of the Southwest is as magnificent and grand and scope as Cormac McCarthy although this is not a place where violence solves problems only exacerbates them and true strength comes with embracing life. I will say I would've liked to have seen the disjointed narrative that was so seamlessly constructed at the outset of the novel continue, it smoothes out and becomes less dislocating as Tayo heals but it also loses an experimental edge that I very much enjoyed and what drew me into the first half of the novel.

Of mixed Native and white ancestry, Tayo has never felt welcome among either community. Now, having been a POW and seeing his closest friend die amid the horrors of war, he has returned from World War II understandably troubled and broken. His family doesn't know what to do with him and are afraid he will end up in the hospital again, and his friends, many of whom had similar wartime experiences, don't understand why he can't just drink away his demons the way they can.

I am hopeful that this is the type of work that becomes more cohesive in the mind of the reader on the second reading. I felt I was not getting as much out of it as I should have given its elevated reputation in the literary world, and also that I may not have fully understood what was occurring (or occurring between the lines) in a few of the scenes. Regardless, it left me with mixed feelings of melancholy and consternation.

fiction

“Everywhere he looked, he saw a world made of stories, the long ago, time immemorial stories...It was a world alive, always changing and moving; and if you knew where to look, you could see it, sometimes imperceptible, like the motion of the stars across the sky.”

“Every day they had to look at the land, from horizon to horizon, and every day the loss was with them; it was the dead unburied, and the mourning of the lost going on forever. So they tried to sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief with war stories about their courage, defending the land they had already lost.”

In the years, immediately after WWII, we are introduced to Tayo, a young Native American, who fought as a Marine in the Pacific and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He returns to his Pueblo reservation, as a shattered man and the novel is about Tayo's long, slow climb out of his own wreckage, using witchcraft and other traditional means to reach this difficult goal.
This is not an easy read. Watching these characters wallow in their suffering and alcohol abuse, can be painful but the narrative brightens as Tayo pulls out of his tailspin and begins to live again and appreciate the loved ones, who have supported him, through his trials. The writing grows stronger as the novel progresses, rewarding the reader, for hanging in there. This will not be for all tastes, but I can appreciate it's lofty position in Native American literature.

This is a challenging, disturbing read. The main character, Tayo, is an American Indian from the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Convinced by his cousin and best friend, Rocky, he enlists in the Army during WWII. Ultimately both young men are taken prisoner together by the Japanese. The horrors of that experience leave Tayo adrift in a limbo-like state, in an Army mental hospital. When he is discharged, still far from well, he finds himself wavering between a desire to return to the hospital's sterile cold white environment, where he felt invisible yet safe; and a tendency to slip into the false happiness of near-constant drunkenness which some of his old friends and fellow veterans have embraced. Wise women in his family have another plan, and hold hope for his redemption, however. They encourage Tayo to seek out a medicine man who can put him in touch with the old ways, and help him complete a journey...a journey which is also a ceremony of deliverance from the evil they know as "witchery"...a journey which may end with a promising sunrise and a form of peace.

I found it difficult to engage with this story at first; I would pick it up, read several pages and find myself totally lost---who is speaking, whose point of view is this, did this happen before or after Tayo went to war? I persisted, not wanting to give up on what I was sure was a significant piece of literature. There were beautiful descriptive passages, and the women intrigued me. A story poem interjected into the text a bit at a time tempted me just to find its parts and read it all at once. (I resisted doing so.) At some point, I found I was invested in Tayo's struggle, and was rooting for him to prevail. I am quite pleased to have stuck with it to the end, although I cannot say I totally grasp all there is in it. There are beautiful moments, even some small measure of hope on an individual scale. I think it is impossible to appreciate Ceremony fully without knowing something of the creation myths and other beliefs of the Pueblo people. Part of Tayo's difficulty is that he himself (in part because he has mixed heritage and has suffered the epithet "half-breed" all his life) neither understands nor accepts the cultural norms so important to his grandmother until he has undertaken his journey and acknowledged the witchery at work in the world. This story can not make sense in the context of European morality; it has to be taken on the characters' terms or left alone. I can admire it without completely understanding it, especially as I assume it was not written for me, a white woman of Anglo-Saxon and Eastern European descent. It is one of those novels that, like much of Faulkner, cannot simply be read, but must be re-read.

“The old teller has been on every journey
and she knows all the escape stories
even stories before she was born,
She keeps the stories for those who return
but more important
for the dear ones who do not come back
so that we may remember them
and cry for them with the stories.”

“You must be very quiet and listen respectfully.
Otherwise the storyteller might get upset and pout
and not say another word all night.”

Storytelling has been a hallowed tradition for Native Americans and has been that way for centuries. Silko pays tribute to that tradition, in this collection of stories, poems and striking, B & W, photographs. She also weaves in her own family's history, along with her own childhood experiences, listening to the tales told by her grandparents. This was my first time reading Silko, and it was a wonderful introduction.

[Ceremony] is powerful, memorable and, at once a total indictment of European genocide in North America
and stands as a testimony to
the resilience, faith, and courage of the Indigenous people who survived. And still endure on "reservations."

Scientists are now determining that it would be healthier for U.S. "Indians" to be ALLOWED to hunt, fish, gather, and preserve their own food.
Is that America's idea of reparations?

Given many people's understanding and often agreement with the practice of some Indigenous People to offer redemption in place of punishment,
sending a man who has just murdered three people for no reason to California with zero consequences for his responsibility could be asking for
more murders since "Why not?"

Would Tayo have felt the same accepting ambivalence if Emo had murdered Rocky or Josiah or his beloved Grandmother?

And what was the reason for the senseless violence that resulted in the killing of his two former friends?
Alcohol and stupidity do not account for this odd revenge.

The story of an Indian/white man dealing with his past and his experiences in the Philippines during WWII. He used ancient Indian stories and medicine men to regain peace with the world.

Told from Tayo's point-of-view. He is a Native American who, along with his cousin, goes off to fight in Southeast Asia during WWII. When he returns home, he is suffering from PTSD. The story switches time periods from before the war growing up, during the war, after the war. Some of his friends relive their time in the army when they were heroes. Tayo is just trying to cope with his life and his war experiences.

Interesting style of writing where there is no chapters. It is one continuous story that switches back and forth from the far past, the war, and the present with Native wisdom, stories, and songs. I like that it is written from the Native American point-of-view and that we get into Tayo's mind and dreams. I had no problems switching between the time periods and was able to keep track of when and what was happening. A fascinating book that I am glad I read.