Leslie Marmon Silko: A Collection of Critical Essays ed. by Louise K. Barnett, James L. Thorson

Abstract

B o o k r e v ie w s Leslie M armon Silko: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Louise K. Barnett and James L. Thorson. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999/2001. 336 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by W illiam M . Clem ents Arkansas State University, State University Leslie Marmon Silko has been one of the most frequently studied of the Native American writers who emerged in the last third of the twentieth cen­ tury. Her short fiction and the novel Ceremony, which appeared in the 1970s, assured her a central position among those writers, and she has received con­ siderable critical attention for the past quarter century. By 1979— just two years after the novel’s publication—American Indian Quarterly devoted an entire issue to Ceremony, and there has been a steady stream of scholarly crit­ icism of Silko’s work ever since. The current volume, a paperback edition of a book originally published in 1999, is a welcome addition to that body of criticism. Each of the thirteen essays brought together by Barnett and Thorson contributes to our under­ standing of Silko’s work. A couple of general features of the whole collection merit particular attention. All the authors demonstrate the relevance of the complementary perspectives of postmodernism and the indigenous Native American aesthetic out of which Silko writes. The most current literary theo­ rists inform the essays, but so do the ideas about art and literature articulated by Silko herself and other American Indian writers. The editors also chose essays that examine underexplored Silko works. Though not ignored, the oftendiscussed Ceremony is seldom mentioned; only one essay concentrates on Silko’s important first novel. Instead, these scholars focus on the collection Storyteller (1981) and particularly on Silko’s second novel, Almanac of the Dead (1991). Since the latter book has often been misunderstood and underappreciated, devoting more than half of its pieces to it makes this collection especially valu­ able. The essays on Almanac of the Dead— from Paul Beekman Taylor’s ambi­ tious investigation of how Silko has regained in the novel some of the esoteric meanings that Europeans and Euro-Americans have appropriated from Native American sources to Janet St. Clair’s analysis of the novel’s homophobic imagery to Janet M. Powers’s comparison of the novel to Dante’s C ommedia (to cite only a few of the insightful articles in the collection)— afford real oppor­ tunities for enhanced appreciation of a work that makes many readers uncom­ fortable. Also, one essay (that by Daniel White) treats Silko’s nonfiction, an important component of her literary work that is often relegated only to pro­ viding context for the discussion of her fiction and poetry. A preface by Robert Franklin Gish, an introduction by the volume’s editors, and a biographical sketch of Silko by Robert M. Nelson precede the critical articles. Connie Capers Thorson’s bibliographical essay and bibliography of primary and secondary materials round out the book. 116 WAL 37.1 Spring 2002 Readers should be aware that nothing by Silko published after 1996— the year when the nonfiction collection Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit appeared— has been treated by the essayists. Consequently, her most recent novel, Gardens in the Dunes (1999), did not make the chronological cut. Nevertheless, this collection of essays is essential reading for anyone interested in Silko’s work, especially Almanac of the Dead. Reading the Fire: The Traditional Indian Literatures of America. Revised and expanded by Jarold Ramsey. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. 360 pages, $19.95. Reviewed by Tol Foster University of Wisconsin—Madison This review begins with a confession: I dreaded reading another book about the “pure” Native oral tradition, with its implication that contemporary written texts by Native authors are somehow deficient and corrupted because they refuse to be static artifacts of a frozen culture. I also feared another book that refuses to contextualize Native literature within its specific culture and time. There is none of that in this book. Instead, we gain through Ramsey’s work strong methodologies and awareness of the stakes and pitfalls in a package that is downright pleasurable to read. The fruit...