Discursive Violence in Silko’s Yashtoah

The concepts of change and identity are problematic for the characters within Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Tayo’s hybridity represents all that the Laguna people fear. The coming of change and meshing of cultures has brought an impending threat of ruin to Native American traditions. Although they reject him for his mixed heritage, Tayo’s journey is not his own but a continuation of the storytelling tradition that embodies Native American culture. Through tradition he learns to use his white and Mexican heritage to identify himself without abandoning his Native American practices.

Like the Pueblo Indians, Silko carefully chooses her diction in order to give the audience an even better idea about the culture of the Pueblo Indians. For example, Silko chooses the phrase “highly suspect” to explain how the audience does not carefully choose their words. Furthermore, Silko explains how the Pueblo Indians do not believe in “detachment from the occasion and the audience,” which is a result of a rehearsed speech. Rather, the Pueblos prefer words that are “unpremeditated and unrehearsed.” In addition, the Pueblos prefer writing that is all attached, resembling a “spider’s web, with many little threads radiating from the

This shines light upon her Native American roots and how it can be an inspiration for her Century Quilt, each square representing her family’s racial diversity and mixed roots. It is quite difficult to learn of all the harsh animosity they were enduring, such as Meema and her yellow sisters whose “grandfather’s white family nodding at them when they met” (24-27). The hostility is clear as the white relatives only register their presence; no “hello” or warm embrace as if they didn’t acknowledge them as true family. However, with descriptive imagery, the speaker’s sense of pride for having the best of both worlds is still present as she understands Meema’s past experiences and embraces her family’s complexity wholeheartedly; animosity and all.

These oral stories, or histories, provides historical actors with an opportunity to depict their own stories in their own words, where usual written records often discount the great unwashed. For Indigenous peoples, individuality is critical to shared histories. Politicians, activists, and business leaders may materialize frequently in official documents and the media, usually manipulating it for their purposes, but the rest of us very seldom do. In The Back of The Turtle, Kings portrays a identical similar setting; a world full of media coverage that is manipulated by large companies, such as Dominion; “‘A spill?’ ‘No’ said Winter. “But evidently there has been some seepage. Possibly from one of our ponds.’ ‘Didn’t we fund an environmental

"Their (Natives) present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies…By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to

In Indigena as scribe: The (W)rite to remember. A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness Writings, Cherrie Moraga emphasizes the importance of writing, as people of color. Moraga makes us aware of how much we deny our culture, practices, and myths because we are so afraid to be like our ancestors. Although we fear this close proximity to our ancestors, to Moraga, that same proximity is what makes our narratives valuable. The fear carried within us silences us and makes us forget about the powerful voices we hold. Moraga also writes about the importance of recognizing that institutionally, we have become colonized beings and to understand this concept, can help us break away from the shackles that keep us from being who we truly are. For Moraga, it is important that we acknowledge the power that writing has. She wants us to realize that our narratives are important and we have the right to remember who we are.

Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony, reveals how the crossing of cultures was feared, ridiculed, and shunned in various Native American tribes. The fear of change is a common and overwhelming fear everyone faces at some point in their life. The fear of the unknown, the fear of letting go, and the fear of forgetting all play a part in why people struggle with change. In Ceremony the crossing of cultures creates “half-breeds,” usually bringing disgrace to their family’s name. In Jodi Lundgren’s discourse, “Being a Half-breed”, is about how a girl who struggles with understanding what cultural group she fits into since she is a “half-breed.” Elizabeth Evasdaughter’s essay, “Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony”: Healing Ethnic Hatred by

Stories that have been passed on for decades by Indigenous people have many cultural values and meanings that can help teach and guide others. In his book Earth Elder Stories: The Pinayzitt Path, Alexander Wolfe’s includes three stories “The Sound of Dancing,” “The Orphan Children,” and “Grandfather Buffalo,” that reveal important Anishinaabe cultural values. In the story “The Sound of Dance,” the value of family sacrifice is shown as a strong Anishinaabe cultural value. In the story “The Orphan Children,” Wolfe expresses the importance of orally transmitted knowledge as a core Anishinaabe cultural value. Then in “Grandfather Bear,” the keeper of knowledge emphasizes the importance of the connection to the past, especially within family relations in Anishinaabe culture. There are many cultural values that can be found in these three stories told my Alexander Wolfe. Family sacrifice is one of many values shown throughout these stories, specifically in the story “The Sound of Dancing”.

Sandra Cisneros’s short story “Never Marry a Mexican” deals heavily with the concept of myth in literature, more specifically the myth La Malinche, which focuses on women, and how their lives are spun in the shadows on men (Fitts). Myths help power some of the beliefs of entire cultures or civilizations. She gives the reader the mind of a Mexican-American woman who seems traitorous to her friends, family and people she is close to. This causes destruction in her path in the form of love, power, heartbreak, hatred, and an intent to do harm to another, which are themes of myth in literature. The unreliable narrator of this story was created in this story with the purpose to show her confusion and what coming from two completely different

Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach incorporates words and phrases from the Haisla language in an effort to reflect the protagonist’s culture while also satiating the cultural curiosity of a non-indigenous audience. The incorporation of Haisla is one of the mechanics of the Glorious Northern Gothic novel, as it provides a reformation of traditional Gothic conventions through an Indigenous lens. The Haisla language is presented through the protagonist’s narration and is usually introduced in an instructional tone or story. Italics mark most of the language in the text; however in some instances the words are not italicized or are only implied. It is through this process of marking that the use of Haisla language moves beyond a mode of integrating the protagonist’s culture into the story and provides a critique on Non-Indigenous Canadians’ appetite for Indigenous stories: what language the text contains and what language is omitted defines what parts of the culture Non-Indigenous Canadians have already consumed or are permitted to consume.

Traditions and old teachings are essential to Native American culture; however growing up in the modern west creates a distance and ignorance about one’s identity. In the beginning, the narrator is in the hospital while as his father lies on his death bed, when he than encounters fellow Native Americans. One of these men talks about an elderly Indian Scholar who paradoxically discussed identity, “She had taken nostalgia as her false idol-her thin blanket-and it was murdering her” (6). The nostalgia represents the old Native American ways. The woman can’t seem to let go of the past, which in turn creates confusion for the man to why she can’t let it go because she was lecturing “…separate indigenous literary identity which was ironic considering that she was speaking English in a room full of white professors”(6). The man’s ignorance with the elderly woman’s message creates a further cultural identity struggle. Once more in the hospital, the narrator talks to another Native American man who similarly feels a divide with his culture. “The Indian world is filled with charlatan, men and women who pretend…”

Rigoberta starts questioning her perspective on ladinos, wondering if they are really all bad. She befriends Indians who have worked with poor ladinos who suffer from the same problems as her community does. The poor, from ladino to Indian, are exploited just the same yet they are so conditioned to dislike one another it’s hard for them to unite and really consider their circumstances the same. This troubles Rigoberta greatly for she knows that the heart of her distress aches from abuse from the rich landowners and if the poor ladinos are abused the same, they ache as well. Rigoberta dares to live in a state of confusion when wondering why there is such an enormous barrier between ladino and Indian. This confused state of mind is progressive for her time because her culture has long equated change and confusion with chaos and

Throughout literature many pieces of work can be compared and contrasted to each other. In “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie discusses the challenges he faced as a young Indian adult, who found his passion of reading at an early age, living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He challenged the stereotype of the young Indian students who were thought to be uneducated while living on a reservation. Likewise, in the excerpt from The Hunger of Memory, Richard Rodriguez shares his similar experience of being a minority and trying to break stereotypes of appearing uneducated. He shares the details of his life growing up learning a different culture and the struggles he faced becoming assimilated into American culture. In these two specific pieces of literature discuss the importance of breaking stereotypes of social and educational American standards and have similar occupational goals; on the other hand the two authors share their different family relationships.

However instead of employing historical contexts to create the tension, Ondaatje makes subtle but explicit comments on historical oblivion to individuals and their stories. History is implicitly considered as a master narrative that allows no space to articulate local narratives and to account for the richness, variety and complexity of human experience. To counterbalance the

Many individuals were born into a life that their past generations had left for them. Some were born into slavery and forced to work in cotton fields because they had no equal rights as the white individuals. Having gone through the mistreatment, humiliation, and the discrimination done by the white individuals, not many had the opportunity o create the life they desired. This was presented in “The Last Member of the Boela Tribe “ written by Cathy Day in which four generations , Bascomb, Gordon,Verna, and Chicky, were left with a past and present that they could not escape from unable to move forward to create new identities for themselves that is expressed through the use of characterization and symbolism.