Identity In Silko's Yellow Woman

Silko uses many structural elements in an attempt to make her point of what beauty is clear, convincing, and engaging. The first of which is a reflective style of writing. She also uses a first person point of view. Finally she does not address the title until the final paragraph.

In the opening, she shares her childhood encounters with women in prose with the children’s rhyme “a little girl who had a curl”. This personal anecdote introduces the topic of the portrayal of women in literature, as well as establishes a connection with her audience.

Additionally, Silko uses anecdote to prove the message of the power of stories. Not only do stories preserve tradition and culture when shared, but stories also give strength. For example, a story was told to build strength during a difficult time when Tayo was fighting in the jungle during the war. As Silko states, “He made a story for all of them, a story to give them strength. The words of the story poured out of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles, and stone extending to hold the corporal up, to keep his knees from buckling, to keep his hands from letting go of the blanket” (Silko 10-11).

In her book, “Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit”, the author clearly tells about how the culture of the Laguna Pueblo Indians were so different from that of the Western culture. For example, in Laguna Pueblo, there is no different class or social status. I find this very interesting. They also do not place too much value on one’s outward beauty as well. Instead, women were more attractive if they are strong, even stout, which is a great contrast to today's –Western definition: skinny and thin, flawless face etc. They are more interested in beauty within. How one is at peace with nature, his or her surroundings. It is more of having a good character, being selfless, and courageous at any age.

These expectations increased when she was in the presence of “great power, [her] mother talking story” (20). In one particular situation, the narrator recalls her mother singing about Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior. Although her mother expected her daughter to become a wife or a slave, the narrator had a different idea; she would “grow up a woman warrior” (20). As a young girl, she said that she “couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began” (19). This is the case in “White Tigers.” The narrator’s dream-state takes readers into the mind of a girl who attempts to please her mother and entire family by becoming a woman warrior. This is possibly an attempt to subside much of the harsh ridicule she receives from her mother due to cultural differences. Although this is a key factor in her early childhood, she learns to block out these criticisms as she grows older.

To sum up, the narrator in the story is able to fulfill her instinctual desires by becoming a Yellow Woman. She transforms through her dream-like journey into the person she longed to be. It was not until Silva became violent and she sees “something ancient and dark” in his eyes that she begins to snap back into reality. The story reaches out to all of its readers and allows them to relate to the narrator because we all have unfulfilled desires throughout our lives. The sensational descriptions that are given of the landscape as well as her sexual interactions with Silva make the narrator’s thoughts and feelings very easy to understand. In fact many of us who have read the story “Yellow Woman” have a feeling of jealousy that the woman was able to have her adventure and return home and resume her life as normal, without consequence.

In the short story “Yellow Woman”, Leslie Marmon Silko uses characterization and symbolism to address personal and cultural identity.

Lindo was arranged to marry Tyan-yu. While the marriage was short-lived, Tyan-yu constantly lied to Lindo, and Tyan-yu’s mother treated Lindo like an object to be bartered between families. Lindo experiences depression being trapped in this lifestyle, so she decides to flee to America in order to escape it. When reminiscing on her marriage Lindo says, “I had no choice, now or later. That was how backward families in the country were. We were always the last to give up stupid old-fashioned customs” (Tan ). Similar to the mother in the beginning, Tan creates appeal to pathos, forcing the reader to sympathize with Lindo. The reader’s sympathy to Lindo allows Tan to expand on the larger issue of sexism, creating an emotional and educational tone in order to coax the reader into, again, understanding the true scale of sexism. Tan drilling this larger idea of sexism into readers changes the reader’s perspective. With new perspective, readers notice the need for change to establish equality between both sexes. Therefore, Tan is using her writing as a tool for a deeper subject: exciting change within the world, and thus, exemplifying Jong’s words.

This modern fairy tale contains diverse characters but none of them are as important as the grandmother. In fact, through her narration the reader gets the basic

Rayona and her mother Christine grew up in different worlds but they are very similar in many ways. Christine faced various problems as a young child that are now being passed down to Rayona and she is now seeing how they are being affected by them. The novel “A Yellow Raft in Blue Water” walks us through Rayona’s coming of age story and the three perspectives that it is being told in, Rayona’s, Christine’s, and Ida’s. Although Rayona and Christine are very different, they both seem to be facing similar problems; they end up helping one another find their self identity and both are finally able to appreciate and understand one another.

Chapter one titled, “No Name Woman”, is an example of the narrator referring to her mother’s talk-stories and a prominent illustration of incorporating the past into the present. This talk- story is culturally based to express information about the past. In “No Name Women”, the narrator explains that her mother, Brave Orchid, would use the stories to give lessons on life that would stick with her children. She represents a bridge figure with one foot in the past, her Chinese culture that she relays on to the family and one foot in the present, her assimilation to American life. The bridge that Brave Orchid acts as brings together the two cultures and allows her to incorporate the family’s Chinese history into their present

Throughout the story, we see a major idea about how people view “beauty.” The story begins with Silko identifying her flaws and how others see her and her siblings as “different.” “From the time I was a small child, I was aware that I was different. I looked different from my playmate”, (pg. 60) shows more of the introduction of how she perceives herself in a negative fashion. Beauty to the “white” people was adopted as one’s physical appearance meaning the clothes they wear, their facial structure, makeup & cosmetic surgeries, etc.

Leslie Marmon Silko transforms a mythological story about a traditional Yellow Woman who has little control over her own life into one about a Yellow Woman who is of interest to us primarily because she is allowed to take control over the events in her own life and to tell, in her own words, about her own actions, feelings and confusions and make it all adapted to modern society. Throughout this story Silko explores

At the end of Tayo’s healing process, “the sun was sending yellow light across the clouds, and the yellow river sand was speckled with the broken shadows. The leaves of the big cottonwood tree had turned pale yellow, the first sunlight caught the tips of the leaves at the top of the old tree and made them bright gold”(32-33). The sun and the color yellow become natural/spiritual signs to Tayo. They are portrayed as a sign that both health and life were/are returning to not only his people, but he himself and his life.

Folktales are a way to represent situations analyzing different prospects about gender, through the stories that contribute with the reality of the culture in which they develop while these provide ideas about the behavior and roles of a specific sex building a culture of womanhood, manhood and childhood. This is what the stories of Little Red Riding Hood of Charles Perrault (1697) and Little Red-Cap of the Grimm Brothers (1812) show. This essay will describe some ideas about gender in different ways. First, the use of symbolic characters allows getting general ideas about the environment in the society rather than individuals. Second, it is possible to identify ideas about gender from the plot from the applied vocabulary providing a