What Is The Role Of Storytelling In Silko's Lullaby

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.

In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will

The birth mother has also experienced racism and talks of it with experience and ease shown through the flowing poetic imagery used to describe it. At the same time, the daughter conveys the questioning of self undergone by the adopted.

As a result of beginning this piece with the phrase “where I come from,” Silko immediately begins to build her credibility. Furthermore, the phrase “among the Pueblo people” reveals to the audience that Silko has a Pueblo Indian background. This fact allows the audience to have confidence that Silko knows exactly what she is talking about, since she has had personal experience with the culture of the Pueblo Indians.

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.

“Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.-Native American proverb” This is a Native American proverb that shows how important storytelling and stories are to the Native Americans and their culture. Storytelling was a big way of teaching their lifestyle to their younger generation. Storytelling is very important to the Native American culture because it helps explain their way of life, faith, and helps teach life lessons to the younger generation.

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”.

Many Aboriginal populations have been using storytelling as a way of communication for centuries. Storytelling is used on a day to day basis whether it be reading a story to kids or telling friends about an experience. The importance of storytelling is highlighted constantly throughout the book Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden and the entire story itself is a recollection of memories. Niska tells stories of her past to warn and teach Xavier. Xavier tells stories of his haunting and innocence shattering experience at war to help him heal. Elijah tells stories about his life before and during the war as an attempt to maintain what is left of his aboriginal culture and to heal himself by reminding himself of his achievements and what he has proudly accomplished . Storytelling plays a significant role in the novel by teaching and helping to heal the characters.

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…”

Like a coin dropped between the cushions of a couch, traditional oral storytelling is a custom fading away in current American culture. For Native Americans, however, the practice of oral storytelling is still a tradition that carries culture and rich history over the course of generations. Three examples of traditional oral stories, “How Men and Women Got Together”, “Coyote’s Rabbit Chase”, and “Corn Mother”, demonstrate key differences in perspectives and values among diverse native tribes in America.

     Throughout Ceremony, the author, Leslie Silko, displays the internal struggle that the American Indians faced at that time in history. She displays this struggle between good and evil in several parts of the book. One is the myth explaining the origin of the white man.

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.

Tapahonso’s novel is filled with poems and short stories that encompass her Native American tribe the Navajos. As you follow along the journey she takes you, you are able to learn about the importance of a child’s first laugh, the creation of her people, and even how in “Tune Up” children have to come home in order to feel at peace with themselves, their lives, and their culture. “The port presents her memories— ‘long time ago stories,’ as she calls them—as explanations of the Dine way of life to her grandchildren (Vasquez).” This novel is written more for her family and tribe then it is for an outsider. However, as a reader you feel that you are invited into a private world that rarely gets seen.

“Lullaby” is a short story that first appeared in a book entitled Storyteller in 1981. This was a book written by Leslie M. Silko that uses short stories, memories, poetry, family pictures, and songs to present her message. The book is concerned, in general, with the tradition of story-telling as it pertains to the Native American culture.