Ceremony Annotated Bibliography Draft

Jessica Webb
Professor Rouzie
ENG 254
Thursday, April 30, 2009

Annotated Bibliography of Critical Sources for Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony

In Silko’s Ceremony, the “witchery” of white colonialization is, in part, what makes Tayo need to undergo any type of healing at all. In this case, nativism also refers to the effects of colonization on the Native American population, usually in regards to the geographical land. Nativism (the negative reaction against immigrants) also in this case in not purely a Native American issue, though they were there first, because they are no longer in control of their ancestral land. Nativism and racism are similar, however; racism is strictly a race disliking another, while nativism can literally split races with hate. The effect on culture so tied to the land, which are deprived of their very ethno-cultural soul and the land which provides them with their identity is astonishing in this novel. This is, in part, to the effects of nativism on the Laguna population. Therefore, I make the case that Ceremony is, at least in part, a nativist text, as the characters’ progression is heavily fueled by this nativist agenda, not just by the whites, but also by the Laguna themselves.

Bennani, Benjamin and Catherine Warner Bennani. “No Ceremony for Men in the Sun: Sexuality, Personhood, and Nationhood in Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony”. Critical Perspectives on Native American Fiction. Ed. Fleck, Richard F. Washington, D.C: Three Continents P, 1993, 246-255.

The Bennanis make a claim in this article for the characters’ “loss” of personhood, and thus, nationhood. The Laguna, because they are a conquered people, must keep re-inventing themselves. This draws them farther and farther away from a culturally-accepted concept of nationhood. The colonialization process is robbing them of their nationhood and their sense of individual purpose. They cannot fit in in any “new” world. The Bennanis also make a case for this sense of loss driving Silko’s characters through their meaningless, empty lives. This loss of person and nation fuels the sense of nativism in the Laguna people. The Lagunas have become a people who do not love as they should, but instead hate: whites, other Indians, and themselves- the very definition of nativism.

Cutchins, Dennis. ""So That the Nations May Become Genuine Indian": Nativism and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony." Journal of American Culture 22.4 (1999), 79-91.

(Unfinished Annotation)

Holm, Sharon. "The "Lie" of the Land: Native Sovereignty, Indian Literary Nationalism, and Early Indigenism in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony." American Indian Quarterly 32.3 (2008), 243-274.

(Unfinished Annotation)

Piper, Karen. "Police Zones: Territory and Identity in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony." American Indian Quarterly 21.3 (1997), 483-497.

Piper opens her article the concept of Laguna oral tradition. Via these stories, the Laguna’s geographic home becomes part of their legends, their landscapes, and their lives. The whites view land as property, a dead thing, while the Laguna view their land as alive and constantly in flux, much like themselves. Though the Native Americans have been granted “sovereignty”, they only get a little, enough to appease the Indians who live on these reservations. In reality, the whites have already stolen all of their land and own it without saying so. The landscape, as Piper says, becomes a palimpsest in this manner. The witchery of the whites has diffused into the Laguna’s very landscape, becoming attached to the Laguna themselves. Through this witchery, the Indian culture is being destroyed from the inside out. The landscape becomes the way to constantly re-enter discourse against their colonizers. Silko’s Ceremony seeks, in Piper’s eyes, to dissolve their colonizer’s power that is keeping the Native Americans under its thumb.

Wilson, Michael D. “‘Authenticity’ and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony”. Writing Home: Indigenous Narratives of Resistance. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2008, 21-42.

Wilson makes a case in this chapter about “authenticity”. Colonialism puts indigenous cultures in rigid boundaries that the cultures cannot fit into, as Fleck states. Thus, the colonialists can easily rob most indigenous cultures of any type of logical authenticity. Indigenous peoples usually cannot verify any type authenticity to their colonizers, keeping them at a perpetual disadvantage. Authenticity is also questioned, being called not fixed or natural. Thus, it may not be a reliable, logical tool in decision-making. The struggle for Native Americans to achieve authenticity is an uphill battle that they must win because of the cards they have been dealt. Nativism results from this- resentment that they must justify their existence to the white man. Once tribes are “authenticated”, more doors (regarding economics, justice, social issues, etc.) are opened for them. Fleck describes an “authentic core” of indigenous literature, also making a case that Silko’s Ceremony does not belong in this category. The concept of ‘inauthentic’, will always taint what is believed to be authentic.