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Introduction

Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko is considered one of the great masters of Native American literature. She grew up near a Native American reservation but was never allowed to participate in the rituals of her people because of her mixed heritage. Perhaps in rebellion, she has always identified herself more strongly with her Laguna Pueblo roots than with her European ones. Though Silko has published many nonfiction works, including scathing criticisms of other writers’ work, she’s most famous for her first novel, Ceremony. Still widely read and studied in colleges across the United States today, Ceremony emphasizes the importance of reintegrating older traditions and knowledge into our lives—exactly what Silko herself has been doing since she was a young girl.

Essential Facts

1. Silko is the daughter of famous photographer Lee Marmon.
2. Silko’s first story, “The Man to Send Rainclouds,” won a National Endowment for the Humanities Discovery Grant. She was also awarded the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 1981.
3. Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead has been criticized because many of the book’s villains are homosexual.
4. Silko has been called the first Native American woman novelist, which is a staggering thought considering that Ceremony was published in 1977.
5. Silko grew up feeling isolated because neither white society nor the Laguno society fully accepted her. Her prominent family made the Laguna distrustful, but her skin color kept white society from embracing her. She has said, “I am of mixed-breed ancestry, but what I know is Laguna.”