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.The sum of Storyteller is greater than its parts.The very act of storytelling isas important as the story itself.Silko seeks to lose herself in the generations ofstorytellers who precede and will follow her.The storyteller is a unifier, someonewho brings the people together to share in the story s wisdom and be transformedby it. Storytelling, she writes, brings us together despite great distances betweencultures, despite great distances in time.70 NATIVE AMERICAN WRITERSMajor ThemesIn Storyteller, Silko attempted to create what she calls a single form, a new thingwhich grows naturally out of [these] other forms of experience and expression.Through fragments, tales, myths, and photographs, she re-creates the world of thestoryteller and his or her power to transform the world through narration andimagination.Storytelling for Silko is at the heart of the communal life she is a partof, both past and present.Other themes that are explored in the collection are the struggle against co-lonialism and the subjugation of native peoples, the importance of language, andpersonal growth.Superstition Versus Reason and ReligionThe world of the Indians in Silko s stories is filled with magic and witchcraft.The mostprofound example is Tony s Story, based on a real crime that took place in New Mex-ico in the early 1950s.In Silko s story, two friends, Tony and Leon, are together at theFeast of San Lorenzo (Saint Lawrence) in their pueblo.Leon has returned from mili-tary service and has been changed by living in the outside world of white men.Tony,who has remained in the pueblo, is bound by tradition and believes in the supernatu-ral.During the festivities, the two encounter a white state police officer who, withoutreason, savagely attacks Leon.Leon is outraged by this injustice and takes his case tothe tribal council, seeking justice.He warns that if the same racist officer attacks himagain, he will kill him.Tony sees the attack in a different light.He believes the evil-minded cop is a witch and wears an amulet to protect himself from his power.He triesto get Leon to wear an amulet, but his friend refuses and scoffs at his superstitions.Ironically, in a final confrontation with the malicious officer, it is Tony, thepeace-loving one, who kills the policeman, while Leon looks on in shock.Tony, ina dream, saw the evil man as an obstacle to the coming of the much-needed rainson their land. Don t worry, everything is O.K.now, Leon, Tony tells his friendafter the killing.The last sentence of the story suggests that Tony may be right:.in the west, rain clouds were gathering.Whether the author believes in Tony s interpretation or not is left in doubt.There is less doubt in The Man to Send Rain Clouds, in which the wise villagersthwart the Catholic priest Father Paul in his efforts to give the dead shepherd aChristian burial.The villagers not only get their way with the burial rite, they evenenlist Father Paul in their plan.The priest is not depicted as a guiding light for thesimple Pueblo people but a pathetic outsider who does not fit in with their com-munity.The bonds of superstition and magic are strong and serve an importantrole in the native community, Silko seems to be saying.Personal Empowerment Through StoriesIn a story originally told to Silko by her Aunt Alice, a girl goes hunting and provesherself the equal of any boy or man.The story is set in a stretch of countrysideLeslie Marmon Silko 71known for its rock landmark.Every time a child passes the rock, he or she is re-minded by its elders of the story.Silko believes that such a story is meant to em-power every girl who hears it and that she also identified strongly with the girl inthe story. People tell those stories about you and your family or about others and theybegin to create your identity, the author said in an interview.The story, if mean-ingful, gives its teller strength to overcome adversity and, as in the case of theYupik girl in Storyteller, a defense against forces that would dominate and defeather and her family.Even if the modern world rejects the story, the teller continuesto stubbornly tell it, as the old man does in his bed.As Elizabeth McHenry writes in an essay on Silko s book, Blurring theboundaries between art and social science, she is able to introduce her readersto the fullness and fragmentation of her own private life and the life of Lagunaculture.In Silko s richly realized stories, the individual and the communal intertwine,informing and mutually supporting each other.CNGJMLJLRSCarter Curtis RevardN.Scott MomadayGerald VizenorJames WelchMichael DorrisLeslie Marmon SilkoJoy HarjoLouise ErdrichRigoberta MenchSherman AlexieJOYHARJOBiographyA leading Native American poet whose poems depict the mythical pastand often confusing present of the contemporary world, Joy Harjo was born onMay 9, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation,and grew up in New Mexico.Her aunt Lois Harjo Ball and her grandmotherNaomi Harjo Foster were both painters.Harjo s father, a sheet-metal worker,left the family when she was young.She earned her B.A.from the University ofNew Mexico in 1976 and then earned a master of fine arts degree (M.F.A.) increative writing at the University of Iowa in 1978.She published her first collec-tion of poetry, The Last Song, in 1975.It was followed by the poetry collectionsWhat Moon Drove Me to This? (1979) and She Had Some Horses (1983).Secretsfrom the Center of the World (1989) was a unique collaboration with astrono-mer and photographer Stephen Strom that combined poems and photographs.Harjo s fifth collection of poems, In Mad Love and War (1990), received theAmerican Book Award and the Delmore Schwarz Memorial Award
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