You should understand the way it was
back then, because it is the same even now.
SO WROTE LESLIE MARMON SILKO in Storyteller (1981). Silko (b. 1948) draws on the past—on traditional Laguna Pueblo stories and on her Pueblo, white, and Mexican heritage—to create poems and stories that are relevant to current times. Her first novel, Ceremony (1977), intertwines tribal mythology with the story of a veteran returning to the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Silko is considered one of the foremost writers of the so-called Native American Renaissance, an explosion of works by such Native American authors as the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday and the Ojibwe writer Louise Erdrich. Test what you know about this modern-day storyteller with a quick Silko quiz.
1. What collection of poems was Silko’s first published book?
2. From what war had Tayo, the main character in Ceremony, returned?
3. Which character from Laguna Pueblo mythology appears often in Silko’s fiction, as well as in the title of her essay collection on contemporary Native American life?
4. The Delicacy and Strength of Lace (1986) was a collection of letters between Silko and which Pulitzer Prize–winning American poet?
5. In what epic novel does Silko describe the time since the Americas were colonized as the “epoch of Death-Eye dog”?
ANSWERS
1. Laguna Woman (1974).
2. World War II, although the book was written at a time when many soldiers had returned from fighting in Vietnam.
3. Yellow Woman, who in traditional stories saved the Pueblo people from starvation. The essay collection is Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit (1997).
4. James Wright.
5. Almanac of the Dead (1991).