Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko - 1977
Introduction
Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony (1977) is a literary landmark. One of the first contemporary female Native American novelists, Silko was at the forefront of the explosion of Native American literature that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Ceremony deals with the struggles of Indian men returning from World War II, where for a time they were considered "Americans" rather than "Indians." Back in the peacetime United States, however, they once again face prejudice and exclusion from white society. Tayo, the main character, is a Laguna Pueblo Indian of mixed ancestry. He returns home from the Pacific battlefields, but the cousin he vowed to protect during the war does not. Tayo had cursed the endless rain, which he blamed for his cousin's death during their forced march to the Japanese prisoner of war camp. He returns home a broken man, only to find that his curse was all too effective: rain not only disappeared from the island of his captivity, but a severe drought has come to the land of the Laguna Pueblo people. Awash in grief and guilt, Tayo must grapple with questions of identity and ethnicity, both in and out of the Pueblo tribe.
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