Ceremony: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

By Leslie Marmon Silko and Larry McMurtry

The great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

More than thirty-five years since its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power. The Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition contains a new preface by the author and an introduction by Larry McMurtry.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 26, 2006
• ISBN: 9781440621826

Leslie Marmon Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko, a former professor of English and fiction writing, is the author of novels, short stories, essays, poetry, articles, and screenplays. She has won numerous awards and fellowships for her work. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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Preface

We moved to Ketchikan, Alaska, from Chinle, Arizona, in the late spring of 1973. My elder son, Robert Chapman, was seven years old, and Cazimir was eighteen months. Ketchikan was John Silko’s hometown, and he’d taken a supervisory position in the legal services office in Ketchikan. I had a book contract with Viking Press because Richard Seaver, who was a Viking editor, saw my short stories in Ken Rosen’s anthology, The Man to Send Rain Clouds. At the time I thought it was odd that my book contract specified either a collection of short stories or a novel. I didn’t have a literary agent then to explain that publishers preferred novels. I had no intention of writing anything but short stories for Viking Press; I felt confident about the short story as a genre, but aside from being a voracious reader of novels from age ten, I neglected to take that course the English Department offered on The Novel. No way I was going to mess with success. Short stories, that’s what I’d write. I used my writer’s grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to pay for day care for Caz while Robert was in school.

Located on Revillagigedo Island, 750 miles north of Seattle, Ketchikan had a mild climate by Alaskan standards due in large part to a warm ocean current named the Japanese Current. The average year-round temperature was forty-eight degrees, and the average rainfall was 180 inches. In Chinle the annual rainfall was twelve inches in a good year. I was accustomed to the bright sunlight of the Southwest, where the weather permitted activity outdoors all year around. In southeastern Alaska the tall spruce trees, the heavy clouds, fogs and mist and the steep mountains enclosed the town. In the Southwest I was accustomed to gazing into distances of forty or fifty miles. I was accustomed to seeing the sky and the stars and moon.

The change in climate had a profound effect on me; I spent all of June, July, and August fighting off the terrible lethargy of a depression caused in large part by the absence of sunlight. I managed to write one short story during that time, about a woman who drowned herself; it wasn’t a good short story but a message to myself. In September after the boys were in day care and school, I tried to write at home but I found it difficult to concentrate: the dirty dishes and dirty laundry seemed to cry out for attention.

About this time Richard Whittaker came to my aid. Dick and his family lived across the street from my Silko in-laws. He practiced Indian law mostly for the local tribes, and he was a strong supporter of the Alaska Legal Services program, which employed my husband. Dick was a reader of novels and especially admired Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I talked about needing a place to write, and Dick Whittaker invited me to use the table and chair in his closet-sized law library. His law office was located on the second floor of the building that housed the offices of the legal services program. The building is still there overlooking Ketchikan Creek, next to the great Chief Johnson totem pole with Raven and Fog Woman at the corner of Mission Street and Stedman Street.

I worked on the library table with my Hermes portable typewriter and a fountain pen. Once I saw what I’d typed, I immediately edited with a fountain pen. Every day I read the previous day’s writing to get myself started again. Luckily I was in the early stages when I didn’t have much manuscript or many notes, because of course I could not leave my work spread out over the law library table: Dick Whittaker and his staff did need to use the law books from time to time. I wrote the short story Lullaby in the law library. I’d already started to write what would become Ceremony, but after I heard Nash and Ada Chakee were killed, I allowed myself to stray from the novel long enough to write the short story in their memory.

After about six months, the legal services offices were moved to larger offices downtown, and I followed. There was a tiny office space there, but without a door. Some of the early draft of Ceremony is written on the back side of discarded legal services letterhead. I managed there for a couple of months until Dick Whittaker told me he couldn’t find a renter for the office space vacated by legal services. Rent free, he gave me the exclusive use of the space complete with heat and lights and, best of all, no telephone.

There was an outer room that had been for reception, and the inner office that had windows that looked out on Raven and Fog Woman above Ketchikan Creek. The inner office had a chair and a wide, long built-in plywood work area shaped like a wing. The first thing I did was buy a can of Chinese red enamel and paint the plywood desk top. I brought an old percolator down to make hot water for instant coffee. Some days when I got to my office I didn’t feel like working on the novel so I wrote letters to the new friends I’d met at a writers conference in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in June of 1973. Other days I’d scoot the Hermes and manuscript over and I’d stretch out on top of the work area for a nap.

My rule for myself was this: I had to stay in that room whether I wrote or not, and, finally, after I’d written letters to Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge or Lawson Inada, the poets who provided me with moral support, or taken a nap, I’d walk over to the window to look up at the big black raven carved above me on the top of the pole. A long way down the pole came Raven’s two raven helpers, Gitsanuk and Gitsaqeq, their raven beaks oddly hooked, melted from the fire’s heat the time they carried Raven’s gift of fire to human beings. Then came the figures of Raven and his wife, Fog Woman, who held two salmon by the tails. The beauty of the carved figures lifted my spirits and I’d finally break down my resistance, and start work on the novel.

At the time I didn’t know much about the Chief Johnson pole or the story of Raven and Fog Woman, but later I learned what an auspicious location my writing office had. The Chief Johnson pole was set in 1901 to celebrate the potlatch given by Chief Johnson for the Kadjuk Tlingits. The carved figures recalled Raven’s beloved wife, Fog Woman, who used Raven’s spruce root hat to create the first salmon. Soon the rivers and ocean were jammed with salmon, and suddenly Raven was rich. Once he was rich, he began to neglect Fog Woman, and one day he spoke abusively to her until she ran toward the beach where she turned into fog. Raven told himself it didn’t matter, but when he got home he found all the dried salmon he’d stored came to life again and swam out to sea and Raven was as poor as before. The figure of Fog Woman on the pole faces the ocean at the place the salmon enter the creek to spawn; Fog Woman’s gift of the salmon made the people of Ketchikan rich.

Lunchtime was easy. Mrs. Hirabayashi’s café was only a half block away, on the street across from the docks and the fishing fleet. Mrs. Hirabayashi and her mother ran the place. It had a long white marble counter with stools where the fishermen liked to sit. They grew aged poinsettias plants in the café front window. It might have been a soda fountain at one time. The Hirabayashis, like other Japanese Americans, were imprisoned in internment camps during the war, and it was Gordon Hirabayashi, Mrs. Hirabayashi’s son, who with others worked tirelessly to secure redress for the crime from the U.S. Congress.

Mrs. Hirabayashi welcomed all her customers with a joyous greeting, and her elderly mother working behind the stove smiled shyly and nodded. I always ordered the same thing: green tea and a bowl of pork noodles. Except for me and a few old Tlingit and Haida people, the Hirabayshis’ customers were fishermen in rubber boots and gray wool halibut jackets. Usually it was raining. My first October, in 1973, Ketchikan got 42.5 inches of rain in thirty-one days. So after my noodles and tea, I usually went straight back to my writing and worked until three, when it was time to fetch Caz from day care to be home when Robert returned from school.

If it wasn’t raining too hard, sometimes I wandered around downtown Ketchikan just looking at the fishing boats or giant cruise ships and the vast flotillas of spruce logs towed by tugboats to the pulp mill. Big ravens cavorted on the docks in search of tidbits from the fishing boats, but most amazing to my eyes were the great bald eagles, a dozen or more, that lounged or played in the tops of tall spruce while they waited to dive into the water for salmon. After a while I realized that Raven and Eagle still owned the town; the old-time tribal people belonged to the clans of Killer Whale, Grizzly Bear, and Wolf. Humans belonged to Halibut and King Salmon and Steel Head Trout clans too; surrounded by ocean, rivers, creeks, and rainwater, the watery clans seemed a safer bet. The totern poles often had small wan faces of drowned men carved between the major figures—I couldn’t swim and boats made me seasick—the small wan face might be me.

Once I started writing the novel, the depression lifted, but then came the terrible migraine headaches, worse than any I’d had since the tenth grade. I stayed in a darkened bedroom for eight hours at a time while the vertigo spun the bed. Fortunately, as the main character, Tayo, began to recover from his illness, I too began to feel better, and had fewer headaches. By this time, the novel was my refuge, my magic vehicle back to the Southwest land of sandstone mesas, blue sky, and sun. As I described the sandstone spring, the spiders, water bugs, swallows, and rattlesnakes, I remade the place in words; I was no longer on a dark rainy island thousands of miles away. I was home, from time immemorial, as the old ones liked to say to us children long ago.

I wasn’t just homesick for the sandstone cliffs and the sun; I missed the people and the storytelling, so I incorporated into the novel the old-time story about Hummingbird and Green Fly, who help the people purify their town to bring back the Corn Mother. The title of the novel, Ceremony, refers to the healing ceremonies based on the ancient stories of the Diné and Pueblo people. The two years I lived and taught for Diné College were important to my understanding of the healing ceremony’s relationship to storytelling. I was conscious of constructing the novel out of many different kinds of narratives or stories to celebrate storytelling with the spoken as well as the written word. I indulged myself with the old-time stories because they evoked a feeling of comfort I remembered from my childhood at Laguna.

During this time the wet climate did not agree with my younger son, Cazimir, who was twice hospitalized for acute asthma. Grandma Lillie, on a visit to Ketchikan, suffered a heart attack. At crisis times I completely forgot the novel, but afterward the need to return to the work became overwhelming. The novel was my escape, and I remember how I fretted on weekends because I was so anxious to keep working. I wasn’t sure what I was writing qualified as a novel.

It was supposed to be a funny story about Harley, the World War II veteran whose family tried but could not keep him away from liquor. But as I wrote about Harley’s desperate thirst for alcohol, it didn’t seem so funny after all, and I realized I wanted to better understand what happened to the war veterans, many of whom were survivors of the Battan Death March, cousins and relatives of mine who returned from the war and stayed drunk the rest of their lives. The war veterans weren’t always drunk, and they were home and available to us children when the other adults were busy at work. These men were kind to us children; they helped me train with my first horse. Even as a child I knew they were not bad people, yet something had happened to them. What was it?

As I wrote what I thought would be a comical short story about Harley and his drunken exploits, suddenly a friend of Harley’s—a character I never planned to have—Tayo, entered the story. I was perturbed because Tayo’s condition didn’t promise much comedy. Before I began the funny story about Harley, I twice tried to develop a young female protagonist to be the main character of a novel; but I found I was too self-conscious and failed to allow my fictional woman to behave independently of my image of myself. The notes and false starts and the short story beginnings that developed into Ceremony are in the collection of the Yale University library.

In February 1974, I interrupted work on the novel to go to Bethel, Alaska, for three weeks to be a visiting writer in the middle school. Eighty miles from the Bering Sea and with temperatures of fifty below zero, I still found Bethel preferable to Ketchikan because at least the frozen tundra had blue sky and miles of visibility in all directions. I remember the day I had lunch with my friend Rose Prince in Bethel and told her and her friend about my idea to have all things European invented by a tribal witch. I made notes then, but didn’t actually write the creation of the witchery section until June 1974 while I was at the Grand State College Writers Conference. I wrote it a few hours before my reading that night. That was the night I first met the poet James A. Wright. I was in a group of ten or twelve young poets that included Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge and Lawson Inada when we were introduced. Wright’s poetry had a profound effect on the work of all of us at the conference. He wrote to me after Ceremony was published, and we engaged in a wonderful correspondence that I cherish with the friendship we shared.

After I returned to Ketchikan from Bethel I stopped work on the novel long enough to write the short story Storyteller. Although I was only in Bethel for a month, the stories I heard while I was there, stories about the tundra and the Yupik people, left a powerful impression on me, and the stories I heard there refused to let me get back to work on Ceremony until I wrote a short story about the place and people of the Bethel area.

As I neared the end of the novel, I knew what I had to write; all that remained was to do it. I remember typing that last word, Sunrise, and feeling great relief and happiness that the novel and the ceremony were finished. I fussed around with the ending a bit more, but the manuscript was completed during the first week of July 1975, eight weeks before we left Ketchikan to move back to New Mexico.

I sent off two copies of the manuscript: one to Richard Seaver at Viking Press, and the other to Mei-Mei Berssenbruge, the poet. I still wasn’t quite sure if it was a novel, so I waited anxiously to hear from them. Mei-Mei called right away and was very excited. She said she especially liked the way I did not break the novel into chapters. Oh no! I thought while she was talking, I knew I forgot something! (I never should have neglected that course titled The Novel.) Don’t worry, I told myself, you can call Seaver and tell him you’ll send a revised copy with the chapters, and you can do it in a day or two, easily. But later, as I worked to break the novel into chapters, I realized it was not meant to be in chapters, so I left it as it was.

Richard Seaver called a few days later and expressed his satisfaction with the novel. He wanted to make only one editorial change. Instead of the more proper as if, I’d used the colloquial like—e.g., "He ran like a dog vs. He ran as if he were a dog. I checked a dictionary and found that Norman Mailer was allowed to use like in his novels, so I initially refused to make the changes. I didn’t have an agent then, so when Dick Seaver hinted that if I didn’t take the editorial advice on this point, he and Jeanette Seaver could not get behind the book, I decided to agree to the change, in part because there were only about six instances where I used like instead of as if."

Jeanette Seaver was my editor during the production phase, and she managed to get the art department to use my father’s photograph of Mt. Taylor and old Acoma pueblo for the cover of the book jacket. Mt. Taylor, or T´sepina, is a sacred mountain central to much of the novel.

Ceremony was published in March 1977. The Seavers gave me a wonderful cocktail party at their Central Park West home. I was staying downtown on Water Street near Wall Street, and when it was time for me to find a cab to take me uptown, no one had warned me there were hundreds of cabs but none for hire because the Wall Street people had all the cabs under contract. So I had to walk in my party dress and high heel shoes to find a subway, and then I took the wrong line and had to walk a distance to Central Park West. When I arrived I was late and I was sweaty and my hair was messy; fortunately, the others had consumed enough wine by then and didn’t care.

Gus Blaisdel gave me a publication party at his bookstore, The Living Batch, in Albuquerque, where I was teaching at the University of New Mexico. No book tour for a first novel, but Geraldo Rivera and Good Morning America did a short piece on the novel at Marlon Brando’s suggestion. Brando read Ceremony, and later when I worked on a film project for him, he sometimes brought up obscure details from Ceremony that I hardly remembered; he had a photographic memory for anything he saw or read.

After Ceremony was published, some readers remarked on my male protagonist and many male characters, something of a novelty for female novelists in the English language. My childhood was spent in the Pueblo matriarchy, where women owned property, and children belonged to the mother’s clan. The story of the returning World War II veterans could only be told from a male point of view, so I did it without hesitation. Besides, I thought, male novelists write about female protagonists all the time, so I will write about men.

In this and in all things related to the writing of Ceremony, I feel I was blessed, watched over, and protected by my beloved ancestors, and the old ones who told me the stories—Grandma A’mooh, Aunt Susie, and Grandpa Hank. May the readers and listeners of this novel be likewise blessed, watched over, and protected by their beloved ancestors.

—LESLIE MARMON SILKO

Introduction

When Leslie Marmon Silko began to publish her first stories and poems in the early 1970s, it was immediately clear to discerning judges that a literary star of unusual brilliance had appeared. Among the discerning judges were the selectors for the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, who chose Leslie Marmon Silko as one of their very first group of fellows, to receive what is now known as a genius award.

The MacArthur Foundation, in choosing Leslie—an old friend of mine—already had ample evidence of her blazing talent. Between 1974 and 1981 she published a wholly original book of poems (Laguna Woman), a brilliant book of short stories (Storyteller), and her early masterpiece, the haunting, heartbreaking, Ceremony, which rises near to greatness and can easily stand as one of the two or three best first novels of her generation, a book that has been startling and moving readers in their thousands for more than a quarter of a century.

Far from resting on her already considerable laurels, Leslie plunged into the long swim across time and history that became Almanac of the Dead, which the critic Sven Birkerts rightly called one of the most ambitious novels of our time. The Almanac absorbed Leslie Marmon Silko for more than ten years; it was followed by a lovely book of essays (Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, after which she returned to a theme which is woven through all her work: the theft, by the invading Europeans, of the native people’s long-accumulated and reverently guarded wisdom about the natural world. This novel was Gardens in the Dunes, and the intellectual property that is being looted is chiefly botanical lore.

Ceremony is a novel whose unsettling story has lost none of its force in the nearly three decades since it was published. It is a book so original and so richly textured that the novelist N. Scott Momaday has wondered whether it ought to be called a novel at all. Perhaps, he suggests, it should just be called a telling.

Leslie Marmon Silko grew up on the Laguna Reservation west of Albuquerque. She, like her hero, Tayo, is of mixed blood; most of her work could be said to explore those borderlands of identity experienced by mixed-blood people—individuals who, in a sense, find themselves stuck between cultures, neither wholly in nor wholly out of what may be their native society: too often they are viewed suspiciously by both of the peoples whose blood they carry.

Tayo is a World War II veteran who returns from the Pacific war suffering terribly from what was then called battle fatigue and would now be called—as soldiers continue to experience it—posttraumatic stress disorder. After a stint in a veterans’ hospital in Los Angeles, Tayo journeys—without much hope—back to New Mexico. He finds, as do soldiers in all wars, including the current one, that going home is terribly hard. Neither Tayo nor his home is the same. In Tayo’s homeland a mine has been dug in a sacred area, a violation of nature that disturbs him deeply. Evils have been unleashed, witches have increased in power, and the indigenous people are more vulnerable than ever to spiritual and physical defilement.

Tayo, like the wisest of his people, turns for protection to the tribe’s saving stories. The stories help the people move from imbalance and disorder back to a kind of balance, the balance that comes from the accuracy and depth and beauty of the stories. The importance of faithful storytelling is a strong theme in all of Leslie Marmon Silko’s writing. She knows that the stories won’t save everyone; but, if they are faithfully kept and honored, the people will survive and perhaps in time recover their primal strength.

All of Leslie Marmon Silko’s work is infused with reverence for thel natural world. Her tellings never lose sight of the fact that the earth was here first, along with the sun and the moon and other permanent powers. Thus, when she has told the tale of Tayo’s difficult return, she ends with this:

Sunrise,

accept this offering,

Sunrise.

—LARRY MCMURTRY

Ceremony

Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman,

is sitting in her room

and whatever she thinks about

appears.

She thought of her sisters,

Nau’ts’ity’i and I’tcts’ity’i,

and together they created the Universe

this world

and the four worlds below.

Thought-Woman, the spider,

named things and

as she named them

they appeared.

She is sitting in her room

thinking of a story now

I’m telling you the story

she is thinking.

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,

[he said]

They aren’t just entertainment.

Don’t be fooled.

They are all we have, you see,

all we have to fight off

illness and death.

You don’t have anything

if you don’t have the stories.

Their evil is mighty

but it can’t stand up to our stories.

So they try to destroy the stories

let the stories be confused or forgotten.

They would like that

They would be happy

Because we would be defenseless then.

He rubbed his belly.

I keep them here

[he said]

Here, put your hand on it

See, it is moving.

There is life here

for the people.

And in the belly of this story

the rituals and the ceremony

are still growing.

What She Said:

The only cure

I know

is a good ceremony,

that’s what she said.

Sunrise.

Tayo didn’t sleep well that night. He tossed in the old iron bed, and the coiled springs kept squeaking even after he lay still again, calling up humid dreams of black night and loud voices rolling him over and over again like debris caught in a flood. Tonight the singing had come first, squeaking out of the iron bed, a man singing in Spanish, the melody of a familiar love song, two words again and again, Y volveré. Sometimes the Japanese voices came first, angry and loud, pushing the song far away, and then he could hear the shift in his dreaming, like a slight afternoon wind changing its direction, coming less and less from the south, moving into the west, and the voices would become Laguna voices, and he could hear Uncle Josiah calling to him, Josiah bringing him the fever medicine when he had been sick a long time ago. But before Josiah could come, the fever voices would drift and whirl and emerge again—Japanese soldiers shouting orders to him, suffocating damp voices that drifted out in the jungle steam, and he heard the women’s voices then; they faded in and out until he was frantic because he thought the Laguna words were his mother’s, but when he was about to make out the meaning of the words, the voice suddenly broke into a language he could not understand; and it was then that all the voices were drowned by the music—loud, loud music from a big juke box, its flashing red and blue lights pulling the darkness closer.

He lay there early in the morning and watched the high small window above the bed; dark gray gradually became lighter until it cast a white square on the opposite wall at dawn. He watched the room grow brighter then, as the square of light grew steadily warmer, more yellow with the climbing sun. He had not been able to sleep for a long time—for as long as all things had become tied together like colts in single file when he and Josiah had taken them to the mountain, with the halter rope of one colt tied to the tail of the colt ahead of it, and the lead colt’s rope tied to the wide horn on Josiah’s Mexican saddle. He could still see them now—the creamy sorrel, the bright red bay, and the gray roan—their

Reviews for Ceremony

[ffortsa · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although my book catalog tells me I've read this before, I have no memory of it. A pretty wonderful book about the traumas of a Native American in WWII and afterwards, with a good dose of religion? magical realism? enriching the journey and a wonderful evocation of the southwest U.S. from the Native American point of view.

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ceremony is the story of Tayo, a half white, half Navajo veteran of World War II who, after a stay in a California hospital being treated for PTSD (although that term was not in vogue when the novel was written—1977) returns to his childhood home, the Laguna Pueblo reservation in New Mexico. The book is also an allegory of Tayo’s people, both the Navajo of the American Southwest in particular, and of Native Americans more generally (called “Indians” in the novel).

In the war, Tayo fought on an unnamed Pacific island where it rained constantly. His home (just west of Albuquerque) on the other hand, is in the midst of a long term severe drought. Tayo feels some guilt because he prayed for and performed ceremonies to end the rain in the Pacific, and he fears that his efforts may have brought the drought to his home.

Tayo’s childhood friends, who also fought in the war, spend much of their time reminiscing about how much respect they got while they were in uniform. That respect contrasts dramatically with the way they are treated now, and they find themselves devolved into an almost constant state of drunkenness. Their fate inspires Tayo think about the tremendous discrimination Native Americans face at the hands of the whites, whom they nevertheless seem to admire.

The narrative oscillates from Tayo’s pre-war youth to the war and to his current situation. Always present is Tayo’s efforts to influence events through prayers and ceremonies. The characters face a constant tension between the Christianity forced upon them by the whites and the ancient stories and beliefs of their ancestors. It Is not clear to me whether the author wants the reader to believe (for purposes of the story) in the efficacy of the ceremonies as actual causes of the events in the novel, but it is very clear that the characters believe in them. It is also clear that Ms. Silko doesn’t put much faith in the whites’ religion, either in the novel or in her own life.

The story takes some unusual turns, and the conclusion is more than a little bizarre. Tayo’s efforts to end the drought have not been successful, and so he believes he must do something extra to complete his ceremony. That something is to incorporate an element of white culture into his rite. He decides that he needs to spend a night in a local abandoned uranium mine and the ceremony will be complete.

Unfortunately, some of his “friends,” one of whom is an avowed enemy from childhood, have their own notions of ceremony that involve a ritual killing of a tribe member, presumably Tayo. The “friends” come looking for Tayo, but can’t find him in the mine. So they decide to kill Tayo’s best friend! From his hiding place, Tayo watches them torture his real friend to death, but, knowing the trouble he would incur, restrains himself from killing their leader in order to save his friend. The white authorities investigate the murder, but are unable to prove a case against the leader. However, the FBI agent investigating the crime knows enough to tell the leader to leave New Mexico and never return. The leader goes off to California, which is significant because that is where Tayo had spent his time recovering in the VA hospital.

In the end, the drought is broken. The reader is left to decide whether the correlation of Tayo’s ceremony was the cause of the end of the drought.

In this summary, the story seems more than a little kooky. However, the book is very well written, including numerous short poems that bring Indian lore to life. In addition, I can attest that its descriptions of the land is very accurate. I read this book in conjunction with Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, a collection of non-fiction essays by the same author. The two together provide a bittersweet depiction of Native American life today.

(JAB)

[greeniezona · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book had long been on my list of "books I need to read someday," and when I found this lovely used copy of the 30th anniversary edition at my local bookstore, it got upgraded to books I need to read soon. But what did I know about it, going into it? Hardly anything. Just that it is a modern classic, and written by a Native American woman.

How do I explain why I loved this so deeply? Even when it was sometimes confusing often painful, a slow and tangled read. But the challenge is the point. There are no straight roads back to wholeness, not when things are as broken as they are.

I found this spell-binding. I am thankful to have crossed paths with this book.

[terriks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Her writing is lyrical, suspenseful, and matter of fact, by turns. I first came across her short story "Lullaby" in college lit class, and was floored by it.

Yes, her approach moves seamlessly between time periods and various events so the reader must remain alert. But what of it? This reads like a dream, only the harshness is the lives of Native Americans who populate this novel. Just read it.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good, if confusing, novel of a war veteran native american from Laguna pueblo in NM. Non linear storyline about Tayo, who manages to restore himself, after all he had experienced. Very poetic at times. Worthwhile.

[Ruby202 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ceremony is a magnificent book that I discovered thanks to the required readings at university. Ceremony tells us the life of Tayo, a mestizo who lives between two worlds without fitting into either of them. Rejected by Native Americans for his appearance and by whites for his education, Tayo seeks to find his place in the world. This duality is reflected in the mix of genres we find in the book. I would not describe Tayo as a hero, due to how imperfect he is, and precisely for that reason, he seemed to me one of the most realistic and human characters I have ever read. I do not know if there is a translation, but I think anyone with a B2 level of English could read it without problems. (Translated from Spanish)

[janerawoof · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Disjointed until I figured out there were different timelines--before the 2nd world war, during it where the main character is in the Philippines and comes home with PTSD [or battle fatigue as the condition was called in those days] and afterwards when he returns home. The novel describes his return to normality through traditional Native American ceremonies. I enjoyed descriptions of Indian practices, the telling of legends and the nature descriptions did not put me off. Writing style was beautiful. The lot of the Indian was depressing.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had difficulty engaging with this book, had a hard time reading it (took forever!), but after finishing it, I found myself frequently thinking about it. It is definitely a book that would reward rereading.

Tayo, a mixed race Laguna Pueblo Indian has returned to the reservation a damaged soul after World War II. He has been traumatized by his experiences as a POW of the Japanese, where he witnessed the harrowing death of his best friend/"brother" Rocky, with whom he was raised. Even before the war, he has spent his entire life feeling like an outcast--not fully Indian on the reservation, and not fully "white" in the wider world. He is clearly suffering from PTSD and survivor's guilt. Stays in the VA hospital do not seem to be helping, and Tayo begins seeking help in traditional Native American practices.

The book is difficult. The chronology is jagged jumping from Tayo's childhood to his war experiences to his return to the reservation, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and I frequently had to reread passages to figure out what time period we were in (and sometimes to figure out what character was paramount at that time). And interspersed throughout the narrative are long poetic and prose passages delineating Native American myths. But in the end, it all went together, and as I said it will reward rereading.

And the dual themes of PTSD and racism are absolutely contemporary for a book published more than 40 years ago. Unfortunately, these themes still resonant strongly today, with tragically little progress having been made.

I haven't read a lot of Native American literature, and this has been described as one of the greatest Native American novels. I can't disagree.

Recommended.
4 stars

[b.masonjudy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a while to get to Ceremony but I'm sorry it did, really a fantastic read. I enjoyed Silko's use of folklore and poetry in the text and even points where the narrative bleeds into the poetic form embodies the idea that these stories are all living and interconnected. Her vision of the Southwest is as magnificent and grand and scope as Cormac McCarthy although this is not a place where violence solves problems only exacerbates them and true strength comes with embracing life. I will say I would've liked to have seen the disjointed narrative that was so seamlessly constructed at the outset of the novel continue, it smoothes out and becomes less dislocating as Tayo heals but it also loses an experimental edge that I very much enjoyed and what drew me into the first half of the novel.

[msf59 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Everywhere he looked, he saw a world made of stories, the long ago, time immemorial stories...It was a world alive, always changing and moving; and if you knew where to look, you could see it, sometimes imperceptible, like the motion of the stars across the sky.”

“Every day they had to look at the land, from horizon to horizon, and every day the loss was with them; it was the dead unburied, and the mourning of the lost going on forever. So they tried to sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief with war stories about their courage, defending the land they had already lost.”

In the years, immediately after WWII, we are introduced to Tayo, a young Native American, who fought as a Marine in the Pacific and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He returns to his Pueblo reservation, as a shattered man and the novel is about Tayo's long, slow climb out of his own wreckage, using witchcraft and other traditional means to reach this difficult goal.
This is not an easy read. Watching these characters wallow in their suffering and alcohol abuse, can be painful but the narrative brightens as Tayo pulls out of his tailspin and begins to live again and appreciate the loved ones, who have supported him, through his trials. The writing grows stronger as the novel progresses, rewarding the reader, for hanging in there. This will not be for all tastes, but I can appreciate it's lofty position in Native American literature.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a challenging, disturbing read. The main character, Tayo, is an American Indian from the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Convinced by his cousin and best friend, Rocky, he enlists in the Army during WWII. Ultimately both young men are taken prisoner together by the Japanese. The horrors of that experience leave Tayo adrift in a limbo-like state, in an Army mental hospital. When he is discharged, still far from well, he finds himself wavering between a desire to return to the hospital's sterile cold white environment, where he felt invisible yet safe; and a tendency to slip into the false happiness of near-constant drunkenness which some of his old friends and fellow veterans have embraced. Wise women in his family have another plan, and hold hope for his redemption, however. They encourage Tayo to seek out a medicine man who can put him in touch with the old ways, and help him complete a journey...a journey which is also a ceremony of deliverance from the evil they know as "witchery"...a journey which may end with a promising sunrise and a form of peace.

I found it difficult to engage with this story at first; I would pick it up, read several pages and find myself totally lost---who is speaking, whose point of view is this, did this happen before or after Tayo went to war? I persisted, not wanting to give up on what I was sure was a significant piece of literature. There were beautiful descriptive passages, and the women intrigued me. A story poem interjected into the text a bit at a time tempted me just to find its parts and read it all at once. (I resisted doing so.) At some point, I found I was invested in Tayo's struggle, and was rooting for him to prevail. I am quite pleased to have stuck with it to the end, although I cannot say I totally grasp all there is in it. There are beautiful moments, even some small measure of hope on an individual scale. I think it is impossible to appreciate Ceremony fully without knowing something of the creation myths and other beliefs of the Pueblo people. Part of Tayo's difficulty is that he himself (in part because he has mixed heritage and has suffered the epithet "half-breed" all his life) neither understands nor accepts the cultural norms so important to his grandmother until he has undertaken his journey and acknowledged the witchery at work in the world. This story can not make sense in the context of European morality; it has to be taken on the characters' terms or left alone. I can admire it without completely understanding it, especially as I assume it was not written for me, a white woman of Anglo-Saxon and Eastern European descent. It is one of those novels that, like much of Faulkner, cannot simply be read, but must be re-read.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[Ceremony] is powerful, memorable and, at once a total indictment of European genocide in North America
and
of the resilience, faith, and courage of the Indigenous people who survived. And still endure on "reservations."

Scientists are now determining that it would be healthier for U.S. "Indians" to be ALLOWED to hunt, fish, gather, and preserve their own food.
Is that America's idea of reparations?

[snash_44 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story of an Indian/white man dealing with his past and his experiences in the Philippines during WWII. He used ancient Indian stories and medicine men to regain peace with the world.

[sheila1957 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Told from Tayo's point-of-view. He is a Native American who, along with his cousin, goes off to fight in Southeast Asia during WWII. When he returns home, he is suffering from PTSD. The story switches time periods from before the war growing up, during the war, after the war. Some of his friends relive their time in the army when they were heroes. Tayo is just trying to cope with his life and his war experiences.

Interesting style of writing where there is no chapters. It is one continuous story that switches back and forth from the far past, the war, and the present with Native wisdom, stories, and songs. I like that it is written from the Native American point-of-view and that we get into Tayo's mind and dreams. I had no problems switching between the time periods and was able to keep track of when and what was happening. A fascinating book that I am glad I read.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I like to compare reading Silko to drinking a icy cold glass of limoncello. It is not the kind of thing you gulp down in chug-a-lug like fashion. It is better to take in small sips of the scenes in order to let them slide over your subconscious and filter slowly into your brain. Think of it this way. It is as if you have to give the words time to mellow and ultimately saturate your mind.

First things first. When you get into the plot of Ceremony what you first discover is that Tayo is a complicated character. After being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, alcoholism, battle fatigue (now called post traumatic stress disorder), mental illness, and guilt all plague Tayo. It's as if threads of guilt tangle in his mind, strangling his ability to comprehend reality, especially when other veterans on the Laguna Pueblo reservation turn to sex, alcohol and violence to cope. Friends are no longer friendly. 
Next, what is important to pay attention to are the various timelines. There is the time before the war and the time after at the mental health facility with the timeline with Thought (Spider) Woman, Corn Woman, and Reed Woman. Each timeline dips back and forth throughout the story. Tayo struggles to reconcile what it means to be Native American, with all its traditions and beliefs, with the horrors of war and captivity. How does one as gentle as Tayo forgive himself for being a soldier? "He stepped carefully, pushing the toe of his boot into the weeds first to make sure the grasshoppers were gone before he set his foot down into the crackling leathery stalks of dead sunflowers" (p 155). He can't even inadvertently harm a bug.
Interspersed between the plot are pages of lyrical poetry.
Throughout it all, I found myself weeping for Tayo's lost soul.

[chrisblocker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On one hand, Ceremony is a well-told tale and an intriguing story. It is the kind of story that hasn't been told enough and so needs to exist. On the other, Ceremony is a cerebral read that feels slightly inauthentic and is arranged in a jarring manner (flashbacks galore) that makes the story difficult to follow. This is one of those novels that I didn't always understand what was going on (or when in the story it was taking place), but it had a way of getting under my skin that I couldn't shake. Ceremony is intense and gritty, but not the easiest of reads.

[jeterat-844391 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book for high school, and at the time, did not like it. As an adult and a feminist (both things that I was not back then), I return to this book over and over as an example of a woman speaking about her experience and the experience of the people around her. I remember the story very clearly, something that speaks to a well written novel, and compare other fiction to this as an example of excellent creative storytelling.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Tayo returns home to the Laguna Pueblo reservation from World War II suffering from PTSD and attempts to cure himself by reconnecting with the traditional ceremonies of his people.

This was a slow read, mostly because the language is very poetic and demands a lot of attention to be paid. In fact, poetry is woven into the narrative at several points, which were probably my favorite sections. The poems relate traditional stories and comment on the events of the main narrative. (I would like to go back and reread the poems by themselves at some point.) Silko pays a lot of attention to the natural environment of the story, and these descriptive passages are among the most beautiful.

The first part of the story shows Tayo's suffering from his memories of the war, from his lifelong feeling of not belonging (he is half Native American and half white), and from the loss of the two people who meant the most to him, his cousin and his uncle. He is afraid that if he doesn't get better, he will be confined to a mental hospital. So he goes to a native healer who "prescribes" a ceremony for him.

At this point, I had trouble following events and discerning what was real and what was magical realism. This is also the point in the story when a fierce anger toward white people, who lie to Native Americans and to themselves, begins to bubble to the surface. This anger is justified but surprising, given the peaceful, nature-oriented tone of the writing. Tayo eventually finds a way to explain the actions of the whites, but I'm not sure that I entirely believe the anger has been soothed, nor am I convinced that it should be. The final scenes include some shocking violence, which again I wasn't sure was adequately explained by Tayo's reasoning.

I think this book demands to be reread. Close attention needs to be paid to the symbolic aspects of the ceremony and to the parallels between Tayo's story and the traditional stories of the ancestors, which can probably only be done after the initial reading has been absorbed. Only then can this story be fully understood, I suspect.

[kvrfan9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tayo is a Laguna Pueblo Indian who returns from World War II suffering from "battle fatigue." As a result (complicated by deeper things in his background), he feels alienated from tribe, family, and his own self. Threatened with being returned to the mental ward, he seeks out the ministrations of an unconventional medicine man who puts him on the path to healing.

Leslie Marmon Silko is brilliant with words and not only gives draws a sobering picture of the Native experience (mid-20th-century), but also an involving psychological portrait of a man once again coming to claim himself.

[denisa8howe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ceremony was a interesting book and the plot held my interest throughout. I’m not so sure that the Indian traditions and actions are accurate to all tribes, as being involved in my own culture; some of it was not in true form, that being said it was still a good. Tayo is one of those characters that you enjoy meeting and wish you could actually sit down with and have a conversation. The struggle he overcomes is amazing and in the way he himself sees things. The healing of one, which heals his community as well, is uplifting to many who will read this. It’s not one of my favorite but I am glad I read it.

[socalnovelist · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many may feel this book is disturbing, I know my son did. But I cannot help but love the way Silko creates such intense psychological consciousness in her characters. The book was a great one for me. I felt I understood like never before the real plight and sense of loss of the Native American who tries desperately to "fit" into the contemporary and dominant culture, but can never really feel they belong. I can identify with those feelings, and understand the sense of loss in spirit. This was where I first heard the idea of the "hollow" man, then later read T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men," and the image of a "hollow man" was impressed upon me, from these two encounters with it: in Silko's book, "Ceremony" and in T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men." But reading "Ceremondy" gives such a deeper rendition of what it means to be hollow, as Tayo, the main character learns in Silko's book.

It is a story that stays with you, years after.

[nancynova · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

rabck from eponine38; Fiction, but reads as a true story. Tayo, a young Indian, was a Japanese POW during WWII. Now returning back to the reservation after the war, after being treated as a first class soldier during the war, he's trying to fit back into the second class citizen mould that the Whites who were his peers during the was, force the Indians into. In addition, his cousin Rocky, who the family pinned all there hopes on, was killed in the war, and he feels that he let the family down by him living and Rocky dying. Add battle fatigue (now called PTSD), his friends unable to cope except by getting drunk and rabble rousing, and he's losing himself. With the help of a medicine man, and by steeping himself in the old ways, he finally finds healing. A lovely read with lots of prayers and insights into the Indian spiritual way. This will continue on as a "C" book ring book.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Audiobook....A powerful story about the power of personal and cultural story in preserving and healing the spirit. The structure reflects the dream/nightmare experience of the protagonist, a Native American returning from war. I let myself submerge in the narrative and was pulled along, experiencing a wide range of emotion on the journey. Marvelous read!

[idyll-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful language and obviously an important book. I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it. The spiritual deus ex machina taking up the last 1/3 of the book is a letdown, but I realize that this is a personal preference. Well worth reading.

[sean191 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought I read this years ago, but if I did, only a couple of small parts seemed familiar this time around and they may have been pieces I read elsewhere.

Regardless, Silko writes a good book. Poetic, bordering maybe on too poetic at times, but not seeming to cross the line. Mystical, but plausible. Depressing, but redeeming. Overall, a worthy read.

[readingthruthenight · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

First, I must admit, I knew nothing about Ceremony when I picked it up (via Bookmooch, me'thinks). I was perusing through some forums seeking recommendations for the broad generalization of "magical realism" when this title continued to pop up. See how easily I am sold when on a mission motivated by curiosity.

The cover, normally, would not have appealed to me.

It was short, so I dove right into its pages earlier this year. I'd been through a reading slump of sorts and a smallish book seemed to be what I was looking for. Needless to say I was NOT expecting a journey.

And Ceremony is DEFINITELY a journey.

This book reads like a dream. Even though Tayo is our young narrator, I swear there are moments when I began to believe I was a part of the Ceremony. (So yes, think of an academia Nightmare on Elm Street sorta experience or possibly The NeverEnding Story?).

So, what's Ceremony about? In a nutshell, Tayo and his best friend join the military and leave their indian village. The idea of fighting in World War II was not Tayo's idea. He would have been content working within the village. There is definitely an element of "Being an Outsider" that plays into Ceremony time and time again. In this case, Tayo was an outsider because he didn't really want more than what his village offered. His friend, however, knew that the military was his way out.

Unfortunately, Tayo is the only one to return, and much like the other Native Americans in his village back from the Great War, he is considered crazy and a drunkard. Which is only partly true. There are times when he acts crazy. And gets drunk. But only partly.

There's not a lot of time spent on the war (which pleased me because I'm not one to usually read war novels). The war scenes are all done in flashbacks and sometimes flashforwards which makes you feel sometimes lost and other times as though you are on a fast roller coaster without know which side is up. So yeah, kind of like real like, huh?

And then there's the prose....I remember reading somewhere that a whole bunch of Native Americans got their underwear in a wad because they thought Silko was exposing too many sensitive details about their spiritual world and stories. The prose is magical. And the Native American stories within Ceremony are utterly gorgeous.

I know the catch phrase with this book is: it's not only entitled Ceremony, reading it *is* a ceremony. Sounds pretty hokey, yes? I KNOW! But.... but... it's kinda true.

I mentioned earlier that there is definitely an ongoing theme of "Otherness" in Ceremony and it's true. It's everywhere. Tayo, upon his return, is the "Other" who made it back alive. He fights his own demons and then is separate from his own people. Larger than Tayo's singular experience, the idea of "Other" as Native American also presents itself.

Ceremony speaks more about the integration of a culture that was forced out of its land and then made to feel second rate because of it. It's about Tayo coming to terms with his HERITAGE as well as the KILLING of war.

Ultimately, it's a pissed off at the world kinda book that leaves the soul at peace.

[yvonnek7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a difficult read in part because, if read carefully, it forces you to take the journey with Tayo toward integration. The book itself is a healing ceremony, a ceremony that asserts the Oneness of life--the relatedness of everything.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Silko explores the place of Native Americans in the post-World War II American society.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a powerful and poetic work, exploring ideas of legacy and PTSD through a Native American war veteran who struggles between cultures and between generations. Silko's language and artful style combine here into a collage of legend and narrative, creating a unique journey that lends itself to a quiet and disarming read. While the book comes across in the beginning as a quiet exploration of cultures and history, it quickly becomes more---this book is worth reading.

[josephj_530382 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful book. Once you realize it is not out to fit into the typical structure of the novel and is based more on traditional Native American storytelling, then the book becomes this cool anti-novel that actually tells a pretty sad, yet beautiful story about a Native American soldier dealing with PTSD after WWII. He also deals with reconciling his Pueblo culture with the Western culture of the white man.