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Almanac of the Dead
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In its extraordinary range of character and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on the grand scale. The acclaimed author of Ceremony has undertaken a weaving of ideas and lives, fate and history, passion and conquest in an attempt to re-create the moral history of the Americas, told from the point of view of the conquered, not the conquerors.
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Paperback, 768 pages
Published
November 1st 1992
by Penguin Books
(first published 1991)
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Emily Bertholf
I have yet to reread it and be disappointed yet.
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30

Start your review of Almanac of the Dead

There is, perhaps, no way to bestow readerly affection on a work so single-mindedly driven by an intense fury. But what one can do is reverentially acknowledge the handiwork of this authorial anger, appreciate the blurred edges of a story - an important one - that emerge from the void of a mass amnesia and a carefully preserved collective delusion. And applaud as a silent witness to the fictional resurrection of a people and civilization so meticulously blotted out, first from existence, then fr
...more

I wrote my master's thesis on this book, thus I've lost track of how many times I've read it. This is not for the faint-of-heart. Silko is putting Western, Euro-centric culture on trial and the evidence she cites is pretty damning. She has said in interviews that the anger that seethes on every page of this novel is not her personal anger but the anger of the Earth. Anger over the cruelty, greed and destruction that dominate the rise of European culture over Native American culture and other nat
...more

Cimi is six and is called death, owl's day. Lord of the underworld and Lord of death. Nonetheless day six, day of the skull, is a good-luck day.Talk of "the right book at the right time" has been floating around for a while now, so here, on the tail end of whatever mood spurred me on to delve into the USA breed of colonialism, I have this book. I mentioned earlier a summary of quick and easy reference, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite J ...more
The old almanac said “civil strife, civil crises, civil war.”

Oh my days* where do I begin? I'm glad I read The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir first in preparation for this behemoth, as I knew something about where Leslie Marmon Silko herself was coming from in her mapping of place and relationships, and I had seen the Arizona desert through her eyes so much already it was like a familiar friend here, a place to revere and protect, full of life and beauty. The desert is not the only place that comes to life in these pages – the muted light of the Mexican jungle
...more

Fucking wow.
This is not a pleasure cruise of a read. It's got a lot of things that would be a huge turn-off to many readers - drugs, violent sex, horrible things done to children and animals, disgusting characters of all sorts (racist, homophobic, sexist, abusive, drug-addled and/or drunk, pedophiles, scumbags), and more than can even be discussed on a surface level.
It's rough.
I've read complaints that Silko is an angry, bitter woman. So? Why can't a woman of color be angry or bitter? Does it ma ...more
This is not a pleasure cruise of a read. It's got a lot of things that would be a huge turn-off to many readers - drugs, violent sex, horrible things done to children and animals, disgusting characters of all sorts (racist, homophobic, sexist, abusive, drug-addled and/or drunk, pedophiles, scumbags), and more than can even be discussed on a surface level.
It's rough.
I've read complaints that Silko is an angry, bitter woman. So? Why can't a woman of color be angry or bitter? Does it ma ...more

It was one of my goals to read more indigenous authors in 2020, but I've decided to withhold judgment on Leslie Marmon Silko until I've read her other works. I know better than to punish a writer or a novel for not being what I wanted but this doesn't match the cover blurb or what I was hoping for. Instead of a family or community saga saturated in characters from various indigenous backgrounds, it is a novel about government corruption, police corruption, drug trafficking, people trafficking, u
...more

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This was Games of Thrones, meets Breaking Bad, with engaging, graphic and enlightening prose. The book consists of snapshots into a slew of diverse and broken characters, who realize how ruthless life can be. This is dense and long (763 pg's the longest novel I've read), but that didn't diminish the wonderful experience of reading this boo ...more
"Those who can't learn to appreciate the world's differences won't make it. They'll die."
This was Games of Thrones, meets Breaking Bad, with engaging, graphic and enlightening prose. The book consists of snapshots into a slew of diverse and broken characters, who realize how ruthless life can be. This is dense and long (763 pg's the longest novel I've read), but that didn't diminish the wonderful experience of reading this boo ...more

Epic. Silko nailed the epicness of this story. She has tried to tell 500 years of North American Native history, since the coming of the white Europeans, with the outcome of anger and hostility, the degradation and defeat of the people but not the defeat of the spirit. The spirit remains strong.
This isn't an easy read at times. It's gritty, detailed, hard, cruel and at times stomach-turning. But it tells a sweeping, deep story of colonization, exploitation, anger, distress, hopelessness, corrup ...more
This isn't an easy read at times. It's gritty, detailed, hard, cruel and at times stomach-turning. But it tells a sweeping, deep story of colonization, exploitation, anger, distress, hopelessness, corrup ...more

As damning and excoriating as ever, the second time through. Fearless. Unassailable. Meant to be hated, in a way. I hated it more and enjoyed it less this time through, knowing where I was going, and that really seemed to be the point of it.
First review:
This novel is exorbitantly, lavishly violent. It's a sordid kind of violence, violence done to and by characters with a pathological level of cruelty. It was impossible to not feel assaulted by it as I read. It jolts me right out of my complacenc ...more
First review:
This novel is exorbitantly, lavishly violent. It's a sordid kind of violence, violence done to and by characters with a pathological level of cruelty. It was impossible to not feel assaulted by it as I read. It jolts me right out of my complacenc ...more

Jan 09, 2011
Jennifer (aka EM)
added it
Half-way through, and I'm giving up. The flat, 3rd-person, short-sentence prose is numbing. I see vague connections between the dozens of sub-plots, but I can't keep them straight. The torture porn is seriously off-putting without anything to redeem or explain its inclusion so far (other than the obvious); most of all, there's not a single heroic character in the bunch. And from the reviews I've skimmed, it's only going to get worse.
This is not a novel, it's a manifesto (in case the chapter or t ...more
This is not a novel, it's a manifesto (in case the chapter or t ...more

Someone said a good book tells about a good character, and a bad book tells more about the character of its author. I believe this book is the latter, and I don't believe I would care to cross paths with Leslie Marmon Silko. Among the many fold things I disliked about this book (homophobia, long academic pretension, shock tactics, faux-spiritualism, and completely soulless characters), I found the anger in it to be the most disturbing. It was anger DISGUISED as prophesy and renewal, but in the e
...more

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As I've re-read this book twice, and regularly go back and read some of my favorite parts, I'm having trouble remembering what it was like reading it the first time around. It is a devastating portrait of the violence, greed, and moral corruption of colonization, making it often extremely difficult to read (there are several scenes of sexual violence that I skip when I re-read it). However, the violence is never, ever frivolous, rather, it feels like Silko demands that her readers bear witness t
...more

Intricately plotted novel covers southwestern U.S. history for the past five hundred years and into the future, though most of the action takes place in present-day Tucson. There is a huge cast of characters and when they reappear after a few hundred pages you can be forgiven if you've forgotten exactly who they are. Much of the plot describes the venality of the capitalistic way of life in North America. Drug dealers, arms runners, pornographers, corrupt judges, and murderers are among the peop
...more

I was determined to finish this and I did. I was so hungry for the narrative: drug dealing and real estate development in Tucson, an army of the homeless, military fortifications on the border, a tv psychic, persistent rumors of an indigenous uprising coming from the south. Some of these themes overlap with 2666, and it's also similar to 2666 for being a Big Book. But I just couldn't get past the writing. First of all, most of the book is written in the past perfect, for no grammatical reason I
...more

Jun 11, 2007
Hilary
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
Everyone who wants to have a life-changing experience. But maybe not children.
This is the book that helped me realize that time doesn't have to be the way we think. Both the past and the future are our partners. We need them both, and we have them both with us all the time. This is the book that made me realize that although Bush totally rots, his time and his influence are temporary. What I got out of it was, "We have Life After Bush in our hands already -- we can make it better."
It doesn't say anything about Bush, actually, since it was published a while ago. Actually S ...more
It doesn't say anything about Bush, actually, since it was published a while ago. Actually S ...more

Imagine Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee crossed with Infinite Jest, plus a dash of The Women of Brewster Place. That's basically what Almanac of the Dead feels like. This is some great storytelling in its interweaving of characters, its evocation of the desert Southwest (me gusta!) and its force-to-be-reckoned-with politics. It leaves you wishing that the predicted uprising would really happen. Is that last sentence so very fifteen-sixteenths European of me, to assume "we" are safely ensconced her
...more

I feel like it is maybe immoral to imagine the death by starvation and thirst of literally millions without being willing to imagine these deaths and disasters in any specific psychological detail. The part with Alegria in the desert is about the only part of this book I can think of where a character's death (or near death, anyway) isn't played either (a) essentially for satiric/allegorical effect (or for lurid, sadistic horror), or (b) referred to entirely in passing (moments where characters,
...more

“What was coming could not be stopped; the people might join or not […] It made no difference because what was coming was relentless and inevitable; it might require five or ten years of great violence and conflict. It might require a hundred years of spirit voices and simple population growth, but the result would be the same: tribal people would retake the Americas; tribal people would retake ancestral land all over the world. This was what earth’s spirits wanted: her indigenous children who l
...more

Almanac of the Dead took me eleven months or so to complete. I picked it up in spurts. Which i thought was fine; the intricacies and tangents allow for that type of reading, which I rarely employ. I will try and state my opinion of it simply. As information, as history, as ideology, and as a tool for pinpointing political and social accountability, this book was beautiful, accurate, extremely justified, and I celebrate every second of it. It is an extremely valuable, and, as I'm sure is the case
...more

Dec 28, 2011
Leslie
added it
It was emotionally painful to read this book. So little redemption, and so varied an assortment of reasons to despair about human nature and the direction of the world, made it feel like a task to keep turning the pages. I'm glad I finished it, and I think it says things that are important to've been said, but I couldn't wait for it to be done. Drug trade, organ trade, sex trade, the rich discounting the poor, the poor despising the rich, betrayal personal and professional, a widespread movement
...more

I'd be one of those people watching Days of Our Lives, getting up to make tea, sitting down in unison, this shit-eating look on my face. Being swung up and let go. Then landing someplace shitty, like LA, where they spend their noontime making everything stretch out, writing scripts to things like "Criminal Minds" and "Desperate Housewives" and then watching everyone play it out. I'd be Silko's culturally-aware equivalent, riding on top of the days of our lives, smokin' hot, ready to be where the
...more

This is one of those rare books that challenges your spirit and historical view on so many levels. After two decades, this novel is more relevant today than it was in 1991. Mexico is at war; North Africa is on the brink of overflowing into Southern Europe and terrorism is the new global economy.
Almanac is truly a masterfully crafted epic novel on an Americana scale. The voices of indigenous America is heard throughout,
as they seek justice and land reclamation.
Almanac is truly a masterfully crafted epic novel on an Americana scale. The voices of indigenous America is heard throughout,
as they seek justice and land reclamation.

Sep 08, 2007
Sara
rated it
did not like it
Recommends it for:
Nobody
Recommended to Sara by:
My teacher
700 + page book I had to read for Native American lit. One of the most exhausting, if not the most exhausting book I have ever read. There were too many characters and none of them were likable. I was so sick and tired of the book that I just skimmed the last 100 pages.

Leslie Marmon Silko is a superb novelist, and this massive tale of cross-border life has a strong indigenous feel to it. A sign of its quality is that (like Tolstoy) despite the huge cast and interwoven tales the narrative flows clearly and elegantly.

BUT, don't read this if you are tender-hearted or images of violence are likely to seep beneath your skin. i couldn't put this down. then it stayed with me in a haunting and awful way for years.
...more

Almanac of the Dead is an incredible piece of literature. It is the most angry book I have ever read. Silko is rewriting the history of the Americas-- this time, with the introduction of the indigenous and African perspectives. I loved her long lists of insurrections, rebellions, and successes of the indigenous people of the Americas and the African slaves. The driving belief of the entire novel is that the Americas will return to their tribal origins. Silko's portrayal of the fall of the Europe
...more
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2015: The Year of...: The Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko | 18 | 52 | Nov 24, 2015 07:18AM |
Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon; born March 5, 1948) is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, now known as the "Genius Grant", in 1981 and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Life ...more
Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, now known as the "Genius Grant", in 1981 and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Life ...more
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