Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

Jul 21, 2014 Samadrita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: by-women-who-matter, gory-book-is-gory, crime-noir, bygones-are-never-bygones, disturbia, 1001-and-more, in-by-about-america, cherished, politics, sociology

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 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 from consciousness and memory.

I must always return to what the white men kept hanging in all the lovely cottonwood trees along the rivers and streams throughout this land. Swaying in the light wind, rags of clothing flapping the shrunken limbs into motion. They try to walk, they try to walk - the feet keep reaching long after the neck has broken or the head has choked.

The American Dream is buttressed by the labor extracted from 'stolen black bodies' (as Ta-Nehisi Coates would say) and the genocide of its original inhabitants. And the gravitas of this sociohistorical verity reverberates across the pages of this massive tome time and again, as one hacks one's way through the dense layering of individual character arcs and subplots competing for attention and ascendance.

Angelita skipped from the dates to the tables of facts and read the figures for the Native American holocaust:
1500-72 million people lived in North, Central, and South America
1600-10 million people lived in North, Central, and South America
1500-25 million people lived in Mexico.
1600-1 million people lived in Mexico.

In prose as desiccated and bereft of life as the Sonoran desert, Leslie Marmon Silko reconstructs the local economy and polity of the US-Mexico borderlands - an apocalyptic vision of a purgatory birthed and sustained by the nexus between corrupt judiciary, greedy capitalists, local police, drug-smuggling rings and the CIA. Like a never-ending nightmare, this vast underworld of covert wars, secret guerrilla groups camped out in the jungles of South and Central America, and multiple, interconnecting conspiracies features every feasible form of torture, murder, and rape. New characters are introduced every fifty or so pages, every new player as venal and vile as the last one, their gender, sexual orientation, ideological stance, religion, and race notwithstanding. Homophobia, xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and mindless avarice are the dominant forces that operate in this parallel moral universe. And yet a reader never becomes desensitized to the violence and violations - both sexual and psychological - as more and more outlandish perversions are introduced and detailed with an unnerving insouciance. It's as if Silko believed that to allow her readers to relapse into complacency at any point in the narrative would be a disservice to the spirit of the story, especially a story which must arouse only abhorrence and unmitigated horror.

There will be no happiness to pursue; there will be no peace or justice until you settle up the debt, the money owed for stolen land, and for all the stolen lives the U.S. empire rests on!

I notice complaints in other reviews regarding the profusion of gore-porn subplots which in my opinion are legitimate in the light of how little narrative purpose they serve. The dry monotone in which this hellish saga of crime, drugs, and systemic injustices is narrated provides little incentive to pick up the book again after a break. Adding to the list of irritants, the ending is abrupt. It fails on both counts of delivering a fitting emotional payoff to all the initial build-up and satisfactorily explaining the inclusion of a diverse cast of characters. We are left to ponder the outcome of an uprising that begins to unfold just as the novel signs off.

No human, individuals or corporations, no cartel of nations, could "own" the earth; it was the earth who possessed the humans and it was the earth who disposed of them.

Despite everything, however, this is a reading experience which augmented my scant knowledge of an excised portion of American history. Goes without saying it would be a folly of the highest order to dismiss this work's monumental significance. ...more

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Jan 04, 2008 Lori rated it it was amazing

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 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 native cultures around the world. She refers to this era as "The Reign of the Death-Eye Dog" and subliminally allies it with the current incarnation of the world as defined by the Mayan codices (codexes?). Known as the 5th World in Western terms, this era is slated to end in 2012, and Silko predicts that the next era will be defined by a return to a more "traditional" way of living. She dubs that "The Reign of the Fire-Eyed Macaw." This is necessary not for the survival of humanity, she contends, but for the survival of the earth. I've always thought that the earth was the only sympathetic character in the novel. The Earth, in its spiritual aspect, is always at the heart of Silko's fiction, whether it's embodied in a character, as it is in Ceremony, or omnipresent as it is in Almanac.

This is all encoded in the text, as befits a novel based on the writings of the Maya, but I think that it's pretty essential to understand that concept to stick it out to the end of this novel. The world Silko portrays is defined by the evil that men do, and very few, if any, of her characters have any redeeming qualities. She is, in a sense, holding up a mirror and daring us to confront the reflection. This is ferociously unapologetic fiction. It is an indictment. But it's important to note that Silko has not reduced her themes into a Western=bad, Native=good equation. In the world of the novel, everyone is either corrupted or corruptable.

I love books that are puzzlesque, and this stands (outside of Ulysses, which I could never get through) as the most complicated puzzle of a book that I've ever read. Not a beach-read, not a feel-good read, but if you can withstand the brutality, it is an amazing journey of a novel. ...more

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Jul 26, 2013 Aubrey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reality-check, r-2014, disturbation, r-goodreads, reviewed, antidote-think-twice-read, ever-on, antidote-think-twice-all, person-of-reality, 5-star

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.

The old almanac said “civil strife, civil crises, civil war.”

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

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.

The old almanac said “civil strife, civil crises, civil war.”

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 Jest, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, insufficient if I did not expound but of merit for the recognition that this is white man conspiracy, white man drugs, white man massacre, all of them favorites of mine for the seeming single purpose of bringing me here, to this book. Conspiracy, drugs, massacre, written by a woman of color, The Royal Family penned nine years earlier and far more "edgier" and without a single shred of pity for any of the dead and dying living through its pages. Reasoning, yes, respect, sometimes, all of the intersectional holistic sort that leads you to care for a person on the first page and tasks you to feel for the earth entire on the last. In that matter, it is, as we say, "difficult".

There was not, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the Europeans’ own definitions and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land. Because stolen land never had clear title.

Even city people might identify the true leaders because true leaders would immediately seize all vacant apartments and houses to provide shelter for all the homeless.

I used to give warnings in reviews out of shared commiseration, then equivocating "objectivity", then tired exasperation; then white people fear interfered so much with one of my class' showing of Twelve Years a Slave which of itself is feel-good-look-we-don't-enslave-anymore!-times in comparison to Fruitvale Station which also continues the narrative that a serious movie can be made of black people only when it involves them killed/tortured/etc etc that I can no longer conceptualize what would be sufficient "warning". Instead, I will tell you that if you are white and living in the United States, treat reading this as your civic duty. If you aren't white, I can't tell you anything. The rules I live by were made by white people, and do not work the same for you.

Over the years the judge had learned a great deal about lie-detector tests and the evaluators of the testing. The judge knew that the worst offenders remained serene, absolutely innocent in their own minds because the victims had always started the trouble.

Mosca doesn't understand why white people become uneasy when they see cripples or brain damage; their fear is irrational. They believe another person's bad luck is contagious no matter how many times they are given scientific facts.

While England spurred its youth with magic, the United States clamors through its dystopias, written by white people for white people and paling (ha) when contrasted with this, which treats the now of this country I live in as the eve of the French Revolution to such a strategically and technologically sound extent that I have to wonder why Silko has not been arrested. Paranoia, yes, but when you see something like this and know this small horrendously recent segment of timeline it to be true, how could there not be repercussions stretching all the way back to the day New Amsterdam became New York and Wall Street was named for the wall that prevented slaves from escaping? This, and realities of global warming and the corporations paying billions to pretend science isn't a thing, makes you wonder about your life and the "right thing to do".

Clinton was suspicious whenever he heard the word pollution. Human beings had been exterminated strictly for “health” purposes by Europeans too often.

The ancestors had called Europeans “the orphan people” and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish or coldhearted clanspeople, few Europeans had remained whole. They failed to recognize the earth was their mother. Europeans were like their first parents, Adam and Eve, wandering aimlessly because the insane God who had sired them had abandoned them.

There are plenty of references for those who are inclined to figure out such, all the more challenging for being completely outside the usual Eurocentric framework of such and such names and phrases and philosophical meanderings. I've seen talk about all the gay people (gay men, actually, I would've remembered coming across a lesbian) being portrayed as evil, when the first of the type I came across was one of the most "moral" of the entire cast and there were plenty of "evil" straight/asexual men/women and "evil" itself is, well. I'm as careful to contextualize the word as I am with this recent Kathleen Hale business and how easy people find it to call her "crazy" and "not right in the head" because I, clinically depressed as I am due to the wave of the doctor's magic diagnosis, am also "not right in the head". Words, words, words. I have a lot less to lose due to being white and het and cis, of course, but the difference is enough for me to keep an eye on things.

David was worth more dead than he had been worth alive. The Eric series would appreciate in value, and even pictures of David’s corpse would bring good prices. Beaufrey knew Serlo disapproved of selling these photographs; but here was what gave free-world trade the edge over all other systems: no sentimentality. Every ounce of value, everything worth anything, was stripped away for sale, regardless; no mercy.

Capital punishment is terrorism practiced by the government against its citizens.

There's torture porn and circumcision of infants porn and very candid talk of cannibalization of the poor and the disabled by the rich and the healthy, but the state of romance and economics being what it is today, it's not a huge leap of faith.

Survival had depended on differences.

I'll recommend this to the world, but I'm not comfortable enough with calling it a "favorite". That's the point. Also, the author was part of the first batch of Genius Grant recipients. It's fantastically consistent, the correlation between composing good literature and having a shitton of money. ...more

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Sep 22, 2014 Zanna rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015year-reading-women, bechdel-pass, native, favourites

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

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Aug 25, 2015 El rated it it was amazing

Shelves: native-american, anarchism-revolutions, 20th-centurylit-late, fantasy, library-borrow, big-effing-books

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 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 make her message any less important? Not in my mind. She claims this story started out as a sort of drug-trafficking thriller, and it turned into this... 700+ behemoth filled with all this other stuff that flat-out hurts to read.

This isn't a book that should be enjoyed, per se. It's not a pleasurable read, but I feel it's prophetic and important. It goes deeper than the flawed characters, or the "flat" writing of Silko that I have seen complaints of - this is 500 years of history about a land (and a culture and a people) that doesn't belong to me originally.

There are many layers of story and history here, and they are woven together like a tapestry. It is non-linear, which can make it a frustrating read, but also requires a bit of responsibility from the reader. The Almanac of the Dead itself is seemingly what holds the story together, though I will admit that it wasn't always as central to the story as I would have liked. This is such an expansive story that I cannot deny that Silko didn't lose some grasp on some of the threads, but I feel the end result is still more satisfying than any other writer would have been able to accomplish. 700+ pages, something like 70 characters, 500 years of history. There is a mystery, there is some magical realism (of sorts), there is history. (Did I mention there is history? Because there is history).

All of the destruction and grittiness in this story is intentional. I feel the characters mirror what was done to the land, to the Native Americans, 500 years ago. While the story is about rising up and taking back what was taken from them, many of these characters seem to be doing the exact opposite of that. Which makes sense, really, if you consider how people (especially minorities) are beaten down until they have no memory of how they should be treated. These characters personify that treatment.

I don't feel that ever saying a story based on such a horrific past is too violent is ever a good enough excuse.

Word by word, the stories of suffering, injury, and death had transformed the present moment, seizing listeners' or readers' imaginations so that for an instant, they were present and felt the suffering of sisters and brothers long past.

...more

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Sep 04, 2015 Tori (InToriLex) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult, favorite, nativeamerican, diverse-reads

Find this and other Reviews at InToriLex

Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon Silko, IntoriLex, Book Review

"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 book. At the core of Find this and other Reviews at InToriLex

"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 book. At the core of this is the idea being reinforced over and over again that we must remember and know the history of our people. In America Native American history in school isn't taught and Christopher Columbus continues to be regarded as a hero. This book is a a step in the right direction, because it starts the conversation with the unflinching truth about the Native American genocide.

Alot of criticism of this novel talks about homosexual characters being portrayed as evil. But at I was reading I thought that was a unfair characterization. Every character was more nuanced than good or evil. There were some graphic and disturbing scenes which involved rape and molestation, but the author clearly wants you to be uncomfortable. The point is that your comfort is taken away, so you can better relate to the turmoil and ugliness described in the novel.

There is wonderful insights and thoughts that challenge the reader to look at things they may be used to turning away from. The spiritual connection that has been lost to the earth is a reoccurring theme, but did not come off as preachy at all. Religion is used to manipulate and profit. Characters are betrayed, lost and grasping for hope where they can. I was emotionally reminded of things that this book didn't directly address, but the intimacy described is relateable for everyone.

"The ancestors had called Europeans the 'orphan people' and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish or coldhearted clanspeople, Few Europeans remained whole."

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience an educational, engaging, and powerful glimpse into a different culture. My book club, didn't finish the book when we met on account of the length, but we all took memorable and important lessons from it. The ending seems unfinished, but it's not. This book makes you recognize and experience the power of stories, and made me immensely grateful. ...more

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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 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 two on Marx didn't give that fact away). It no doubt serves its purpose. Or rather, served. Almanac is well and truly rooted in an 80s/90s sensibility, not only the Native American uprising it (seems to) foretell, but the vision of the particular form of excess and decay that a society oppressed for 500 years by European colonialism will take: riddled by drugs, guns, pornography, rape, brutality and murder; homeless Vietnam war vets; serial killers; the rampant greed of real estate developers fueled by the drug of choice, cocaine. An already barren landscape being pillaged by the corruption and greed of petty thieves, gang-bangers, mafia families, third-world generalissimos, and governments in collusion with all of them.

Silko slammed Erdrich for not being political enough in a review the former did of the latter's The Beet Queen. I haven't read up on the feud, but there've been books written on it. Or at least chapters in books, which maybe I will some day read. I think that it's an interesting topic: how do these two paragons of Native American writing approach the politics inherent in the literature that they create? Where do literary style and choices play a role, and how?

Me, I'm Team Erdrich all the way. I like my novels novelistic: I like my characters complex; I like my language lyrical and poetic; I like plots that serve theme, but don't exist entirely to bang you over the head with it. And if, at the same time, these novels also illuminate the underlying politics (which Erdrich's most certainly do; and so do Boyden's, and Wagamese's, and Thomas King's, and Tompson Highway's, and ...), then that's a bonus.

As a novel, Almanac of the Dead uses plot (too many) and character (too flat) entirely in the service of anger, cynicism, and political intent, and so ... not my cup of tea.

...more

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May 17, 2015 Petra rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-i-own-e-books, floor-joists

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, 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, corruption (so much corruption in so many different ways) in a way that is, while not pleasant, somehow disturbingly real. This is Life as we don't see it because this Life takes place in the dark corners. It's sad and scary to know that this life exists somewhere. One wants to take all this nastiness away from the people and let them see the brighter side of life.

Then, intertwined in all this grittiness, is the Earth and our connectedness/disconnectedness with it. The Earth can be separated from us but we can not be separated from the Earth. Connectivity. No one stands alone. One person's actions will touch us all in some way.

The people in this book (and there are many) are interesting and well portrayed & written but, for the most part, not likable. These are hurt, angry, greedy and/or downtrodden people with axes to grind and faults that put them outside of our normal vision. They are the addicts, the homeless, the perpetrators. There are few redeeming values. Yet they are real, have power, influence the events of their, and therefore our, world.

It's hard to describe a book like this. It's wonderfully told, hard to read (stomach) at times, gritty, hopeful, depressing, horrifying. There's an element of magical realism, giving the story some haunting and mystical sides. It tells the story of connectivity to each other and our world. It tells its story from the dark side; a different perspective than we're used to reading or hearing about.

Throughout this read I was reminded of Roberto Bolano's 2666. It has the same concept of grittiness and showing a dark side of the world that we don't see and yet exists and influences us. ...more

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Sep 01, 2018 Lark Benobi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, words-without-borders, a-new-way-of-reading

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 ...more

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May 02, 2009 Mary Spielmann rated it did not like it

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 ...more

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Sep 27, 2007 Christy rated it liked it

Shelves: native-american-lit-and-history, 20th-century-american-lit, readinglist1

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a tough book. It's been ages since it took so much time and effort for me to finish a book. Silko creates dozens of characters in several locales and their stories are told only a little bit at a time, with little sense of how they relate to one another until the final section of the book. Even beyond the overwhelming size and scope of the book, Almanac of the Dead is a tough read because in it Silko presents big and frightening ideas. This is a book about the destruction of land and This is a tough book. It's been ages since it took so much time and effort for me to finish a book. Silko creates dozens of characters in several locales and their stories are told only a little bit at a time, with little sense of how they relate to one another until the final section of the book. Even beyond the overwhelming size and scope of the book, Almanac of the Dead is a tough read because in it Silko presents big and frightening ideas. This is a book about the destruction of land and culture by Destroyers (white people), not just in the United States, but in the Americas broadly, in Africa, and even in Europe. Most of the book is dedicated to showing the results of this destruction. People are greedy, dissolute, violent, disconnected from their spiritual roots and from the earth. As the novel progresses, these people either destroy themselves and each other or find a place in the movement to overthrow the Destroyers.

It is a long process of development, leading to a conclusion that looks toward the future with a mixture of hope and fear. It is unclear how much violence will be a part of this revolution, how long it will take to work, or what will happen to the characters we have been following. Ultimately, the characters don't matter. They are expendable. This is a book about the big picture--and most of the characters themselves realize this (at least among the "good guys"). Similarly, looking at the big picture, it is argued that it may take 50 bloody years to create this change or it may take hundreds of more peaceful years; but it will happen. The Destroyers will be removed from power. Their time will pass. The question, then, is what will happen in the meantime? Will Indians across the Americas rise up and fight, will they sacrifice themselves? Or will they try to wait it out? And at the rate that the Destroyers are working, will the Indians survive in the meantime? None of these questions are truly answered at the end of the novel, but possibilities are given. The twins are leading a large group of people north from Mexico, there is an army of Indians coming down from the north of the U.S., there is a homeless army growing around Tucson, and there are multiple leaders, human and spirit, driving Indians toward a conflict with the Destroyers. Clearly, then, Indians are rising up to fight in one way or another. Some groups look forward to nonviolent empowerment and others plan for violent uprising, however. Although Sterling notes with apprehension that "when the shooting started, women and children, the old and the sick, the innocent and the weak, would die first" (753), indicating the dangers of a violent uprising, in the end even he sees the bigger picture: "Burned and radioactive, with all humans dead, the earth would still be sacred. Man was too insignificant to desecrate her" (762). All that matters is the earth and its liberation and this realization changes Sterling: "Sterling didn't look like his old self anymore. He had lost weight and quit drinking beer. The postmaster reported Sterling had let go all his magazine subscriptions. Sterling didn't care about the rumors and gossip because Sterling knew why the giant snake had returned now; he knew what the snake's message was to the people. The snake was looking south, in the direction from which the twin brothers and the people would come" (763). These concluding lines provide some hope for the movement, for the people, for the earth.

But after 760 pages of development, to be left still looking forward to the action is extremely frustrating. Looking at this book as a political novel, this conclusion makes sense. The book gestures outside of itself to the real world, to a future that could be created by readers. But the beginning and middle of the novel do not feel like that of a political novel. There is too much going on; there are too many characters calling for the reader's attention. Basically, it's too complex to be an effective political novel in the traditional sense, but its conclusion demands such a reading. Almanac of the Dead also falls into the category of speculative fiction. It describes a world that is so much like ours that it barely registers as speculative fiction, but this is what gives it power. Silko has the freedom within this genre to embellish, to create a force that doesn't yet exist in the real world, but this force is created in a world that feels so real, so matter-of-fact even, that we begin to believe it really does exist. As such, the book is a warning, a guide, a prophecy that we must fulfill. ...more

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Aug 01, 2008 Thea rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Peggy rated it really liked it

Shelves: native-american, spirituality, dystopian-ecotopian, latin-america, international

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 ...more

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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.

Shelves: future, community, my-teachers

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 ...more

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Oct 03, 2009 Catherine rated it it was ok

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

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Jan 02, 2014 Linda rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Jeanne Thornton rated it liked it

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, 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, while relaxing at home, recall that all of the water and electricity has been shut down in Mexico City DF, condemning thousands & millions of impoverished people to slow starvation or murder, such revelations taking a paragraph or so.)

When writing about revolution, about the moral obligation to revolt ("One day a story will arrive in your town," one of the best passages), I feel really, really troubled when an author isn't willing to describe the consequences of such revolt in immediate and human terms. I mean it is easy to think about deaths on a monumental scale, but the death counts in this book feel like they're more about numeric effect, terms in a rhetorical argument for dehumanization of an adversary. The whole book feels like it's engaging with horror in passing, in summary. Trigg has a habit of fellating homeless men while draining their blood to sell on the biomaterials exchange, but do we actually care about any of these homeless men specifically, or are they just horrors, notes in an overall motif of horror and blood and ruin?

About dehumanization: the people who deserve murder are sorcerers, destroyers, not humans. Likely, but? I want to sign on for a book about the end of 500 years of European dominion over native lands, as prophesied by a gigantic stone snake; I want to see the total reclamation of native lands here promised. The analysis in this book, the historical connections between uprisings and movements across pretty much the entire hemisphere: all of that is tops, and the book comes alive when it gets didactic about this stuff (one of the reasons I really like the parts with Clinton and his radio addresses.) But I also want that reclamation to hurt more than it seems to hurt in this book. If it's necessary, as the book argues, for a blood sacrifice on a massive scale to appease the spirits who've been dishonored by colonialism, then I want that blood sacrifice to seem like a sacrifice, rather than a fantasy predicated on the idea that It's Okay If Everyone Dies Because They Weren't Human Anyway. I want it not to be a fantasy: I want to be able to believe in the total return of native lands, and I can't here because I can't recognize most of the people in this book who implement the systems that prevent that return as humans, as banal. These feel like cruel caricatures of humans.

For a book about the total collapse of all European colonial legacies in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere, very little actually seems to be at stake from page to page. So much of this book's narration involves wandering around settings, hearing characters obsess and make plots among themselves while they go about their business--dealing drugs, buying guns, having joyless sex, doing cocaine, taking part in golf dates where they laugh evilly about their sadistic sex practices, torturing people for sport, watching snuff films--little of which adds up to forward plot momentum. These drifting scenes start to alternate, toward the end, with news flashes about how BY THE WAY the Mexican government has toppled / all Europeans have been driven out of Africa by heroic revolutions there / everyone is dying of starvation in Mexico City DF / etc. There are a few plots that feel engaging--Menardo's in particular--but even there, we hear Menardo talk about how he's in love with his bulletproof vest for so many dozens of repetitive pages that What's Going To Happen is obvious and anticlimactic when it comes. I feel like I have no psychological access to any of the characters besides Sterling, sometimes Seese and Lecha, sometimes Root, sometimes Clinton. I feel like imagining other lives is what I come to fiction for. Is this wrong?

Any of the individual vignettes and plots in this book I'd read a different novel about--one with the exact same plot. even, including the blood van plot, the basset hound sex plot, the baby dismemberment plot, etc.--yet one that seems to care about these people, rather than viewing them either as subjects for pity/damaged motes in God's Eyes, or as disgusting slime who Ought To Be Wiped Out (and who Get What's Coming To Them in the end.)

There are moments that really, really work--"One day a story will come to your town," the scene where a page of the Almanac is cooked into a stew to appease a cannibal, Alegria's walk after the promised "motor homes" don't arrive for her, Sterling's Dillinger tour of Tuscon, etc. The overall structure is really exciting and the premise is one I wanted to see happen on the page. I do not get to see it. Instead I see a lot of Reservoir Dogs-ish Drug Dealing Drama, sadism and torture, flat prose, homophobia.

(There is a huge section of the book that states pretty baldly that AIDS was developed by homosexual Nazi scientists in a secret bunker to erase lower classes of people from the world. There is a part where it talks about how crooked cops are trading tapes of GRS by trans people to collectors, along with tapes of interrogations and murder of desaparecidos and infants. If these things do not bother you, if they don't seem to you to be worth docking a few stars, why not?)

I honestly think this is a mess, but there aren't other books like it that I know of, and there ought to be. ...more

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Dec 08, 2009 Joey Beatty rated it liked it

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

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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

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Feb 20, 2008 Dawn rated it did not like it

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

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May 03, 2011 Tarkpor rated it it was amazing

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.

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Sep 08, 2007 Sara rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: Nobody

Recommended to Sara by: My teacher

Shelves: fiction, 3rd-person-omniscient, native-american, read-for-a-class

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.

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Jul 23, 2011 Malcolm rated it really liked it

Shelves: first-nations, lit-like, fiction-contemporary

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.

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May 19, 2016 Caitlin rated it really liked it

An intricate epic that portrays people as not only perverse in their exploitation of the earth, but their exploitation of each other. Graphic and hard to stomach at times, but with an important message for the inheritors of the planet.

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Aug 20, 2008 Kathy rated it it was amazing

Reading this book through to the end requires some fortitude and determination. Kind of like Moby Dick. But this novel is, well, prophetic. Occasionally, when I come across some item in the news (like the buying and selling of human organs), I say to myself, Oh, that was predicted in Almanac.

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Jul 21, 2007 Jessica rated it really liked it

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.

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Mar 26, 2019 Nammy rated it really liked it

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 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 Europeans is masterful-- she weaves together climate change, the crimes and genocides that took place on American soil, and the liberation of the countries of Africa into the tapestry of a native insurrection.

I do have to address what many reviewers are calling the "gore-porn" featuring most of the white males in the novel. I also found that the gore-porn didn't really advance the plot, other than illustrating what Silko called the age of the "Death-Eye Dog," and Clinton's assertions that the sexual crimes committed against African slaves by early slave masters permanently perverted their sex drive. I actually really enjoyed Clinton's argument (and through him, Silko's), that the enactors of destruction and trauma also traumatize themselves. The white race in Almanac of the Dead have destroyed the earth and their own homes, have become so sexually depraved (this book contains every kind of rape/assault/abuse/perversion) that they are dying out. In that sense, I think the gore-porn does have some level of plot functioning-- but I find it hard to relate to the world I know. The extreme depravity of every white man in power almost puts the real world's corrupt politicians and the ultra-rich capitalists in a better light compared to the monsters Silko wrote. The idea in Almanac of the Dead, however, was that men who seem to be perfectly normal and functioning in the elite circles of society have not really escaped the trauma their ancestors began and which they continue to cause. Behind closed doors, these men are perverted to the point that their humanity is unrecognizable. I really liked how universal the monstrosity of Silko's white men was; the homosexuals, the handicapped, the elderley-- no one was exempt from some kind of disturbing, nauseating sexual proclivity.

Another qualm I had with the book was the lack of children in the novel's present time period. Other than Menardo's and Zeta and Lecha's flashbacks, and stories from the almanac itself, there are no children-- and even the flashbacks are centered around the adults the children interact with. I found it weird that there were absolutely no children featured in the many, many characters whose perspectives the narrative focused on. The book was so brutal, and so violent, that the absence of children became obvious. It made the war feel less real, and the world feel like a sicker, more perverse place.

Almanac of the Dead is by no means an easy read. Parts of the book were so disturbing that I had to put it down and walk away for a while. But it's brilliantly written, a fierce, forceful piece of writing that completely subverts the typical white perspective of indigenous people (in which they are a weakened, nearly extinct people, the memory of crimes of the distant past). In Almanac of the Dead, indigenous people are on the rise, the buffalo are returning, and all of the overlooked people in America-- the people of color, the homeless, the women-- unite to plan a continental rebellion that will overthrow the American government and the entire European system of living. Drug smugglers, real-estate tycoons, gangsters, politicians, spiritual healers; all of the unlikeliest characters are drawn into the "500 year war": a war that began when Columbus set foot in this hemisphere and that is still being fought today. The book throbs with rage, beauty, and corruption. ...more

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Oct 12, 2018 elena rated it it was amazing

Shelves: absolute-favorites, ideally-my-mfa, tejano-mexican-american, 50-books-by-woc-2018

You cannot read this book quickly, no matter how quickly you read other things.
I thought that nothing I read, versus something I saw, would be able to disturb me.
This book has plenty of pieces that will disturb you. It isn't a horror story.

Almanac of the Dead is an epic, that sprawls across centuries, Mexico, the Southwest, and mythic space. If you know pieces of Mexican history, American history, Indian history, you will see echoes in these pages. The homages to reality in a work of fiction ...more

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Jun 07, 2019 Quail rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

what an extraordinary, extraordinary thing. looking at this brick of a book i was expecting a bit of a slog but was open to it, but i was pretty much was captivated by it from the beginning. masterful doesn't begin to cover the author's writing craft, in that as a reader i could trust her fully. she would introduce new characters constantly but always reward the reader for paying attention and we would eventually understand what's going on, she just trusts us to care enough to keep going. as ...more

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Apr 21, 2018 Ai Miller rated it liked it

Shelves: grad-school, native-authors, women-authors, fiction, owned-books, indigenous-studies

Before I read it, I heard this book was long, and BOY IS IT FUCKIN' LONG, Y'ALL. It's so, so long, and I would say the last third sort of feels like you're circling around a drain, slowly. It's certainly a beast to behold, and Silko does a great job of building up to her climax. It's also uh graphic as HELL--at one point, I described it as "indigenous Game of Thrones in Tucson" and I honestly stand by that, so please be wary as you approach this. If there's a trigger warning you can think of, ...more

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