Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit

by Leslie Marmon Silko

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit is a collection of twenty-two powerful and indispensable essays on Native American life, written by one of America's foremost literary voices.

Bold and impassioned, sharp and defiant, Leslie Marmon Silko's essays evoke the spirit and voice of Native Americans. Whether she is exploring the vital importance literature and language play in Native American heritage, illuminating the inseparability of the land and the Native American people, enlivening the ways and wisdom of the old-time people, or exploding in outrage over the government's long-standing, racist treatment of Native Americans, Silko does so with eloquence and power, born from her profound devotion to all that is Native American.

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit is written with the fire of necessity. Silko's call to be heard is unmistakable—there are stories to remember, injustices to redress, ways of life to preserve. It is a work of major importance, filled with indispensable truths—a work by an author with an original voice and a unique access to both worlds.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Native American, Indigenous, Short Stories, History, Read For School

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

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 Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.

(from Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_...

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm making my way through What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia as a reaction to a certain someone's grifter's surge in popularity due to a recent political candidacy, and there's something to be said for a way of life that isn't grounded in a death cult. Cult of racism, cult of eugenics, cult of capitalism, and lord it's been so long since I first experienced Silko's Almanac of the Dead, but thank the spirits that it came when I knew enough to take it on without being truly cognizant of what's good for me. And now I find myself writing on the queer, the feminist, the patriarchal, the "sexual differences were highly respected and honored" , the "marriage did not mean an end to sex with people other than your spouse", the "[s]ince children belonged to the mother and her clan, and women owned and bequeathed the houses and the farmland, the exact determination of paternity wasn't critical", but I'm also thinking about how Silko did comment variously on how being multiracial interfered with her/her family's community/political aspirations, in other words the distance between the ideal and the lived. All in all, a meditation on life in the pre to post Reagan era, where 'race' could have been replaced by 'ancestry' in another universe, and the surge in the border-enforcing fascists is contextualized in as egregiously violent a manner as must be force-fed to the liberals for them to realize that, no, not even (or perhaps not just) Kamala will save them. As Auntie Kie with her history of Indian treaties and her flyswatter and her tamarisk tree she has named Ida Lupino once said,"American presidents are just there to give the people a good show," and with a major national paper treating a monumental terrorist event as a 'Trojan horse', if the country burned down tomorrow, it'd be hard to justify why that was a bad to me. Silko's not nearly so violent and vindictive, and that's exactly why I find myself interacting with 99% of human beings: sure, my firebrand fury is useful in certain circumstances, but in 33 years and counting, planting myself as a seed for a decade's harvest has proven more viable than burning myself out in a second's instant. So, read this if you don't mind casting back three decades to a specific corner of the desert world and thinking about what it would be like to be raised as a lifeblood rather than a chess piece. You may not win yourself a truth that you can appreciate whilst completely sober (judging from my own track record), but if you're debating whether to read this or yet another work by a white person, c'mon. Live a little.

[David Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is window into a different world, with the wonderful but scary possibility that the world described is actually our world. And we too can see and live it, IF we could only let go of everything we have been taught about how the world works. Since virtually ALL of modern media aims to narcissism which fuels our consumer society...I doubt many of us can step through the window Leslie Marmon Silko generously gives us.

Imagine a world were finding the most productive and cost effective way of life is NOT the constant goal

The Hopi elders say the Hopi people might have settled in locations far more lush, where daily life would not have been so grueling . But there on the high, silent, sandstone mesa that overlook the sandy, arid expanses stretching to all horizons, the Hopi elders say the Hopi people must “live by their prayers” if they are to survive. The Hopi way cherishes the intangible: the riches realized from interaction and interrelationships with all beings above all else. Great abundance of material things, even food, the Hopi elders believe, tend to lure human attention away form the most valuable and important. The views of the Hopi elders are not much different from those of elders in all the pueblos. pg. 40

I bet the Hopi didn’t try to make things harder on themselves but the stopped when the solution offered was just to give up everything that made them Hopi. No expert here, but even the idea that easy affluence is something to be avoided is so dazzling it allures me.

Then there is this…

My grandmother was dark and handsome. Her expression in photographs is one of confidence and strength. I do not know if white people then or now would consider her beautiful. I do not know if the old-time Laguna Pueblo people considered her beautiful or if the old-time people even thought in those terms. To the Pueblo way of thinking, the act of comparing one living being to another was silly, because each being is unique and therefore incomparably valuable because it is the only one of its kind. The old-time people thought it was crazy to attach such importance to a person’s appearance. pg. 64

WOW!! A world with out comparisons!!?!? Accepting each thing and each second without regard to how it falls on a scale of good/bad. We are surrounded by ratings and are compelled to make judgments at every step. Each doctor’s visits follows with a plea to be rated. Each online purchase demand a form be filled out. So may phone calls are followed by a survey to assure quality. I get it, but please STOP.

And the idea that everything really IS connected. It is just a joy to hold that idea in your heart.

And an odd example is why are so many people so messed up? So violent? So cruel? Consider that the violence we do Earth itself is actually rebounding back onto us...

[explaining a horrific murder] The impulse to pick up the shiny new axe had been irresistible, the killer later said. He could not explain the murder of his tow friends.

But the old people have their own explanation. According to the elders, destruction of any part of the earth does immediate harm to all living things. Pg. 131

there is much more but rather than ruin it with my ham handed analysis here are some quotes I want to remember

Without calendars and clocks, the process of aging becomes a process of changing: the infant changes; the flower changes; the changes continue relentlessly. Nothing is lost, left behind, or destroyed. It is only changed. Pg. 137

...maybe I was thinking about snakes because I was homesick for the way people at Laguna see everything as being related; they like to say someone is related to coyotes or that a snake looks like somebody’s uncle. Pg. 138

All places and all beings of the earth are sacred. It is dangerous to designate some places sacred when all are sacred. Such compromises imply there is a hierarchy of value, with some places and living beings not as important as others. No part of of the earth is expendable; the earth is a wh0le that cannot be fragmented, as it has been by the destroyers’ mentality of the industrial age. pg. 94

The land has not been desecrated; human beings desecrate only themselves.

The Mother Earthy is inviolable. Pg. 95

[aída · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Like all human beings they [Pueblo people] are concerned with their continued survival as the people they believe themselves to be. What is essential to all Pueblo people is that generation after generation will continue to remember and to tell one another who they are, who they have been, and who they may become»

[Indie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit

I only read the essay Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit,therefore my review consist on this essay not on the entirety of the book.This short essay was beautifully written,it made it's points clear,convincing and engaging.The story is a narrative told by the author’s perspective, in an interesting way she gives us an insight on the Laguna Pueblo people and their culture,which is very intriguing and different.The culture,which is one of the main thoughts the author is trying to convey,is one of the most beautiful and fascinating things about the story.

The structure of the story is divided between paragraphs,each paragraph related in some way to the previous and yet each one with an independent idea.By dividing her story in such way,the author turns it into an easier read,instead of making a continuous narrative,her format allows us to independently judge and analyse each paragraph.

One of the main points the author is trying to make,is the differences between the old generation and the new one,she proceed to tell us the ideology of the old Laguna People,which is truly mesmerizing since it's so different from what is accepted in today's societies,the values and mentalities truly are what every society should strive to apply.The story never gets boring since the Culture of the Laguna people is so beautiful that you just want to keep reading and keep learning more about.Without doubt Silko is an amazing author.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays on similar themes, with a lot on storytelling, family, and photos, so some parts repeat almost exactly word for word.

That being said, each essay in itself is interesting, with good things to think about. Working together, they are even better.

It makes me want to read more by the author.

[Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

technically me he leido solo dos essays del libro para el research pero bueno, shhh. Cuando tenga más tiempo me lo leere entero

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

what

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at an antique/thrift store in rural PA. It caught my eye because I'd read stories by the author before in an undergrad lit class. This compilation of essays did not disappoint. I took a pen to it and made notes as I read.. so much learned about not only the Pueblo people but also about issues surrounding Native Americans in the US. Great read for anytime, but especially these times.

[Bob Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who am I?

I’m a Jew. My ancestors lost their lands around two thousand years ago. Not that they were living such a peaceful life then either—massacres, exiles, wars, destruction, a lot of “smiting” went on. They wandered, they mixed with others but claimed “purity” anyhow. They kept their religious beliefs, they kept their original language at least in written form though they mostly spoke the languages of others. They were reviled, banned, shunned, and murdered again and again. They were prevented from entering most occupations and blamed for carrying on the few left open for them. People foisted all sorts of demeaning, negative images on them while using the very religious texts that Jews had created, while worshipping a man who came from that very people. But when they finally found their way back to Palestine, the Jews didn’t accept the people living there, who’d lived a very long time there too. They didn’t reflect on their own travails. What will happen? That’s still a question.
Every time I read what American Indians write I can’t help but feel that they are talking about my tribal history and wonder, if the Native Americans really do break out of those “reservations” and finally get their lands back, how will they treat those who came later? Will it be another repeat performance? Somehow, I hope they do get their lands back or at least get their power back. There’s too much of me in them. But will it be another Israel/Palestine repeat performance?
Leslie Marmon Silko, a part-Laguna Pueblo Indian identified with her Indian heritage and why not? She idealizes that heritage and tells the tales of that people. However, it seems that she was not allowed to take part in certain ceremonies because she wasn’t pure. Children of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother would be in the same boat. It’s a human failing to think of blood instead of culture and personality. If you act and think like a Jew/Laguna Puebloan and you grow up alongside Jewish/Laguna Pueblo relatives, then for sure you are one. Mixture is irrelevant. It’s what’s in your head that counts.
Silko is a fine writer, but I think her fiction and highly-original works are stronger than this book, which repeats a lot of the same ideas and even some of the same sentences. It���s a collection of mixed worth speculating about her childhood, about the land she loved, about racism in America, photography, and even the dubious worth of tribal councils. She wrote of another Native American people, the Yaquis, that they might have had to leave their lands but “they did not leave behind their consciousness of their identity as Yaquis, as a people, as a community. This is where their power as a culture lies: with this shared consciousness of being part of a living community that continues on and on…” (p.90) That is exactly how I feel about being Jewish. I don’t speak Hebrew or Yiddish, I seldom go to a synagogue, I have genes from various quarters (so says Ancestry.com), but I have the power of a culture that none of “them” could erase. When she says stuff like this, her voice is strong. When she mixes myth and history, I think that she is on thinner ice. I don’t take the Old Testament as literal. I really liked what she said on the last page: “I understand now that human communities are living beings that continue to change; while there may be a concept of the “traditional Indian” or “traditional Laguna Pueblo person”, no such being has ever existed. All along there have been changes;” (p.200)
And tell me what was I supposed to think about those little Jewish puppets on sale in the streets of Prague? Where are the Jews of Prague today? Don’t even fuckin ask. Were they “traditional Jews”? Yes, Leslie, I’m right with you there.

[Angie Fehl · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

In this collection of essays, Silko, a member of the Pueblo Nation, discusses art, symbolism, and overall cultural growth within the Pueblo community. Some of the topics covered in Yellow Woman (the title of the book coming from one of the essays enclosed):

ART
* Symbolism in Pueblo art, ie. use of squash blossom on pottery designs = possible berringer of death, lightning imagery could mean good fortune, karmaj petals used for their symetry to represent four corners of the earth or four elements (fire, water, earth, air). Discussion of how some imagery is used to illustrate the earth being simultaneously complex and fragile

* "Yellow Woman" an image of Pueblo mythology, a goddess highly regarded for her bravery, strength, calm demeanor during catastrophe, and her "uninhibited sexuality" Rather than relying on violence and destruction to assure victories, "Yellow Woman" bewitches foes simply through her sensuality and self confidence.


FAMILY / SOCIETAL STRUCTURE & PREJUDICES

* Silko writes that her own family is a blend of Pueblo, Mexican and Caucasian and her own struggles of "not looking right" to any of these groups. She speaks lovingly of her "dark and handsome" great-grandmother who "exuded confidence and strength", but admits that the woman might not have been considered traditionally beautiful by either Caucasians or Pueblo people, which opens up an essay discussion for how beauty, the thing itself, is interpreted by different cultures. Silko notes that facial differences are highly prized among the Pueblo people.

*Discussion of how the idea of gender norms or "mens' work vs. womens' work" doesn't really have a place in Pueblo culture, only a matter of if you are able-bodied enough to get the job done.. so you find women doing construction and men doing basket weaving and child care. People just go where they are needed.

*Historically, Pueblo people were originally fine with sexual fluidity and up until the arrival of the Puritans, openly supported LGBTQ members of the tribe. Also, babies born out of wedlock were not an issue because unplanned or not, the life was honored as life. If not wanted by the biological parents, the newborn was simply given to a barren woman within the tribe to raise.

The discussions on art and culture were interesting but there was something quietly underneath that just had a feel of Silko sometimes talking down to her readers. Some of the essays repeat topics and even certain passages are duplicated verbatim from one essay into another, which I found incredibly disappointing and lazy. I know some of these pieces were previously printed elsewhere, but certain essays she must have been sitting on for a long while. For instance, one that is noted as having been previously published in 1996 -- "Auntie Kie talks about US Presidents and US Policy" -- but within that essay Silko talks about telling her aunt about an upcoming article Silko is to have published, "What Another Four Years Of Ronald Reagan Will Mean to Native Americans" (Reagan announced his Alzheimer's diagnosis in 1994).

So while some of the topics were interesting, I thought the collection as a whole was kind of sloppily put together. Also, if you haven't read any of Silko's fiction, there are spoilers for some of her short stories within these essays.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're new to Leslie Marmon Silko, Yellow Woman and the Beauty of the Spirit is a great introduction. If you already know her work, you'll probably appreciate this essay collection that much more. The titular essay introduces Leslie Marmon Silko to readers: a woman of mixed ancestry who grew up on the Laguna Pueblo reservation and became a writer, mostly known for her fiction (all of which looks excellent). She also incorporates photography and visual art into her written work, and she happens to be one of the first recipients of the prestigious McArthur Fellowship grant.

"Yellow Woman" is a figure from Laguna Pueblo old stories who represents all women. From an early age, young Leslie knew she didn't fit into white society's stereotype of what an "Indian girl" should look like, but she found her sense of self in Pueblo old stories about Yellow Woman that value strong spirit, courage, and the ability to act without concern for appearances. The rest of the essays explore themes related to identity by weaving together Pueblo origin stories and culture, her career and creative processes, and Native American history and injustices.

As a collection of essays, this book can be hit or miss. Your enjoyment will depend on your personal interests and your familiar with Marmon Silko books. This was my first time reading her work, so the essays that go behind the scenes of her novels were somewhat lost on me. Yellow Woman is also an anthology of previously published essays, so they often overlap in ways that make you feel like you've already read the page or lost your place.

My personal favorite essays explore the role of books in indigenous cultures and how they've been used as a tool of colonization. I'm a lifelong book lover (duh), but these essays actually resonated with me as a graphic designer. Like many designers, I was taught in Swiss design, which views a specific set of standards as "good design," all based on how Europeans read, write, and value language. Marmon Silko breaks down the history of Native American books to show how their design and their mere existence challenged colonizers' portrayal of indigenous cultures as unintellectual and uncivilized. The surviving documents re an incredible combination of visual image, written text, and spoken word—a level of abstraction and an experience that any good designer would dream of achieving.

There are countless fascinating gems in these essays, and anyone reading them will have a different takeaway and experience. I suspect that's something Leslie Marmon Silko would appreciate.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a bit of a mixed bag - a somewhat random and sometimes repetitive assortment of Marmon Silko's "nonfiction prose" as she puts it.

The first few essays were absolutely mindblowing and world-changing for me, 7 stars. Her descriptions of growing up as part of the Laguna tribe, her description of some aspects of the Laguna belief system and traditional life, her way of depicting Laguna storytelling and use of language - I am going to read those essays again in a little bit, because I didn't begin to absorb what they were saying.

A lot of the other ones were very brief, two to three pages. Which is fine but a bit more difficult for me to get into. I found out (again) that nothing in politics is new - the border wall, problems with Border Patrol, and anti-immigrant/ Native politics have been around for many many years (it seems like the bulk of these were written in the 8o's and early 90's).

What this will do is make me read her fiction, I am now very excited to do so.

[Cuchillo Lope · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was another book gifted to me by a well meaning white person on the grounds of “Your Native and so is this book. You will love it!” It sat in a box for a long while and I found it again in a box of stuff in my mom’s garage. Figured I would give it a go.
I’ve never read any of Leslie Silko’s work, so this is my first and I gotta say it’s alright. Some of the essays, like the titular Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit and Books: Notes on Mixtec and Maya Screenfolds, Picture Books of Preconquest Mexico, are not only really great, but fascinating pieces of personal Pueblo history. They really wowed me.
Outside of those, however, I felt like these were random essays slapped together in one book. They were fine, but nothing that would blow my mind.
It makes me wonder about her narrative work which I may have to check out, but overall it was fine.

[Greta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first encountered Leslie Mormon Silko almost 40 years ago when her novel Ceremony spoke deeply to my sense of cultural confusion and need for purpose in my life. I was a young priveleged white woman in the 1980s looking for something better than what I saw and wanting to contribute to that something as a desperate act of healing. Now approaching 60, I am grateful for that book. Her wisdom as a storyteller is that powerful, and these essays go a long way to explain that power, informed by her own passionate purpose. These essays are good for those interested in theory of narrative, origins of racism and classism, and utopian cultures as well as Native American or more specifically southwest/Pueblo culture.

[mickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really beautiful collection of essays- I found myself underlining several sections with thought-provoking conclusions or poetic phrases. The authors voice is very strong throughout and you can almost hear her reading it aloud to you which is fitting with the overall theme of oral storytelling as central to Pueblo Indian life. One highlight for me are the knowledge of (pre and post colonial) history in the Americas, most of which is really not common knowledge. My favorite thing about this book is the different perspectives it gives you about so many things we tend to fixate on in one way- time, truth, meaning, writing, community, memory… the list goes on.

[Toya · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[alex ★彡 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for my world lit class. Such a captivating essay.

[Kara Bailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of essays was a very interesting and enlightening look into the indigenous perspective. Some essays were repetitive, but the overall message was good.

[Aden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several excellent short essays by an author who continues to remain an essential voice for Indigenous Americans and for everybody.

[Alexa Bellavia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mostly did not enjoy, very dense and not great writing skills.

[Riley Reed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this for school

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this one for school. I found parts of it super interesting, other parts a tad repetitive. But overall good!

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of autobiographical essays. Some were published previously.

[Kailey Crowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my ELA class and it was okkkk

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this book. Leslie’s voice really came through for me in her writing. I can’t wait to read Ceremony next!

[Jen Mays · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: 2.5 stars

Review: This is a short collection of essays compiled about twenty years ago from items that had mostly been previously published in other magazines and journals. Per the author's note, some grammar and other writing issues were fixed between the first publication and the second, but for the most part, they were as they were written originally.

I had picked up the book because of my F2F book group's topic of Women's History for our upcoming discussion, but the essays weren't so much about the female side of things with regard to Native American life; though some touches were made on the topic, overall, the essays seemed to be about Indian connections to land and the history that's come from that, and the disconnect of same by the European settlers since their arrival some 500 years ago. Most of the personal connections are painted with the Pueblo Indian point of view, as this is the heritage of the author. Also discussed are the personal struggles felt by the author who is caught between two worlds and the growing (returning?) power to those in authority who are abusing their powers to frighten people for no apparent reason other than the color of their skin.

This is a thin collection at just 200 pages. I found the emergence and migration stories interesting, as well as the author's recollections of her childhood experiences and the stories of her family and tribe growing up in Laguna. Where things fell flat for me was the repetitiveness of the statements from one essay to the next. As individual essays, the information was strong and compelling. However, in a compilation of them, especially one so thin already, the same few anecdotes told and retold in subsequent pages (sometimes with the exact same sentences, like they were copied and pasted over) meant that I wasn't learning anything new after having read the first few essays in the book. The author mentions a few times that the storytelling of the Pueblo people often involves repeating all the same facts over and over because they are meant to be lessons and not just entertaining stories. In this type of format, though, where I'm reading the same bits over and over again, it just becomes that much easier to distract me away from reading entirely and I don't think losing her audience is what the author intended.

She's written a couple of novels and I might be interested in reading those to see how her fictional storytelling goes. I don't think I'd read any additional non-fiction though, except as maybe a one-off article as these essays appear to have been originally.

[mariah claire ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

i thought i took the time to sit down and write a review on this book but i didn't. i was assigned to read this when i was an english major, but i'd realize that wouldn't be the most optimal career choice for the kind of life i wanted to live. i traded my pencil for a blood pressure cuff lol this was peak pandemic, it was a funny time in my life and all of this was over zoom. so. you can imagine how that was. it was one of my first literature classes i'd be taking as a college student, i graduated high school a year early so i was younger and severely overwhelmed but i owned it, OKAY? and this was a women's lit class. it was the most lit class i fear.

silko of the laguna pueblo tribe presents an unfamiliar (to ME, TO ME!! to ME) perspective of the expression of gender, gender as a whole and just how.... they don't have the same idea of what a "woman" is compared to western idealogy that was brought over and almost completely wiped out. in western culture, two distinct genders are almost a caricature and they're expected to act more a certain way. you think a lady living out in the woods is going to care about having a pink bow? like be serious. it sounds so simple but it really opened my eye because sexuality was also a topic of conversation.

much like gender, the expression of sexuality is fluid. there are no labels, there is no right or wrong way to be a person because they simply are what they are. they are what they are, and they are and they aren't. nothing fucking makes sense and everything is a paradox and it changed my way of thinking. we complicate shit too fucking much. CHILL THE FUCK OUT. thank you so much

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

To begin, I was a little disenchanted by the fact that all of the essays in this collection had already been previously published. I was expecting that a few might be "new" to readers. Otherwise, one could be disappointed with the fact that they had already read her 1980s-1994 material, which was then just combined in 1997 into this book. That being said, perhaps it is good to have a collection of essays in one book, because they are easier to reference this way.

At times, the essays can get repetitious--this is indeed part of storytelling--but in certain areas it feels as if you want "new" material. Nonetheless, the stories are interesting. Some are better able to speak specifically to Silko's experiences and others discuss more of a Pan-Indian identity or crisis (ie: the section on law and policy and border patrol actually effects everyone in different ways). There are several interesting illustrations as well.

Overall, I'm in the middle of the road on this one and am giving it three stars. There is some good information here. But at the same time, it is information that you've likely seen before if you're a Silko fan or scholar.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a book group I belong to. As I read the introduction, my trepidation increased...I thought it was going to be a very dry, angry book that is difficult to get through. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, there are sections where the author is angry - and justifiably so. But, I found the book provided insight into Pueblo spirituality and culture. There were essays that were repetitive, but I don't know that she wrote the essays with the intent of compiling them someday. Overall, an easy, enlightening read.

[Devika Koppikar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, this book was insightful about the Native American view of life. For example, Silko went into detail of how Native Americans view time in a circular pattern. I had read about this concept before - but Silko draws it out clearly. My only critique of this book is that some sections are repeated. I understand it's a compilation of essays - but it should have been condensed at the publication level. It will save the trees of this beautiful land which is a part of all of us!