Storyteller

by Leslie Marmon Silko

A collection of stories focuses on contemporary Native American concerns--white injustice, the fragmenting of the Indian community, and the loss of tribal identity--and recalls Indian legends and tribal stories

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Short Stories, Native American, Indigenous, Literature, Essays

278 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1980

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

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is a Laguna Pueblo native. In her introduction she explains a little about storytelling among her group and other native tribes. Their stories tend to include any and everything, they’re sometimes bawdy, sometimes sad, sometimes humorous and everything in between. The audience to these originally oral stories are meant to learn as well as enjoy. Some stories here build on old tales and some are the author’s stories. Some are plainly folkloric in nature and many include the up-to-date in a storyteller framework.

I found it a little jarring at first to be listening to a story that seemed 100 years old only to suddenly have the sound of snowmobile boot buckles introduced. I adjusted to that sort of thing quickly and got used to different times and even alternate realities. Silko’s writing is thoroughly enjoyable as well as the wonderful poems, letters, family history and photographs mainly taken by her dad. Educational and fun.

[Kate Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Storyteller is a landscape text, nearly A4 in size, containing a mixture of biography, poetry, folk tales, fiction and songs. Within the contrasting topics Silko seems to be bringing together all aspects of her Pueblo culture, through the stories that her Aunt Suzie told her as a child, to her modern fiction. Mixed within these are family photographs and images of the author as a child with her family. She seems to be trying to repudiate the above statement, showing that although they may be untrusted through her society, there is an adequate way of writing the tribe’s history through such an unconventional text, so that due to its having a biographical nature it is no longer just a piece of fiction, but a true representation of the Pueblo culture. It also forces the Western reader to confront what is deemed as a proper novel and whether this text fits into that bracket or not, whether indeed that bracket should even exist or if it is unnecessary binding to an author. Silko not only manages to show her culture through the words on the page, but also through the book itself, its size, shape and layout completely goes against everything considered the “norm” until then. It is a very clever way of almost rebelling or taking the usual form and making it your own.

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She was an old woman now, and her life had become memories." She's Ayah, an Indian woman, and her story encapsulates the persecution and suffering of the Native Americans in the hands of the white colonizers.

I had always suspected that great literature often springs out of suffering, whether of individuals or of peoples.

I dream of the day when one of these starving North Koreans would come out with a secretly-written magnum opus of the suffering of his people and win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few better than Silko.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...passed down from an entire culture/ by word of mouth/ an entire history/ an entire vision of the world/ which depended on memory/ and retelling by subsequent generations"

In and of itself, Storyteller is most certainly a beautiful piece of work. With a prose style as spare as the arid New Mexico desert landscapes glimpsed throughout the book, Silko's collection of poetry, short stories, autobiographical musings, letter extracts and photography is a formidable achievement however you chose to look at it. But what makes it even more interesting is by placing it within its larger context, within the Native American storytelling tradition. Inevitably, it brings up a central question: as Silko draws heavily upon the stories and legends of the Laguna tribe (of which she is a member), how much individual authorial credit can or should be extended to Silko? And, by committing what has always been spoken into the static written word, is Silko actually impeding on the spontaneity and improvisation that has always been an integral, perhaps even essential, element of these stories?

This underlying tension, I think, start to get at what makes this collection so wonderful. For Silko's intention seems far from an attempt to make a definitive statement or record—instead, it merely serves as a self-consciously singular contribution to an overarching collective tradition. In Woman, Native, Other Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, which cites Storyteller multiple times and is what inspired me to search it out, Trinh T. Minh-ha writes "each story is at once a fragment and a whole; a whole within a whole," and though she's referring to the oral storytelling tradition in general, she could very well be characterizing Storyteller specifically, as it not only describes how the volume functions within the storytelling tradition at large, but also how each individual piece performs within the overall collection. Subtly circling around consistent themes (if it can even be defined as that—it's more like a constant reiteration of an unfluctuating mindset or way of life or perhaps even way of being), each individual piece stands alone, but only achieves full texture and resonance when placed next to and within all the others. Like focusing on one facet of a diamond, never realizing that what makes a diamond brilliant is all the individual facets combining into a single, shimmering whole...

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I loved about this book was it's complete lack of any self-conscious explanation of itself. It's like the author is saying to me,"Here's what's important to know." and allowing me to make the connections between the parts myself. A very unusual format for a book, both distant and intimate in different turns, like hanging out with a real person.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The old teller has been on every journey
and she knows all the escape stories
even stories before she was born,
She keeps the stories for those who return
but more important
for the dear ones who do not come back
so that we may remember them
and cry for them with the stories.”

“You must be very quiet and listen respectfully.
Otherwise the storyteller might get upset and pout
and not say another word all night.”

Storytelling has been a hallowed tradition for Native Americans and has been that way for centuries. Silko pays tribute to that tradition, in this collection of stories, poems and striking, B & W, photographs. She also weaves in her own family's history, along with her own childhood experiences, listening to the tales told by her grandparents. This was my first time reading Silko, and it was a wonderful introduction.

[Nicole ✨Reading Engineer✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read the short story Lullaby from this book for class, and I have to say that it was eye opening. This book educated me on a moment in American history that was dark and traumatic for the Native American Population.

The short-story Lullaby details the story of Ayah, a woman who gets her children sent away to an American Indian Boarding School. It tells how it breaks her husband and her apart and how she is never the same after it happened.

While the story details what happened to the parents, it doesn't detail what happens to the children when they are sent away to the schools. If that was included in this story, I feel as if the impact would have been conveyed better. I went to a museum in my city that had an exhibit on the boarding schools, and I have to say the museum add another level to this story, one that it was severely lacking.

Overall, it was a good story that sheds light onto a dark time in American History.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t quite prepared for this book to be such a tableau of different kinds of texts, and while the layout occasionally made me struggle with focusing, there are moments where Silko’s language was so beautiful that I immediately forgave the book for trying me with its layout. Some of the poetry here and renditions of Silko’s family legends are easily 5 stars on there own. I think had I known more of what to expect with this going in that I would have enjoyed it more.

[Charlotte]

Storyteller is a beautiful anthology of poetry, fiction, and Marmon Silko’s own family history. I loved the descriptions of nature and how sensory details blended together, and I loved the rawness of the characters and their relationships. Most of all I enjoyed the strangeness of the poems and stories. Many felt random or unresolved and were just themselves—stories, waiting to be told, waiting to shift and change, over and over and over, from mouth to mouth to page.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

awesome!awesome!awesome! i've misplaced my copy and need to get it back. it's one of my favorite books to just pick up and read a part of. needs to be back on my shelf!

[Vashti Puls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books of all time which explores how we all are the story and create the story even as we write and live the story.

[Tanaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite Native American books and author.

[Benjamin Kass · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a harder one to review. It's all stories: stories of the author's family, stories passed on to her, stories she has created to make a point, poems which serve the stories. There isn't really categorization here but that's the point--why build fences between these stories when they're all serving the same purpose?

At first this book confused me, to be honest, but once I realized it was acting as a storyteller does--not sticking with one train of thought or story but ranging widely--I began to really enjoy it. I'm sad now that there's no more of the book to read, but I'm looking forward to going through it again and again.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[Sierra Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book, or rather, the collection of poems and short stories embodied within this book, was something that was game-changing in terms of my taste for literature. I read this book for my Southwest Literature course in my fall semester, and just reading through it once was more than enough for me to agree that this is a genre that I love. It was because of this book that I decided to give myself an emphasis in Southwest Literature as the genre that I loved.

The writing itself is lovely. Every story is well-written, and all the characters feel as real as I do. Each story is unique as well, but also has a familiar taste. Some characters you feel like you've heard before, you've seen before, and others that seem like they come directly from other poems or stories from this book. It is not just limited to myths and legends of the Native American peoples, but is so much more. It is history, history that can be interpreted through the eyes of any tribe member becuase they have all felt the same hurt and pain in the past. Each story resonates with the reader, hinges on something that you may have heard about the Native Americans, and puts a face on it all. Truly a lovely book, one that I will continue to love time and time again.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of people I meet tell me they have a book inside of them. Like a story to tell. They 19ve lived an interesting life they say. But, what can you possibly tell them? The experience doesn 19t make them 1Cwriters. 1D

That 19s why I 19m amazed by the magical stories Leslie Marmon Silko 19s 1CThe Storyteller. 1D Here is a young Indian woman that reaches into her soul and pulls out a book. She writes both the mystery and violence of her culture. She blends her deep-felt history and religion with the impoverished conditions of her people. And when I say blend, I mean the boundries in her stories tend to blur. And the results are fan-tast-tic. For the reader, it 19s like you don 19t know if you are reading these stories or smoking them. Here is what I think: I don 19t believe she was exposed to a lot of reading as a child (the way we know it.) I doubt she ran into many Indian writers who shared her same experience.

Her writing seems magical. It 19s like Alice in Wonderland set in the Southwest Desert.
At the beginning of 1CYellow Woman, 1D the young Indian woman is sitting on the outside and looking in. She 19s grown up learning of the 1CYellow Woman 1D legend. Sometimes this woman could be very courageous. Other times, she may become subject to cruel abuse. This young woman was old enough and experienced enough to know that the 1CYellow Woman 1D was just a story passed down through generation, but at the same time she realized the stories themselves were her passage into womanhood.

In fact, the 1CYellow Woman 1D begins with the narrator taken sexually in the sand along side a river. She is young and inexperienced, and she has a hard time distinguishing between sex and spirit. She 19s not sure what has just happened, and when her lover begins talking to her as if they are in the middle of a strange story her aunt has told her, she feels something 1Cancient and dark 1D deep down in her stomach. Silko has this way of writing that takes her characters through the 1Cmirror. 1D Suddenly it was if the young girl remembers every word of every story she has forgotten, and at the same time becomes intensely aware of her surroundings. In these type of moments, time stops and expands.

The young girl now has a story of her own to tell.

I read somewhere Silko submitted 1C The Man to Send Rainclouds 1D as a response to a writing prompt in a creative writing class. The story seems bare-boned on the surface. It describes the process of burying a dead relative on an Indian reservation. As you can imagine, the Indians 13 Silko 19s Pueblo tribe 13 had their rituals, and the Catholics had theirs. At the end of her story, Silko creates a culture clash when the poor Indian family members approach a Catholic priest for assistance with the burial.

It 19s a beautiful story because the deep emotions displayed are subtle and embedded much like footprints in the sand.

To me, that 19s the 1CWonderland 1D of Leslie 19s writing.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Storyteller is an arresting portmanteau of stories, tales, poems and autobiographical prose mixed together with photographs depicting the author and her family. Not all the pieces are titled, and there's an overlap between the stories where they old and the new bleed together. Some come from family history, some are culled from the larger tradition of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. Some of the poems tell stories and some of the stories express images and metaphors in poetic language. Trying to parse the pieces and categorize the material, like what I'm doing here, casts the reviewer into the role of a tour guide at a museum: "This way to the prose wing... Artifacts of poesy over here." It's neither satisfying nor easy. I don't feel this impulse to delineate while reading Sebald, for instance, so I probably shouldn't do it here.

Whatever genre she's working in, Silko pays scrupulous attention to the land. The forests and rivers, lakes and mesas are described over and over again. In a story about Laguna people of long ago, Silko tells of a devastating flood that forces the villagers to run for the hills. In a story set in Alaska--my favorite in the book--the coming winter is described as a polar bear stalking a hunter. In the mind of an inventive storyteller, the past inhabits the present in a way that teaches us something about both.

[Michelle Boyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Storyteller is a collection of short stories, poems, and photographs by Laguna poet and author Leslie Marmon Silko. First and foremost, the photographs are a must have if you are looking for a new copy of this work. Many of these photograph ground the stories and poems there are connected to, giving a visual hint to readers that may not have seen some of the things that Silko is discussing. Much of the focus is on oral tradition, and upholding it from generation to generation.

See the poem on (p153), it is especially great in terms of Laguna culture and includes sacred colors and directions--this indefinitely adds to the meaning of the poem. Highly recommend this--it is one of Silko's best story/poem collections.

[Don Flynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mix of poetry, short fiction, and photographs, relating to the author and her family's story, as well as the story of Native people in North America. I liked learning more about this author, who I've only just started reading this year, and enjoyed her poems and short tales about a people and a way of life that were ruthlessly snuffed out by immigrant Europeans. Her flashes of anger are more than understandable when you know the history of it. It's heartening to see Native issues and lifestyles making a comeback, but more waits to be done. This book joins many others that can teach non-Natives just what they've been through, and how they've coped.

[Dafna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really took my time with this one. And I'm glad that I did because it's excellent. I have no doubt that I'll be reading it many times over.

Storyteller is a collection of stories, memories, and photographs passed down to Silko from her family and community. The entire collection is exquisitely beautiful, and touching, but my favorite poems and stories by far were the ones of Yellow Woman who I identified the most with. I highly recommend reading this book, especially if you're interested in understanding Native American Culture a little better.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me feel like I was in the southwest with its varied collection of stories, poems, and pictures. What really drew me to this collection was the common theme of folklore trying to survive in the modern age, the most famous example here being that of "Yellow Woman." This collection is will be loved for those who feel a spiritual connection to nature as Silko commonly brings up different aspects of nature as an inspiration for the characters that populate this book.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not for everyone, but it is compelling. The short stories here are tightly written and insightful about Native American culture. It's very teachable, so long as you pair it with something a bit more uplifting. The images inside are lovely as well. An intriguing text with much teaching potential.

[Dr.gaildavis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I began this novel thinking that it seemed rather shallow. As I got deeper into the book, the characters came alive. I loved that I could picture the geography so perfectly because we had lived there. When I realized that this was a first novel, written when the author was still in school, I began to understand what an accomplishment it was. It is breathtaking.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything about this book is different. Some may even call it experimental. But I never felt like this was Leslie Marmon Silko's idea of an experiment. The writing was just her. Her voice, her story, her roots. Few other books succeed in transmitting the same depth and breadth of life. It was, if nothing else, a nice change from the stacks of "novels" I deal with every day.

[Kyle Aisteach · Rating 5 out of 5]

A charming collection of poetry, autobiographical sketches, and short prose pieces, this book engages the reader quite effectively. Silko's personal approach creates a strong narrative presence that gives the impression you're listening to a storyteller spinning tales just for you. The pieces range from lightly humorous to very dark, and throughout I found myself wanting to move forward.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic compilation of the influences that contribute to storytelling and cultural identity. Silko's collection is wide ranging and informative, yet personal and clear in its role as a single contribution to a necessarily polyvocal, transgenerational, communal identity creation and understanding. A very valuable contribution to Native American and US Literature.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful gathering of tales that mesh ancient & modern Laguna experience; I love the power of the storyteller to enact reality--a major focus of Martin's WAY OF THE HUMAN BEING, so great to rd/teach these 2 together.

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was fantastic. It was stunning to watch Silko put a Western framework over the Laguna oral traditions. Personally, I'd have to say my favorite was Yellow Woman, based on Kochininako and Cottonwood stories.

[Johnna Gurgel · Rating 4 out of 5]

- Powerful and simple stories and poems make for a punch to the gut at this look at Silko's work
- Range of prose and poetry give girth to the picture Silko paints
- Content of Native American life approached in unique and impacting fashion