Book Review
Jan. 12th, 2025 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariCeremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko
This novel is set in the post-war American southwest and is about Tayo, a Laguna Native American veteran. Having survived the Bataan Death March and a Japanese POW camp, he is suffering from PTSD. The story follows his initial descent into drinking and violence and then his reconnection with his tribal stories and way of life. It is through the latter that he finds healing and a return to a stable life.
Ceremony is very beautifully written, exploring both Tayo's environment and his inner life. The narrative is not entirely linear, and weaves in a legend about a time of drought and how it was resolved. It's all a very effective evocation of Tayo's process of healing, with his course of action in the last half of the book forming a kind of ceremony of its own. It also has a lot to say about the forces of destruction, inner and outer, what it takes to resist them, and what it takes to repair the damage they cause.
by Leslie Marmon Silko
This novel is set in the post-war American southwest and is about Tayo, a Laguna Native American veteran. Having survived the Bataan Death March and a Japanese POW camp, he is suffering from PTSD. The story follows his initial descent into drinking and violence and then his reconnection with his tribal stories and way of life. It is through the latter that he finds healing and a return to a stable life.
Ceremony is very beautifully written, exploring both Tayo's environment and his inner life. The narrative is not entirely linear, and weaves in a legend about a time of drought and how it was resolved. It's all a very effective evocation of Tayo's process of healing, with his course of action in the last half of the book forming a kind of ceremony of its own. It also has a lot to say about the forces of destruction, inner and outer, what it takes to resist them, and what it takes to repair the damage they cause.
