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    Ceremony
    Ceremony
    Ceremony
    Audiobook9 hours

    Ceremony

    Written by Leslie Marmon Silko

    Narrated by Pete Bradbury

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Leslie Marmon Silko's sublime Ceremony is almost universally considered one of the finest novels ever written by an American Indian. It is the poetic, dreamlike tale of Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo and veteran of World War II. Tormented by shell shock and haunted by memories of his cousin who died in the war, Tayo struggles on his impoverished reservation. After turning to alcohol to ease his pain, he strives for a better understanding of who he is.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 22, 2008
    ISBN9781436133425
    Ceremony
    Author

    Leslie Marmon Silko

    Leslie Marmon Silko, a former professor of English and fiction writing, is the author of novels, short stories, essays, poetry, articles, and screenplays. She has won numerous awards and fellowships for her work. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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    Reviews for Ceremony

    4/5

    569 ratings38 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Her writing is lyrical, suspenseful, and matter of fact, by turns. I first came across her short story "Lullaby" in college lit class, and was floored by it.Yes, her approach moves seamlessly between time periods and various events so the reader must remain alert. But what of it? This reads like a dream, only the harshness is the lives of Native Americans who populate this novel. Just read it.
    • 5/5
      It is a testament to Leslie Silko’s great influence on Native American Literature that the essence of her plot— a Native American man wounded emotionally and spiritually by participation in a war of the dominant society who is restored to functionality by engaging in traditional ways—has become a commonly explored theme in subsequent novels and screenplays, sometimes in unlikely variations (such as the white Army officer in "Dances With Wolves"). Though it is in some respects similar to Momaday’s 1969 "House Made of Dawn," "Ceremony" is also exceptional in its portrayals of its characters, its explicit linking of the Japanese and Native Americans whose homeland was used for atomic bomb development, and for its powerfully evocative descriptions of the New Mexico landscape that are arguably stronger than Cather’s "Death Comes For The Archbishop." Perhaps more importantly, the book was published at a critical moment in the history of the Native American Renaissance, securing the soul of Native American Literature from the exclusiveness of Momaday and the ersatz traditionalism of Carter.A major innovation of "Ceremony" is that main character Tayo, unlike Dawn’s Abel, is part-white (albeit by ancestry, though not by upbringing), another aspect of the story that in several closely-related variations has become a common convention in the genre (Louise Erdrich’s books, "The Grass Dancer"’s Pumpkin, "Indian Killer"’s John raised by white foster parents). Though he suffers the same discrimination at the hands of the dominant culture against Native Americans, some of Tayo’s Laguna peers discriminate against him for his white ancestry. This is reflected in both the mild form of his Auntie, and the intense form of the pathological Emo. When Tayo tells Betonie, the medicine man who is also part-white, that despair has led him to contemplate sympathizing with Emo’s conception of the world, Betonie responds, “That is the trickery of the witchcraft… they want us to believe that all evil resides with white people. Then we will look no further to see what is really happening… white people are only tools that the witchery manipulates.” Betonie’s conception of the world is an inclusive one in which survival depends on the well-being of the whole of humanity, a view that has informed the best of Native American literature ever since. Tayo ultimately connects the threat of nuclear annihilation to Betonie’s warning, and witnesses the brutality of Emo as he murders Harley.Ceremony was published a year after Forrest Carter’s, "The Education of Little Tree." The simplistic story of a young Cherokee boy who suffers in a government school, Little Tree gained best-seller status and was considered by many an exemplary addition to the growing Native American canon. It was eventually discovered, however, that its author was one Asa Carter, an ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan with a violent history in both word and deed: he allegedly perpetrated a variety of vicious assaults against African-Americans, and also wrote Alabama Governor George Wallace’s infamously pro-segregation inaugural address. As histoian Dan Carter noted, his writing in the guise of a Native American did not repudiate the ethos of virulent racism: “there are threads that stretch from Asa Carter's racist pamphlets to his new-age novel of the Native American: We live unto ourselves. We trust no one outside the circle of blood kin and closest comrades. We have no responsibilities outside that closed circle.” The inclusive worldview of the authentically Native American Silko thoroughly contradicts this, and literature—and humanity-- is the better for it.
    • 1/5
      Flashbacks galore. SI would advise to stay away at all costs.
    • 4/5
      I did not expect to like this book. Mostly because everyone in my Contemporary Lit class who read it (and finished it before me) moaned about the non-linear, steam-of-consciousness style. But hey, I must have a gift for that style because I found Ceremony easy to read, and I enjoyed the unusual way it was put together, combining both Native American poetry and the more western form of the novel.Ceremony is about Tayo, a Native American World War II soldier who has recently returned to the reservation. He is traumatized by the war and the death of his beloved cousin Rocky, and while the rest of his Native veteran buddies jocky it up for booze and girls, Tayo has trouble relating to the real world. The only cure for this is ceremony. The idea of ceremony and its power to heal not only war trauma but also social and ethnic boundaries is extremely ambiguous, but the novel itself is ambiguous.
    • 3/5
      First off, two stars means that it was ok-- not terrible and not earth-shattering. I simply could not get to Tayo as a central character. I would have liked to read more about him than what was offered. Tayo, to me, didn't seem completely developed. I found Josiah and Betonie more compelling and wish they would have been explained more into Tayo's narrative. I didn't have any issues with the physical layout of the book-- i.e. no chapter demarcations, etc. Blurring the lines of a conventional, linear story is nothing particularly new and Silko did an good job in that respect. What I would have liked to see more developed in Tayo is his coming to terms with his 'whiteness'. Throughout the story it was very apparent Tayo was marginalized because of his 'whiteness'. I felt that he never came to terms with this aspect of himself; rather he re-integrated completely back into a culture that didn't fully accept him. So it seemed to me Tayo's heritage was still skewed and not resolved-- whatever Tayo's resolution may have looked like. Perhaps that is part of the Silko's own narrative-- there are aspects of ourselves that sometimes we just can't fully integrate within ourselves. Still, I would have liked to see a little more from the story about Tayo's position.
      I also felt like the story behind Tayo's mother was never really developed either. Silko makes it clear that she was promiscuous and had an affinity for white men. Other than a general idea we have no other context in which to place Tayo's mother.
      Ceremony seemed to have a few superfluous characters as well-- Pinkie for one. We know that Pinkie is a childhood friend of Tayo and drinks a lot with Emo, Leroy and Harley; here again it seemed like there wasn't a context for Pinkie other than the drunken 'friend'.
      I simply could not connect with the characters of Ceremony in the way I could with Susan Power's Grass Dancer, or Simon Ortiz' from Sand Creek, or Louise Erdrich's Tracks.
    • 5/5
      A part-Native American veteran returns from World War II (including a grueling period as a prisoner of war) and confronts PTSD, American racism, and internalized racial self-loathing. That sounds incredibly downbeat, but two things make this a rewarding, hopeful read. First, Silko's prose is beautiful, direct and vivid, with rich descriptions of light, landscape, and the tactile world. Second, Silko does a couple really powerful things with the structure of her narrative. Since the effect of her techniques is heightened by experiencing them raw, I'm putting my discussion of them behind a spoiler tag below. Definitely read the book first.SPOILER: In the first half of the novel, while the protagonist Tayo is suffering most intensely from PTSD, the story keeps jumping forward and backwards in time, from the story's present, to Tayo's time in the war, to before the war, to his terrible early childhood. The lurches back and forth are disoriented in a way that echoes Tayo's own dislocation. Once Tayo begins to accept treatment at the hands of an elderly shaman, the narrative structure settles down - and then Silko does something really magical: a major portion of the story happens in a way that only makes sense - retrospectively - within a worldview that sees the spirit and the material world as constantly interconnected. Because it is only revealed later that Tayo's world has merged the spirit and the material, a reader who doesn't start with a cultural frame of seeing these worlds as overlapping can be eased into it by the narrative, and only realize after the fact that they've been gifted a double vision. To be clear, by the end of the book, Tayo doesn't have a double vision - it's not a problem for him to reconcile what he's experienced. But for a secular or materialist reader, what Silko offers is amazing: a chance to feel what it is like to experience realities that cannot be explained or interpreted in material terms, and yet are wholly true. This isn't an abstract exercise; Silko is implicitly arguing that this is how (some) authentic Native American cultures experience(d) reality, and that it offers greater harmony and well-being than the standard Euro-American materialist vision.
    • 3/5
      Good, if confusing, novel of a war veteran native american from Laguna pueblo in NM. Non linear storyline about Tayo, who manages to restore himself, after all he had experienced. Very poetic at times. Worthwhile.
    • 3/5
      Disjointed until I figured out there were different timelines--before the 2nd world war, during it where the main character is in the Philippines and comes home with PTSD [or battle fatigue as the condition was called in those days] and afterwards when he returns home. The novel describes his return to normality through traditional Native American ceremonies. I enjoyed descriptions of Indian practices, the telling of legends and the nature descriptions did not put me off. Writing style was beautiful. The lot of the Indian was depressing.
    • 4/5
      I had difficulty engaging with this book, had a hard time reading it (took forever!), but after finishing it, I found myself frequently thinking about it. It is definitely a book that would reward rereading.Tayo, a mixed race Laguna Pueblo Indian has returned to the reservation a damaged soul after World War II. He has been traumatized by his experiences as a POW of the Japanese, where he witnessed the harrowing death of his best friend/"brother" Rocky, with whom he was raised. Even before the war, he has spent his entire life feeling like an outcast--not fully Indian on the reservation, and not fully "white" in the wider world. He is clearly suffering from PTSD and survivor's guilt. Stays in the VA hospital do not seem to be helping, and Tayo begins seeking help in traditional Native American practices.The book is difficult. The chronology is jagged jumping from Tayo's childhood to his war experiences to his return to the reservation, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and I frequently had to reread passages to figure out what time period we were in (and sometimes to figure out what character was paramount at that time). And interspersed throughout the narrative are long poetic and prose passages delineating Native American myths. But in the end, it all went together, and as I said it will reward rereading.And the dual themes of PTSD and racism are absolutely contemporary for a book published more than 40 years ago. Unfortunately, these themes still resonant strongly today, with tragically little progress having been made.I haven't read a lot of Native American literature, and this has been described as one of the greatest Native American novels. I can't disagree.Recommended.4 stars
    • 4/5
      It took me a while to get to Ceremony but I'm sorry it did, really a fantastic read. I enjoyed Silko's use of folklore and poetry in the text and even points where the narrative bleeds into the poetic form embodies the idea that these stories are all living and interconnected. Her vision of the Southwest is as magnificent and grand and scope as Cormac McCarthy although this is not a place where violence solves problems only exacerbates them and true strength comes with embracing life. I will say I would've liked to have seen the disjointed narrative that was so seamlessly constructed at the outset of the novel continue, it smoothes out and becomes less dislocating as Tayo heals but it also loses an experimental edge that I very much enjoyed and what drew me into the first half of the novel.
    • 4/5
      “Everywhere he looked, he saw a world made of stories, the long ago, time immemorial stories...It was a world alive, always changing and moving; and if you knew where to look, you could see it, sometimes imperceptible, like the motion of the stars across the sky.”“Every day they had to look at the land, from horizon to horizon, and every day the loss was with them; it was the dead unburied, and the mourning of the lost going on forever. So they tried to sink the loss in booze, and silence their grief with war stories about their courage, defending the land they had already lost.”In the years, immediately after WWII, we are introduced to Tayo, a young Native American, who fought as a Marine in the Pacific and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. He returns to his Pueblo reservation, as a shattered man and the novel is about Tayo's long, slow climb out of his own wreckage, using witchcraft and other traditional means to reach this difficult goal. This is not an easy read. Watching these characters wallow in their suffering and alcohol abuse, can be painful but the narrative brightens as Tayo pulls out of his tailspin and begins to live again and appreciate the loved ones, who have supported him, through his trials. The writing grows stronger as the novel progresses, rewarding the reader, for hanging in there. This will not be for all tastes, but I can appreciate it's lofty position in Native American literature.
    • 4/5
      This is a challenging, disturbing read. The main character, Tayo, is an American Indian from the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Convinced by his cousin and best friend, Rocky, he enlists in the Army during WWII. Ultimately both young men are taken prisoner together by the Japanese. The horrors of that experience leave Tayo adrift in a limbo-like state, in an Army mental hospital. When he is discharged, still far from well, he finds himself wavering between a desire to return to the hospital's sterile cold white environment, where he felt invisible yet safe; and a tendency to slip into the false happiness of near-constant drunkenness which some of his old friends and fellow veterans have embraced. Wise women in his family have another plan, and hold hope for his redemption, however. They encourage Tayo to seek out a medicine man who can put him in touch with the old ways, and help him complete a journey...a journey which is also a ceremony of deliverance from the evil they know as "witchery"...a journey which may end with a promising sunrise and a form of peace.I found it difficult to engage with this story at first; I would pick it up, read several pages and find myself totally lost---who is speaking, whose point of view is this, did this happen before or after Tayo went to war? I persisted, not wanting to give up on what I was sure was a significant piece of literature. There were beautiful descriptive passages, and the women intrigued me. A story poem interjected into the text a bit at a time tempted me just to find its parts and read it all at once. (I resisted doing so.) At some point, I found I was invested in Tayo's struggle, and was rooting for him to prevail. I am quite pleased to have stuck with it to the end, although I cannot say I totally grasp all there is in it. There are beautiful moments, even some small measure of hope on an individual scale. I think it is impossible to appreciate Ceremony fully without knowing something of the creation myths and other beliefs of the Pueblo people. Part of Tayo's difficulty is that he himself (in part because he has mixed heritage and has suffered the epithet "half-breed" all his life) neither understands nor accepts the cultural norms so important to his grandmother until he has undertaken his journey and acknowledged the witchery at work in the world. This story can not make sense in the context of European morality; it has to be taken on the characters' terms or left alone. I can admire it without completely understanding it, especially as I assume it was not written for me, a white woman of Anglo-Saxon and Eastern European descent. It is one of those novels that, like much of Faulkner, cannot simply be read, but must be re-read.
    • 5/5
      [Ceremony] is powerful, memorable and, at once a total indictment of European genocide in North America and of the resilience, faith, and courage of the Indigenous people who survived. And still endure on "reservations." Scientists are now determining that it would be healthier for U.S. "Indians" to be ALLOWED to hunt, fish, gather, and preserve their own food.Is that America's idea of reparations?
    • 3/5
      The story of an Indian/white man dealing with his past and his experiences in the Philippines during WWII. He used ancient Indian stories and medicine men to regain peace with the world.
    • 5/5
      Told from Tayo's point-of-view. He is a Native American who, along with his cousin, goes off to fight in Southeast Asia during WWII. When he returns home, he is suffering from PTSD. The story switches time periods from before the war growing up, during the war, after the war. Some of his friends relive their time in the army when they were heroes. Tayo is just trying to cope with his life and his war experiences.Interesting style of writing where there is no chapters. It is one continuous story that switches back and forth from the far past, the war, and the present with Native wisdom, stories, and songs. I like that it is written from the Native American point-of-view and that we get into Tayo's mind and dreams. I had no problems switching between the time periods and was able to keep track of when and what was happening. A fascinating book that I am glad I read.
    • 4/5
      I like to compare reading Silko to drinking a icy cold glass of limoncello. It is not the kind of thing you gulp down in chug-a-lug like fashion. It is better to take in small sips of the scenes in order to let them slide over your subconscious and filter slowly into your brain. Think of it this way. It is as if you have to give the words time to mellow and ultimately saturate your mind.First things first. When you get into the plot of Ceremony what you first discover is that Tayo is a complicated character. After being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, alcoholism, battle fatigue (now called post traumatic stress disorder), mental illness, and guilt all plague Tayo. It's as if threads of guilt tangle in his mind, strangling his ability to comprehend reality, especially when other veterans on the Laguna Pueblo reservation turn to sex, alcohol and violence to cope. Friends are no longer friendly. Next, what is important to pay attention to are the various timelines. There is the time before the war and the time after at the mental health facility with the timeline with Thought (Spider) Woman, Corn Woman, and Reed Woman. Each timeline dips back and forth throughout the story. Tayo struggles to reconcile what it means to be Native American, with all its traditions and beliefs, with the horrors of war and captivity. How does one as gentle as Tayo forgive himself for being a soldier? "He stepped carefully, pushing the toe of his boot into the weeds first to make sure the grasshoppers were gone before he set his foot down into the crackling leathery stalks of dead sunflowers" (p 155). He can't even inadvertently harm a bug.Interspersed between the plot are pages of lyrical poetry. Throughout it all, I found myself weeping for Tayo's lost soul.
    • 4/5
      On one hand, Ceremony is a well-told tale and an intriguing story. It is the kind of story that hasn't been told enough and so needs to exist. On the other, Ceremony is a cerebral read that feels slightly inauthentic and is arranged in a jarring manner (flashbacks galore) that makes the story difficult to follow. This is one of those novels that I didn't always understand what was going on (or when in the story it was taking place), but it had a way of getting under my skin that I couldn't shake. Ceremony is intense and gritty, but not the easiest of reads.
    • 5/5
      I read this book for high school, and at the time, did not like it. As an adult and a feminist (both things that I was not back then), I return to this book over and over as an example of a woman speaking about her experience and the experience of the people around her. I remember the story very clearly, something that speaks to a well written novel, and compare other fiction to this as an example of excellent creative storytelling.
    • 3/5
      Tayo returns home to the Laguna Pueblo reservation from World War II suffering from PTSD and attempts to cure himself by reconnecting with the traditional ceremonies of his people.This was a slow read, mostly because the language is very poetic and demands a lot of attention to be paid. In fact, poetry is woven into the narrative at several points, which were probably my favorite sections. The poems relate traditional stories and comment on the events of the main narrative. (I would like to go back and reread the poems by themselves at some point.) Silko pays a lot of attention to the natural environment of the story, and these descriptive passages are among the most beautiful. The first part of the story shows Tayo's suffering from his memories of the war, from his lifelong feeling of not belonging (he is half Native American and half white), and from the loss of the two people who meant the most to him, his cousin and his uncle. He is afraid that if he doesn't get better, he will be confined to a mental hospital. So he goes to a native healer who "prescribes" a ceremony for him. At this point, I had trouble following events and discerning what was real and what was magical realism. This is also the point in the story when a fierce anger toward white people, who lie to Native Americans and to themselves, begins to bubble to the surface. This anger is justified but surprising, given the peaceful, nature-oriented tone of the writing. Tayo eventually finds a way to explain the actions of the whites, but I'm not sure that I entirely believe the anger has been soothed, nor am I convinced that it should be. The final scenes include some shocking violence, which again I wasn't sure was adequately explained by Tayo's reasoning.I think this book demands to be reread. Close attention needs to be paid to the symbolic aspects of the ceremony and to the parallels between Tayo's story and the traditional stories of the ancestors, which can probably only be done after the initial reading has been absorbed. Only then can this story be fully understood, I suspect.
    • 4/5
      Tayo is a Laguna Pueblo Indian who returns from World War II suffering from "battle fatigue." As a result (complicated by deeper things in his background), he feels alienated from tribe, family, and his own self. Threatened with being returned to the mental ward, he seeks out the ministrations of an unconventional medicine man who puts him on the path to healing.

      Leslie Marmon Silko is brilliant with words and not only gives draws a sobering picture of the Native experience (mid-20th-century), but also an involving psychological portrait of a man once again coming to claim himself.
    • 3/5
      Ceremony was a interesting book and the plot held my interest throughout. I’m not so sure that the Indian traditions and actions are accurate to all tribes, as being involved in my own culture; some of it was not in true form, that being said it was still a good. Tayo is one of those characters that you enjoy meeting and wish you could actually sit down with and have a conversation. The struggle he overcomes is amazing and in the way he himself sees things. The healing of one, which heals his community as well, is uplifting to many who will read this. It’s not one of my favorite but I am glad I read it.
    • 5/5
      Many may feel this book is disturbing, I know my son did. But I cannot help but love the way Silko creates such intense psychological consciousness in her characters. The book was a great one for me. I felt I understood like never before the real plight and sense of loss of the Native American who tries desperately to "fit" into the contemporary and dominant culture, but can never really feel they belong. I can identify with those feelings, and understand the sense of loss in spirit. This was where I first heard the idea of the "hollow" man, then later read T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men," and the image of a "hollow man" was impressed upon me, from these two encounters with it: in Silko's book, "Ceremony" and in T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Hollow Men." But reading "Ceremondy" gives such a deeper rendition of what it means to be hollow, as Tayo, the main character learns in Silko's book.

      It is a story that stays with you, years after.
    • 5/5
      rabck from eponine38; Fiction, but reads as a true story. Tayo, a young Indian, was a Japanese POW during WWII. Now returning back to the reservation after the war, after being treated as a first class soldier during the war, he's trying to fit back into the second class citizen mould that the Whites who were his peers during the was, force the Indians into. In addition, his cousin Rocky, who the family pinned all there hopes on, was killed in the war, and he feels that he let the family down by him living and Rocky dying. Add battle fatigue (now called PTSD), his friends unable to cope except by getting drunk and rabble rousing, and he's losing himself. With the help of a medicine man, and by steeping himself in the old ways, he finally finds healing. A lovely read with lots of prayers and insights into the Indian spiritual way. This will continue on as a "C" book ring book.
    • 5/5
      Audiobook....A powerful story about the power of personal and cultural story in preserving and healing the spirit. The structure reflects the dream/nightmare experience of the protagonist, a Native American returning from war. I let myself submerge in the narrative and was pulled along, experiencing a wide range of emotion on the journey. Marvelous read!
    • 3/5
      Beautiful language and obviously an important book. I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it. The spiritual deus ex machina taking up the last 1/3 of the book is a letdown, but I realize that this is a personal preference. Well worth reading.
    • 4/5
      I thought I read this years ago, but if I did, only a couple of small parts seemed familiar this time around and they may have been pieces I read elsewhere.Regardless, Silko writes a good book. Poetic, bordering maybe on too poetic at times, but not seeming to cross the line. Mystical, but plausible. Depressing, but redeeming. Overall, a worthy read.
    • 4/5
      First, I must admit, I knew nothing about Ceremony when I picked it up (via Bookmooch, me'thinks). I was perusing through some forums seeking recommendations for the broad generalization of "magical realism" when this title continued to pop up. See how easily I am sold when on a mission motivated by curiosity.The cover, normally, would not have appealed to me.It was short, so I dove right into its pages earlier this year. I'd been through a reading slump of sorts and a smallish book seemed to be what I was looking for. Needless to say I was NOT expecting a journey.And Ceremony is DEFINITELY a journey.This book reads like a dream. Even though Tayo is our young narrator, I swear there are moments when I began to believe I was a part of the Ceremony. (So yes, think of an academia Nightmare on Elm Street sorta experience or possibly The NeverEnding Story?).So, what's Ceremony about? In a nutshell, Tayo and his best friend join the military and leave their indian village. The idea of fighting in World War II was not Tayo's idea. He would have been content working within the village. There is definitely an element of "Being an Outsider" that plays into Ceremony time and time again. In this case, Tayo was an outsider because he didn't really want more than what his village offered. His friend, however, knew that the military was his way out.Unfortunately, Tayo is the only one to return, and much like the other Native Americans in his village back from the Great War, he is considered crazy and a drunkard. Which is only partly true. There are times when he acts crazy. And gets drunk. But only partly.There's not a lot of time spent on the war (which pleased me because I'm not one to usually read war novels). The war scenes are all done in flashbacks and sometimes flashforwards which makes you feel sometimes lost and other times as though you are on a fast roller coaster without know which side is up. So yeah, kind of like real like, huh?And then there's the prose....I remember reading somewhere that a whole bunch of Native Americans got their underwear in a wad because they thought Silko was exposing too many sensitive details about their spiritual world and stories. The prose is magical. And the Native American stories within Ceremony are utterly gorgeous. I know the catch phrase with this book is: it's not only entitled Ceremony, reading it *is* a ceremony. Sounds pretty hokey, yes? I KNOW! But.... but... it's kinda true.I mentioned earlier that there is definitely an ongoing theme of "Otherness" in Ceremony and it's true. It's everywhere. Tayo, upon his return, is the "Other" who made it back alive. He fights his own demons and then is separate from his own people. Larger than Tayo's singular experience, the idea of "Other" as Native American also presents itself.Ceremony speaks more about the integration of a culture that was forced out of its land and then made to feel second rate because of it. It's about Tayo coming to terms with his HERITAGE as well as the KILLING of war. Ultimately, it's a pissed off at the world kinda book that leaves the soul at peace.
    • 5/5
      This book is a difficult read in part because, if read carefully, it forces you to take the journey with Tayo toward integration. The book itself is a healing ceremony, a ceremony that asserts the Oneness of life--the relatedness of everything.
    • 3/5
      Silko explores the place of Native Americans in the post-World War II American society.
    • 5/5
      This is a powerful and poetic work, exploring ideas of legacy and PTSD through a Native American war veteran who struggles between cultures and between generations. Silko's language and artful style combine here into a collage of legend and narrative, creating a unique journey that lends itself to a quiet and disarming read. While the book comes across in the beginning as a quiet exploration of cultures and history, it quickly becomes more---this book is worth reading.