Leslie Silko's Ceremony the Spiderweb as Text
BY
Diane COUSINEAU *
Leslie Silko is an American Indian, born and raised on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation where she currently lives with her husband and family. She is not, however, a full-blooded Indian, but of mixed racial origin, a fact which has important implications for her novel and makes it particularly appropriate to the subject of hybridization. In its valorization of mixed blood, racial impurity, the marginal and transitional, Ceremony firmly rejects all notions of hierarchy and dualistic opposition. It also raises provocative questions about the relation between poetry and prose, fiction and myth, and finally, the oral and written traditions.
Ceremony opens with a poem that recounts the ancient Pueblo myth of the beginning of things :
Ts'its'tsi'nako, Thought-Woman,
is sitting in her room
and whatever she thinks about
appears.
She thought of her sisters,
Nau'ts'ity'i and I'tcts'ity'i,
and together they created the Universe
this world and the four worlds below.
Thought-Woman, the spider,
named things and
as she named them
they appeared.
She is sitting in her room thinking of a story now
I'm telling you the story she is thinking.
* University of Delaware.
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