Leslie Marmon Silko Research Paper

Leslie Marmon Silko has an enormous garden. It was started at her home in the Laguna Pueblo reservation, and took root in the desert there. While, like all the other Laguna families there, her home did have a vegetable garden and some flowers to add splashes of lively color, when Silko would come to grow her own garden, it would be planted with words instead of seeds. Nourished by sun-warmed sand and supported by the spirits of her ancestors, Silko’s words would grow, never to be cropped short or ripped out, and live on to become a flourishing garden, her legacy, as one of the first widely successful Native American women to become a novelist. Silko’s novel, Gardens in the Dunes, is something like a physical representation of the culmination of all her early works and the journey she …show more content…
In Laguna mythology, ancestor spirits are incredibly important (Kuefner). There are shrines where ceremonies are held, offerings decorated with cornmeal and soft feather, and, if approached in the right way, the ancestor spirits are open to becoming actively involved in a person’s life to help with their struggles. Be it through a drastic action such as direct intervention or through the gentle guidance of a story (Kuefner). Gardens in the Dunes is the first story where Silko incorporated the voices of her European ancestor spirits. It is not completely uncommon for an author to say that once they start writing that the story may take over. Sometimes, the words just flow, rushing fervently ahead, eager to be written. The sensation for Silko is not so different, she only has a name to give to that feeling and views it as an outside source that she is compelled to oblige. Interestingly enough, ancestor spirits do not have to be people directly related or even of the same race. A mentor or just someone greatly admired would technically fit the