Download presentation
Presentation is loading. Please wait.
1
Leslie Silko and the Spirit of Place
Osher Lecture 3/16/2017
2
Preface Contexts “Story from Bear Country” “Yellow Woman” “When Sun Came to Riverwoman” Ceremony Summary Selected Bibliography
3
Preface The importance of place Eyes in the back of the head
Nowhere is somewhere
4
Contexts The writer as hero New Mexico as hero Environment
5
Story from Bear Country
On becoming “dark, thick, and shaggy”
6
Yellow Woman Cinderella revisited
Will the real Cinderella please stand up?
7
When Sun Came to Riverwoman
Defining erotic landscape
8
Ceremony Healing the soul
9
Summary Prophetic writing Prophetic reading Reader as shaman
10
Story from Bear Country
You will know when you walk in bear country. By the silence flowing swiftly between juniper trees by the sundown colors of sandrock all around you. You may smell damp earth scratched away from yucca roots. You may hear snorts and growls slow and massive sounds from caves in the cliffs high above you. It is difficult to explain how they call you. All but a few who went to them left behind families grandparents and sons a good life. The problem is you will never want to return. Their beauty will overcome your memory like winter sun melting ice shadows from snow. And you will remain with them locked forever inside yourself your eyes will see you dark shaggy thick. We can send bear priests loping after you their medicine bags bouncing against their chests. Naked legs painted black bear claw necklaces rattling against their capse of blue spruce. They will follow your trail into the narrow canyon through the blue-gray mountain sage to the clearing where you stopped to look back and saw only bear tracks behind you. When they call faint memories will writhe around your heart and startle you with their distance. But the others will listen because bear priests sing beautiful songs. They must if they are ever to call you back. They will try to bring you step by step back to the place you stopped and found only bear prints in the sand where your feet had been. Whose voice is this? You may wonder hearing this story when after all you are alone hiking in these canyons and hills while your wife and sons are waiting back at the car for you. But you have been listening to me for some time now from the very beginning in fact and you are alone in this canyon of stillness not even cedar birds flutter. See, the sun is going down now the sandrock is washed in its colors. Don’t be afraid we love you we’ve been calling you all this time. Go ahead turn around see the shape of your footprints in the sand.
Similar presentations
© 2025 SlidePlayer.com. Inc.
All rights reserved.