Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman

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“Yellow Woman” written by Leslie Marmon Silko is a short story based on a Native American Legend story. In this legend story, a woman has been taken away from her family for a period of time. The Yellow Woman are taken from their families by the Ka’tisna spirit or what is better known the mountain spirit. Throughout the story, the reader learns that the narrator is in an overarching battle with her personal identity. On top of the narrator’s battle with understanding her personal identity, she is in a constant battle with trying to understand what real is life as well as, what could be just remnants of a story told by her grandfather when she was a little girl. In sum, the struggle the narrator has will be the overall essence of this essay …show more content…
She is stuck pondering the idea of how in this day and age there could be a mountain spirit taking her to his house, which coincidentally happens to be on the top of the mountain like in her grandfather’s story. The narrator begins to question who Silva really is and in his response to her says “Little Yellow Women, you never give up do you? I have told you who I am. The Navajo people know me too” (Silko 576). Silva’s response to the narrator's question is intended to make her realize that he is not the Mountain-spirit but for the narrator, it is all too easy to compare him to the mountain spirit in her grandfather’s stories. As a continuation, the narrator then proclaims that “I don’t believe it. Those stories couldn’t happen now... He shook his head and said softly, “But someday they will talk about us and they will say, those two lived long ago when things like that happened” (Silko 575). The significance of this line emphasizes for the narrator that she is living in two different worlds and at this moment in time the two of them have collided into one. This realization and Silva’s words to her caused her to ponder even more about what was really happening in her
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these stories were passed down from generation to generation and allowed human beings to make sense of the world around them. The Laguna Pueblo Indians, one of the many Native American subgroups, is one of the few cultures that still tells stories in the same manner. Leslie Marmon Silko, a proud member of the aforementioned Laguna people, is a fine example of a storyteller. She passes down her values in the form of stories, making them both more accessible and more meaningful to a wider audience. Through her novel, …

Words 1622 - Pages 7