Next, I'd like to introduce Sheila Joe, a colleague
and fellow student of mine, for the introduction of Leslie
Marmon Silko.
Thank you, everyone, for being here tonight.
Well, since I came to University of Arizona
and became part of the American Indian Studies program,
I have been fortunate to meet and be
in the company of many great authors
like Luci Tapahonso, Franci Washburn, Ofelia Zepeda, Winona
LaDuke and tonight, Leslie Marmon Silko.
And I want to give my appreciation to you
for being here tonight.
[SPEAKING DINÉ BIZAAD]
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1948
to Leland Howard Marmon and Mary Virginia Leslie.
She grew up 15 miles away at the Laguna Pueblo in Laguna, New
Mexico and has lived in Tucson for the last 30 years.
Her mixed ancestry has influenced her work
in myriad ways.
Growing up on the edge of the Laguna Pueblo Reservation,
her earliest experiences were positioned between cultures.
As a child, she was educated and became familiar with Laguna
oral tradition of the Laguna and Keres people
through stories passed down by her grandmother
Lillie and her aunt Susie.
Remarking in an interview with Ellen Velie,
"I am of mixed-breed ancestry, but what I know is Laguna."
Leslie Marmon Silko has deepened her affiliation to her tribe
through her books which draw on Laguna myths and storytelling
traditions.
She has acknowledged the influence
of her own family's storytelling on her method and vision.
In 1969, she received her Bachelor of Arts
in English from the University of New Mexico.
It was in the same year that she published her first short story
"The Man to Send Rain Clouds" and received the National
Endowment for the Humanities Discovery Grant.
After a brief time in law school,
she left to pursue a career in writing in 1971.
In 1974, while teaching at Navajo Community College,
she published Laguna Woman, a collection
of poems filled with the images of animals,
landscape, and colors that earned a poetry
award from the Chicago Review.
In 1977, she wrote her first novel, Ceremony,
which tells of a World War II veteran's struggle
to adjust to life back on the reservation
after returning home from the. war.
Ceremony established Silko as an important Native American
writer and marked her as the first Native American woman
novelist.
Throughout the years, she has won many major awards,
including a Pushcart Prize for Poetry,
the MacArthur Genius Award, the New Mexico
Endowment for the Humanities, Living Cultural Treasure Award
and the Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement
Award.
In 1981, Storyteller was published
which interlinked a collection of poems and short stories.
And the New York Times' Book Review Pulitzer Prize winning
novelist, N. Scott Momaday, called Storyteller
"a rich, many-faceted books" and also contended, "Leslie Silko
is very good indeed.
She has a sharp sense of the way,
in which the profound and the mundane often run together."
In addition to being known as a novelist,
Leslie Marmon Silko is an accomplished poet.
She began writing poetry based on the traditional stories
and legends she learned from her family and self-published her
multigenre book Sacred Water--
Narratives and Pictures in 1993.
Her collection of essays in Yellow Woman
and the Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life
Today published in 1996 addresses human concerns
through a storyteller voice that focuses on the spirit
and voice of Native Americans, centered on a range of topics,
varying from national politics to hunger.
Through a combination of years of research,
thought, and efforts connected to the justice
for Indigenous people.
Her second novel, Almanac of the Dead, was published in 1991.
The novel defines the person's choices
on the social and spiritual levels between creation
and destruction.
Her third novel, Gardens in the Dunes,
directly contrasts the traditional world
of Native Americans with European and American
upper class culture.
Her latest novel, The Turquoise Ledge,
takes readers along on her daily walks
through the arroyos and ledges of Arizona Sonoran desert.
It is a personal reflection between the spiritual and
natural world that weaves tales from her past with observations
from the present.
Leslie Marmon Silko's work provides
a degree of explorations of the literature, language,
and heritage and Native Americans
and includes essays on subjects ranging
from the wisdom of our ancestors to the racist treatment
of Native Americans.
She also acknowledges the influence
of her own family's storytelling on her method and vision.
She has been noted as a major contributor
to the Native American literacy and artistic Renaissance which
began in late 1960s.
And with great pleasure, here with us
tonight, Leslie Marmon Silko.