Key themes
- Healing as communal and ceremonial — not individual and therapeutic
- The land as alive — and what happens when people are separated from it
- The veteran who cannot return to a world that has forgotten how to receive him
About this book
Tayo, a Laguna Pueblo veteran traumatised by the Second World War, returns to New Mexico and seeks healing through ceremony — the traditional Pueblo healing ritual — while navigating the destruction that the modern world has visited on his community. Silko's novel interweaves myth, poetry and prose to show the relationship between individual healing and communal survival.
Published in 1977, Ceremony was the first novel by a Native American woman to be published by a major publisher. Silko drew on Laguna Pueblo oral tradition and her own mixed Laguna, Mexican and white heritage.
Discussion questions
- The novel interweaves Tayo's story with Laguna Pueblo myth and poetry. How does Silko use these forms — and what does the mythological layer add to the contemporary narrative?
- Tayo's trauma is both personal (the war, the death of his cousin) and historical (centuries of dispossession). How does Silko hold both scales simultaneously?
- The ceremony is not a single dramatic event but a gradual, incomplete process. What is Silko saying about healing — about what it requires and what it cannot fully achieve?
- Betonie, the mixed-heritage medicine man, performs a modified ceremony. What is Silko saying about the relationship between tradition and adaptation?
- Ceremony is often taught as a foundational text in Native American literature courses. What does it offer that historical or sociological accounts of Native American experience cannot?
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