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As an introduction to Native American culture, I teach Leslie Marmon Silko's novel, Ceremony (1986), in my American-novel class for college-bound juniors and seniors. Ceremony incorporates the art of storytelling and the myths, rituals, and ceremonies of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians in the southwest United States. Silko writes, "You don't have anything if you don't have the stories" (Mitchell 1979, 28).
The narrative structure of the novel is a challenge for students because there are no chapter divisions. Silko uses both prose and poetic forms to tell the story of Tayo, a young half-breed Laguna Pueblo Indian who has lost his will to survive after suffering through the Bataan Death March and a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. The prose sections provide the students with the events of Tayo's life before, during, and after World War II, while the poetic structures are the myths, legends, and chants of the Pueblo and Navajo tribes.
The difficulty in teaching Ceremony, however, is not in its narrative structure or its readability, but in students' lack of understanding of the Native American way of life. Therefore, I begin this unit with the following assignment. I give each student copies of the Cheyenne creation myth and the first three chapters of Genesis from the Bible. I emphasize that the material from Genesis is used as literature in this context. The students read these myths before the next class period and bring a list of differences between them using the following questions:
Who creates the universe?
How is the universe created?
How does each myth present the world and its inhabitants or the world view?
During the discussion, we develop a chart based upon the assigned questions on the chalkboard or overhead and list the differences. (See Figure 1.) (Figure 1 omitted)
I add to the chart the concept of time and space because my students are often mystified and confused by the movement of time in the novel. They complain that Silko jumps about from the past to the present and back again. The literary critic, Paula Gunn Allen, calls this "ceremonial time" in which "events are structured in a way that emphasizes the motion inherent in the interplay of person and event" (Allen 1986, 148). By using a circle and...