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Native American

August 22, 2006

Lesson Plan: “Lullaby” by Leslie Marmon Silko

August 22nd 2006 Posted to Lesson Plans, English 104A, Native American, Literature

Background:

storyteller_2.jpg“Lullaby” is a short story from Silko’s 1981 novel Storyteller. As Linda Krumholtz writes,

“Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller is a collection of stories that is also a highly self-conscious consideration of the process of storytelling, an exploration into the ways the Laguna Pueblo society creates meaning and, subsequently, the ways cultures in general create meaning. Storyteller is a distinctively ‘readerly’ text: the many stories, poems, and photographs are gathered into an apparently random ‘scrapbook’ form, and it is left to the reader to construct connections between them. Storyteller is also a multicultural or cross-cultural text in which European-style short stories and traditional Laguna stories, ‘realistic’ fictional characters, traditional characters (such as Yellow Woman, Coyote, and Spiderwoman), and Silko’s family members are all brought together… (Read the article)

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Leslie Marmon Silko

August 22nd 2006 Posted to English 104A, Native American, Biography

“It’ssilkolesliemarmon.jpg stories that make this a community,” Leslie Marmon Silko has remarked about the Native American world of the Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, in which she grew up, and in five books—Laguna Women (1974), Ceremony (1977), Storyteller (1981), Almanac of the Dead (1991), and Yellow Woman (1993)—she has told and retold the tales that, she believes, make her people who they are. Of mixed Native American, Mexican, and Caucasian descent, Leslie Marmon attended Bureau of Indian Affairs schools at Laguna until entering high school, then studied at the University of New Mexico and later matriculated in law school before deciding to do graduate work in English and devote herself to a literary career. Divorced from John Silko, she has taught at Navajo Community College in Arizona and at the University of New Mexico, is the mother of two sons, and has been the recent recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Her ceremonial impulse to tell stories that are both self-defining and celebratory of her community has issued in an art that employs many forms: poetry, short stories, legendary tales, a novel, and most recently, film scripts.

From: The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. Ed. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. 2nd Ed. New York: Norton & Co., 1985. 2327-8 (Read the article)

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August 28, 2005

Defining Race and Pedagogy

August 28th 2005 Posted to Teaching Immigration Issues, UCSB Courses, Lesson Plans, Syllabi, English 104A, Writing 2, English 197, English 10AC, English 165HR, English 50, English 103A, External Resources for Teachers, Specific U.S. Racial Groups, African American, Asian American, Latino / Latina American, Native American, Type of Resource, Literature, Film, Photographs, Visual Art / Posters, Music Recordings, Maps, Recordings of Speeches, Legal Documents, Panels and Lectures, Biography, Other

Although these terms are often used as though they signified clear and well-bounded meanings, both words have complex histories and implications that are frequently only discernable once one considers the contexts in which they are used. For the purposes of this site, we offer the following definitions: (Read the article)

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