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Almanac of the Dead
“To read this book is to hear the voices of the ancestors and spirits telling us where we came from, who we are, and where we must go.” —Maxine Hong Kingston
In its extraordinary range of character and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on the grand scale. The acclaimed author of Ceremony has undertaken a weaving of ideas and lives, fate and history, passion and conquest in an attempt to re-create the moral history of the Americas, told from the point of view of the conquered, not the conquerors.
In its extraordinary range of character and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on the grand scale. The acclaimed author of Ceremony has undertaken a weaving of ideas and lives, fate and history, passion and conquest in an attempt to re-create the moral history of the Americas, told from the point of view of the conquered, not the conquerors.
763 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1991
About the author
Leslie Marmon Silko
35 books848 followersLeslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon; born March 5, 1948) is a Native American writer of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, and one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, now known as the "Genius Grant", in 1981 and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.
(from Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_...
Silko was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, now known as the "Genius Grant", in 1981 and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.
(from Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 346 reviews
March 12, 2016
There is, perhaps, no way to bestow readerly affection on a work so single-mindedly driven by an intense fury. But what one can do is reverentially acknowledge the handiwork of this authorial anger, appreciate the blurred edges of a story - an important one - that emerge from the void of a mass amnesia and a carefully preserved collective delusion. And applaud as a silent witness to the fictional resurrection of a people and civilization so meticulously blotted out, first from existence, then from consciousness and memory.
The American Dream is buttressed by the labor extracted from 'stolen black bodies' (as Ta-Nehisi Coates would say) and the genocide of its original inhabitants. And the gravitas of this sociohistorical verity reverberates across the pages of this massive tome time and again, as one hacks one's way through the dense layering of individual character arcs and subplots competing for attention and ascendance.
In prose as desiccated and bereft of life as the Sonoran desert, Leslie Marmon Silko reconstructs the local economy and polity of the US-Mexico borderlands - an apocalyptic vision of a purgatory birthed and sustained by the nexus between corrupt judiciary, greedy capitalists, local police, drug-smuggling rings and the CIA. Like a never-ending nightmare, this vast underworld of covert wars, secret guerrilla groups camped out in the jungles of South and Central America, and multiple, interconnecting conspiracies features every feasible form of torture, murder, and rape. New characters are introduced every fifty or so pages, every new player as venal and vile as the last one, their gender, sexual orientation, ideological stance, religion, and race notwithstanding. Homophobia, xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and mindless avarice are the dominant forces that operate in this parallel moral universe. And yet a reader never becomes desensitized to the violence and violations - both sexual and psychological - as more and more outlandish perversions are introduced and detailed with an unnerving insouciance. It's as if Silko believed that to allow her readers to relapse into complacency at any point in the narrative would be a disservice to the spirit of the story, especially a story which must arouse only abhorrence and unmitigated horror.
I notice complaints in other reviews regarding the profusion of gore-porn subplots which in my opinion are legitimate in the light of how little narrative purpose they serve. The dry monotone in which this hellish saga of crime, drugs, and systemic injustices is narrated provides little incentive to pick up the book again after a break. Adding to the list of irritants, the ending is abrupt. It fails on both counts of delivering a fitting emotional payoff to all the initial build-up and satisfactorily explaining the inclusion of a diverse cast of characters. We are left to ponder the outcome of an uprising that begins to unfold just as the novel signs off.
Despite everything, however, this is a reading experience which augmented my scant knowledge of an excised portion of American history. Goes without saying it would be a folly of the highest order to dismiss this work's monumental significance.
I must always return to what the white men kept hanging in all the lovely cottonwood trees along the rivers and streams throughout this land. Swaying in the light wind, rags of clothing flapping the shrunken limbs into motion. They try to walk, they try to walk - the feet keep reaching long after the neck has broken or the head has choked.
The American Dream is buttressed by the labor extracted from 'stolen black bodies' (as Ta-Nehisi Coates would say) and the genocide of its original inhabitants. And the gravitas of this sociohistorical verity reverberates across the pages of this massive tome time and again, as one hacks one's way through the dense layering of individual character arcs and subplots competing for attention and ascendance.
Angelita skipped from the dates to the tables of facts and read the figures for the Native American holocaust:
1500-72 million people lived in North, Central, and South America
1600-10 million people lived in North, Central, and South America
1500-25 million people lived in Mexico.
1600-1 million people lived in Mexico.
In prose as desiccated and bereft of life as the Sonoran desert, Leslie Marmon Silko reconstructs the local economy and polity of the US-Mexico borderlands - an apocalyptic vision of a purgatory birthed and sustained by the nexus between corrupt judiciary, greedy capitalists, local police, drug-smuggling rings and the CIA. Like a never-ending nightmare, this vast underworld of covert wars, secret guerrilla groups camped out in the jungles of South and Central America, and multiple, interconnecting conspiracies features every feasible form of torture, murder, and rape. New characters are introduced every fifty or so pages, every new player as venal and vile as the last one, their gender, sexual orientation, ideological stance, religion, and race notwithstanding. Homophobia, xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and mindless avarice are the dominant forces that operate in this parallel moral universe. And yet a reader never becomes desensitized to the violence and violations - both sexual and psychological - as more and more outlandish perversions are introduced and detailed with an unnerving insouciance. It's as if Silko believed that to allow her readers to relapse into complacency at any point in the narrative would be a disservice to the spirit of the story, especially a story which must arouse only abhorrence and unmitigated horror.
There will be no happiness to pursue; there will be no peace or justice until you settle up the debt, the money owed for stolen land, and for all the stolen lives the U.S. empire rests on!
I notice complaints in other reviews regarding the profusion of gore-porn subplots which in my opinion are legitimate in the light of how little narrative purpose they serve. The dry monotone in which this hellish saga of crime, drugs, and systemic injustices is narrated provides little incentive to pick up the book again after a break. Adding to the list of irritants, the ending is abrupt. It fails on both counts of delivering a fitting emotional payoff to all the initial build-up and satisfactorily explaining the inclusion of a diverse cast of characters. We are left to ponder the outcome of an uprising that begins to unfold just as the novel signs off.
No human, individuals or corporations, no cartel of nations, could "own" the earth; it was the earth who possessed the humans and it was the earth who disposed of them.
Despite everything, however, this is a reading experience which augmented my scant knowledge of an excised portion of American history. Goes without saying it would be a folly of the highest order to dismiss this work's monumental significance.
January 7, 2008
I wrote my master's thesis on this book, thus I've lost track of how many times I've read it. This is not for the faint-of-heart. Silko is putting Western, Euro-centric culture on trial and the evidence she cites is pretty damning. She has said in interviews that the anger that seethes on every page of this novel is not her personal anger but the anger of the Earth. Anger over the cruelty, greed and destruction that dominate the rise of European culture over Native American culture and other native cultures around the world. She refers to this era as "The Reign of the Death-Eye Dog" and subliminally allies it with the current incarnation of the world as defined by the Mayan codices (codexes?). Known as the 5th World in Western terms, this era is slated to end in 2012, and Silko predicts that the next era will be defined by a return to a more "traditional" way of living. She dubs that "The Reign of the Fire-Eyed Macaw." This is necessary not for the survival of humanity, she contends, but for the survival of the earth. I've always thought that the earth was the only sympathetic character in the novel. The Earth, in its spiritual aspect, is always at the heart of Silko's fiction, whether it's embodied in a character, as it is in Ceremony, or omnipresent as it is in Almanac.
This is all encoded in the text, as befits a novel based on the writings of the Maya, but I think that it's pretty essential to understand that concept to stick it out to the end of this novel. The world Silko portrays is defined by the evil that men do, and very few, if any, of her characters have any redeeming qualities. She is, in a sense, holding up a mirror and daring us to confront the reflection. This is ferociously unapologetic fiction. It is an indictment. But it's important to note that Silko has not reduced her themes into a Western=bad, Native=good equation. In the world of the novel, everyone is either corrupted or corruptable.
I love books that are puzzlesque, and this stands (outside of Ulysses, which I could never get through) as the most complicated puzzle of a book that I've ever read. Not a beach-read, not a feel-good read, but if you can withstand the brutality, it is an amazing journey of a novel.
This is all encoded in the text, as befits a novel based on the writings of the Maya, but I think that it's pretty essential to understand that concept to stick it out to the end of this novel. The world Silko portrays is defined by the evil that men do, and very few, if any, of her characters have any redeeming qualities. She is, in a sense, holding up a mirror and daring us to confront the reflection. This is ferociously unapologetic fiction. It is an indictment. But it's important to note that Silko has not reduced her themes into a Western=bad, Native=good equation. In the world of the novel, everyone is either corrupted or corruptable.
I love books that are puzzlesque, and this stands (outside of Ulysses, which I could never get through) as the most complicated puzzle of a book that I've ever read. Not a beach-read, not a feel-good read, but if you can withstand the brutality, it is an amazing journey of a novel.
December 17, 2015
Cimi is six and is called death, owl's day. Lord of the underworld and Lord of death. Nonetheless day six, day of the skull, is a good-luck day.Talk of "the right book at the right time" has been floating around for a while now, so here, on the tail end of whatever mood spurred me on to delve into the USA breed of colonialism, I have this book. I mentioned earlier a summary of quick and easy reference, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, insufficient if I did not expound but of merit for the recognition that this is white man conspiracy, white man drugs, white man massacre, all of them favorites of mine for the seeming single purpose of bringing me here, to this book. Conspiracy, drugs, massacre, written by a woman of color, The Royal Family penned nine years earlier and far more "edgier" and without a single shred of pity for any of the dead and dying living through its pages. Reasoning, yes, respect, sometimes, all of the intersectional holistic sort that leads you to care for a person on the first page and tasks you to feel for the earth entire on the last. In that matter, it is, as we say, "difficult".
The old almanac said “civil strife, civil crises, civil war.”
There was not, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the Europeans’ own definitions and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land. Because stolen land never had clear title.I used to give warnings in reviews out of shared commiseration, then equivocating "objectivity", then tired exasperation; then white people fear interfered so much with one of my class' showing of Twelve Years a Slave which of itself is feel-good-look-we-don't-enslave-anymore!-times in comparison to Fruitvale Station which also continues the narrative that a serious movie can be made of black people only when it involves them killed/tortured/etc etc that I can no longer conceptualize what would be sufficient "warning". Instead, I will tell you that if you are white and living in the United States, treat reading this as your civic duty. If you aren't white, I can't tell you anything. The rules I live by were made by white people, and do not work the same for you.
Even city people might identify the true leaders because true leaders would immediately seize all vacant apartments and houses to provide shelter for all the homeless.
Over the years the judge had learned a great deal about lie-detector tests and the evaluators of the testing. The judge knew that the worst offenders remained serene, absolutely innocent in their own minds because the victims had always started the trouble.While England spurred its youth with magic, the United States clamors through its dystopias, written by white people for white people and paling (ha) when contrasted with this, which treats the now of this country I live in as the eve of the French Revolution to such a strategically and technologically sound extent that I have to wonder why Silko has not been arrested. Paranoia, yes, but when you see something like this and know this small horrendously recent segment of timeline it to be true, how could there not be repercussions stretching all the way back to the day New Amsterdam became New York and Wall Street was named for the wall that prevented slaves from escaping? This, and realities of global warming and the corporations paying billions to pretend science isn't a thing, makes you wonder about your life and the "right thing to do".
Mosca doesn't understand why white people become uneasy when they see cripples or brain damage; their fear is irrational. They believe another person's bad luck is contagious no matter how many times they are given scientific facts.
Clinton was suspicious whenever he heard the word pollution. Human beings had been exterminated strictly for “health” purposes by Europeans too often.There are plenty of references for those who are inclined to figure out such, all the more challenging for being completely outside the usual Eurocentric framework of such and such names and phrases and philosophical meanderings. I've seen talk about all the gay people (gay men, actually, I would've remembered coming across a lesbian) being portrayed as evil, when the first of the type I came across was one of the most "moral" of the entire cast and there were plenty of "evil" straight/asexual men/women and "evil" itself is, well. I'm as careful to contextualize the word as I am with this recent Kathleen Hale business and how easy people find it to call her "crazy" and "not right in the head" because I, clinically depressed as I am due to the wave of the doctor's magic diagnosis, am also "not right in the head". Words, words, words. I have a lot less to lose due to being white and het and cis, of course, but the difference is enough for me to keep an eye on things.
The ancestors had called Europeans “the orphan people” and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish or coldhearted clanspeople, few Europeans had remained whole. They failed to recognize the earth was their mother. Europeans were like their first parents, Adam and Eve, wandering aimlessly because the insane God who had sired them had abandoned them.
David was worth more dead than he had been worth alive. The Eric series would appreciate in value, and even pictures of David’s corpse would bring good prices. Beaufrey knew Serlo disapproved of selling these photographs; but here was what gave free-world trade the edge over all other systems: no sentimentality. Every ounce of value, everything worth anything, was stripped away for sale, regardless; no mercy.There's torture porn and circumcision of infants porn and very candid talk of cannibalization of the poor and the disabled by the rich and the healthy, but the state of romance and economics being what it is today, it's not a huge leap of faith.
Capital punishment is terrorism practiced by the government against its citizens.
Survival had depended on differences.I'll recommend this to the world, but I'm not comfortable enough with calling it a "favorite". That's the point. Also, the author was part of the first batch of Genius Grant recipients. It's fantastically consistent, the correlation between composing good literature and having a shitton of money.
December 3, 2015
Oh my days* where do I begin? I'm glad I read The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir first in preparation for this behemoth, as I knew something about where Leslie Marmon Silko herself was coming from in her mapping of place and relationships, and I had seen the Arizona desert through her eyes so much already it was like a familiar friend here, a place to revere and protect, full of life and beauty. The desert is not the only place that comes to life in these pages – the muted light of the Mexican jungle and the chill tundra where the Yupik woman Rose tends her ghosts are also vivid; their spirits inhabit the text. The centrality of LAND to the great uprising of the indigenous people of 'The Americas' is paramount, a focus common to characters who come from the Plains, or trace their origins to Africa. In fact there is a whole Part of the book titled 'Africa'...
*since here the days themselves are spoken of as spirits (who 'will return'), this is an interesting exclamation
You can see what's happening, I'm wandering down one path after another before I've managed to give even a sentence of overview. Leslie uses a picture:
In an essay 'The Radical Geography of Silko's Almanac of the Dead' Alex Hunt explains
Still, the gentleness of Ceremony, a text that merely saves the world from destruction, is here put aside to make way for a more demanding struggle, although the witch-story that brought the Europeans and the idea of the Destroyers is definitely built on in Almanac and the quote I used in my review of a totally unrelated book came back to me as a point of resonance since a group of white 'artists' are included. This eschatological text hovers in a proximate future, painting present America overflowing with drug users, addicts and dealers, with sex and phallocentricity, with abusers and killers, death too easily met, all kinds of wretchedness, all the whims of the Destroyers and misery of their victims. Hunt says 'it succeeds in its anti-colonial and pro-environmental politics by evoking horror rather than empathy'
Hunt also explains how the local knowledge of indigenous people becomes a weapon against the colonisers and destroyers. Maps and blueprints constantly appear in the hands of those who have illegitimate power to appropriate, manipulate and ruin the land, and Silko continually turns the power of these mappings against their makers. What strikes me on reflection, because while I was reading I found the texture of the text quite homogenous, is the variety of modes she couches this strategy in. There's such a contrast between the richly dramatised scene where the Yupik woman uses animal hide and satellite TV to cause a plane crash, and the satirically played scene where the investor brushes off the ominous sign of red Xs on his map of the region where they occur.
Silko's map shows the border as a black line, but of course no such clear delineations characterise its multiplicity of meanings and effects in the text. Hunt draws a contrast between the border as a tool of the state designed to produce 'sameness and assimilation', and in its real actions among the people: it produces 'difference, alliance and hybridity' in the cultures that span and cross it. A Yaqui character, Calabazas, dismisses the border along with 'written time' as imaginary, but like others, he makes his living by smuggling across it, once again turning technologies of state control against the state. Rich Mexicans trying to escape state collapse are abandoned in the desert by their Indian guides, the border somewhere and everywhere around them, its meanings dissolved in heat and thirst.
The revolutionary vision that emerges and is partially articulated by various characters isn't grounded in ethnic identity but in deep ecocentric values that comprehend people as belonging to the Earth: 'they had discussed a network of tribal coalitions dedicated to the retaking of ancestral lands by indigenous people. Europeans were welcome to convert, or they might choose to return to the lands of their forbears to be close to Europe's old ghosts' [emphasis mine]. At the 'International Holistic Healers Convention' there is plenty of ridicule for the whites appropriating indigenous knowledge; there is nothing rosy-tinted about this book anywhere, but the possibility for white people to release their minds from destroyer ideology implicitly exists. It is 'all things European' that will vanish from the continent, not necessarily Euro-Americans themselves
The Convention as a venue, in all its absurdity, perfectly illustrates the complexities of uniting people around ideas and values which are thought and articulated differently. Nothing is pure, nobody is heroic, alliances are fluid and strategic. Silko is sensitive to the divisions, giving time to discussions of environmental racism (from a native perspective) and some racist underpinnings or connotations of 'natural health' (from a black perspective). She demolishes the racist rhetoric of 'overpopulation' so prevalent among white environmentalists. White 'eco-warriors' are not dismissed entirely but their scary desire to 'return to the Pleistocene' is identified with their unacknowledged longing for connection with their ancestral lands – where they were cave-dwellers. In the same vein Leah Blue, an Italian American developer, plans a 'Venice' in the desert, which will cause terrible ecological damage
Clinton, an African American veteran, makes the counterhegemonic move to connect with African spiritual beliefs, and now describes his religion simply as 'ancestor spirits'. This is easily possible for him (spiritually but certainly not socially since his practices (which are not violent) cause him to be thrown out of various dwellings) because, Silko asserts, the African gods accompanied their people on the Middle Passage to the 'Americas', and exist there to sustain them, though of necessity they became less gentle and much more angry and warriorlike. In contrast, the Europeans have been abandoned by their god(s) and have left their ancestors behind, causing dangerous pathological behaviour like Leah's 'Venice' dream.
Thinking about how to heal myself from socialisation & education that denies interconnections and encourages me to be a rootless consumer, I thought about my own ancestors, for example my grandfather, a farm worker and later allotment gardener, who knew the earth. My mother's passion for gardening comes from him and she laments that I don't have a garden to nurture here in London. (I'm awful though, I hate getting my hands dirty, a bit like the horrible group of arch-racist destroyers in Almanac. This strand seems homophobic, which is not very well remedied elsewhere! Where are the lesbians?) I also thought about the passion young pilot Maddie felt in Code Name Verity the first time she flew over humbly beautiful Britain (threatened by war). Her tears recalled to me my own helpless crying each time I have taken off from my birthplace in a plane.
Revolutionary Maya instigator Angelita is one of my favourite people in the book. She is inspired by Marx, whom she sees as a storyteller gathering the stories of the oppressed. His ideas, she argues, came from Native American people and the values he observed among them, even if, being a white man, he made many misinterpretations.
Reading this and The Turquoise Ledge recently has precipitated so many trains of thought, directly and indirectly. I am becoming aware of all the ways I am encultured to be oblivious, to forms of racism, to the origins and meanings of borders, to my own sense data
*since here the days themselves are spoken of as spirits (who 'will return'), this is an interesting exclamation
You can see what's happening, I'm wandering down one path after another before I've managed to give even a sentence of overview. Leslie uses a picture:
In an essay 'The Radical Geography of Silko's Almanac of the Dead' Alex Hunt explains
Its emphasis on space, land and borders positions Almanac as a geographical novel best understood through its commentary on maps and through the textual map it produces in its scope and its narrative movements. After all, the novel's subject is indigenous reappropriation of the land. At Zeta reflects 'There was not, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the Europeans' own definitions and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land'The epic scale of Silko's mapping and vision might suggest a ponderous, impersonal style, the sort of thing I myself expect from scriptural or prophetic writing, but the texture of the novel is nothing like this, it is as concrete as a stone in your hand; it is intimate, personal, nowhere but in its extensive cast of actors, agents, witnesses. The mythic tone, loaded with symbolism and portent, is reserved for the extracts included from the fragmentary ancient almanac twin sisters Zeta and Lecha received from their Yaqui grandmother Yoeme, a woman the twins' other family members are terrified by. The twins themselves are pretty formidable, but they are rendered here complete with attachments and vulnerabilities.
Still, the gentleness of Ceremony, a text that merely saves the world from destruction, is here put aside to make way for a more demanding struggle, although the witch-story that brought the Europeans and the idea of the Destroyers is definitely built on in Almanac and the quote I used in my review of a totally unrelated book came back to me as a point of resonance since a group of white 'artists' are included. This eschatological text hovers in a proximate future, painting present America overflowing with drug users, addicts and dealers, with sex and phallocentricity, with abusers and killers, death too easily met, all kinds of wretchedness, all the whims of the Destroyers and misery of their victims. Hunt says 'it succeeds in its anti-colonial and pro-environmental politics by evoking horror rather than empathy'
Hunt also explains how the local knowledge of indigenous people becomes a weapon against the colonisers and destroyers. Maps and blueprints constantly appear in the hands of those who have illegitimate power to appropriate, manipulate and ruin the land, and Silko continually turns the power of these mappings against their makers. What strikes me on reflection, because while I was reading I found the texture of the text quite homogenous, is the variety of modes she couches this strategy in. There's such a contrast between the richly dramatised scene where the Yupik woman uses animal hide and satellite TV to cause a plane crash, and the satirically played scene where the investor brushes off the ominous sign of red Xs on his map of the region where they occur.
Silko's map shows the border as a black line, but of course no such clear delineations characterise its multiplicity of meanings and effects in the text. Hunt draws a contrast between the border as a tool of the state designed to produce 'sameness and assimilation', and in its real actions among the people: it produces 'difference, alliance and hybridity' in the cultures that span and cross it. A Yaqui character, Calabazas, dismisses the border along with 'written time' as imaginary, but like others, he makes his living by smuggling across it, once again turning technologies of state control against the state. Rich Mexicans trying to escape state collapse are abandoned in the desert by their Indian guides, the border somewhere and everywhere around them, its meanings dissolved in heat and thirst.
The revolutionary vision that emerges and is partially articulated by various characters isn't grounded in ethnic identity but in deep ecocentric values that comprehend people as belonging to the Earth: 'they had discussed a network of tribal coalitions dedicated to the retaking of ancestral lands by indigenous people. Europeans were welcome to convert, or they might choose to return to the lands of their forbears to be close to Europe's old ghosts' [emphasis mine]. At the 'International Holistic Healers Convention' there is plenty of ridicule for the whites appropriating indigenous knowledge; there is nothing rosy-tinted about this book anywhere, but the possibility for white people to release their minds from destroyer ideology implicitly exists. It is 'all things European' that will vanish from the continent, not necessarily Euro-Americans themselves
The Convention as a venue, in all its absurdity, perfectly illustrates the complexities of uniting people around ideas and values which are thought and articulated differently. Nothing is pure, nobody is heroic, alliances are fluid and strategic. Silko is sensitive to the divisions, giving time to discussions of environmental racism (from a native perspective) and some racist underpinnings or connotations of 'natural health' (from a black perspective). She demolishes the racist rhetoric of 'overpopulation' so prevalent among white environmentalists. White 'eco-warriors' are not dismissed entirely but their scary desire to 'return to the Pleistocene' is identified with their unacknowledged longing for connection with their ancestral lands – where they were cave-dwellers. In the same vein Leah Blue, an Italian American developer, plans a 'Venice' in the desert, which will cause terrible ecological damage
Clinton, an African American veteran, makes the counterhegemonic move to connect with African spiritual beliefs, and now describes his religion simply as 'ancestor spirits'. This is easily possible for him (spiritually but certainly not socially since his practices (which are not violent) cause him to be thrown out of various dwellings) because, Silko asserts, the African gods accompanied their people on the Middle Passage to the 'Americas', and exist there to sustain them, though of necessity they became less gentle and much more angry and warriorlike. In contrast, the Europeans have been abandoned by their god(s) and have left their ancestors behind, causing dangerous pathological behaviour like Leah's 'Venice' dream.
Thinking about how to heal myself from socialisation & education that denies interconnections and encourages me to be a rootless consumer, I thought about my own ancestors, for example my grandfather, a farm worker and later allotment gardener, who knew the earth. My mother's passion for gardening comes from him and she laments that I don't have a garden to nurture here in London. (I'm awful though, I hate getting my hands dirty, a bit like the horrible group of arch-racist destroyers in Almanac. This strand seems homophobic, which is not very well remedied elsewhere! Where are the lesbians?) I also thought about the passion young pilot Maddie felt in Code Name Verity the first time she flew over humbly beautiful Britain (threatened by war). Her tears recalled to me my own helpless crying each time I have taken off from my birthplace in a plane.
Revolutionary Maya instigator Angelita is one of my favourite people in the book. She is inspired by Marx, whom she sees as a storyteller gathering the stories of the oppressed. His ideas, she argues, came from Native American people and the values he observed among them, even if, being a white man, he made many misinterpretations.
Marx, more tribal Jew than European, instinctively knew the stories or “history” accumulated momentum and power. No factory inspector's “official” report could whitewash the tears, blood and sweat that glistened from the simple words of the narratives.I'm quite tempted to transcribe her whole speech, but it's really long – it starts around p520 of my edition. Angelita's warrior personality contrasts with the Barefoot Hopi and other characters articulating a peaceful revolutionary vision as instructed by the spirits that communicate with them: 'Angelita heard from spirits too – only her spirits were furious and they told her to defend the people from attack'. This again marks the strength in difference as diverse people come together.
Reading this and The Turquoise Ledge recently has precipitated so many trains of thought, directly and indirectly. I am becoming aware of all the ways I am encultured to be oblivious, to forms of racism, to the origins and meanings of borders, to my own sense data
The elders used to argue that this was one of the most dangerous qualities of the Europeans: [they] suffered from a sort of blindness to the world. To them a “rock” was just a “rock” wherever they found it, despite obvious differences in shape, density, color, or the position of the rock relative to all things around itIt seems that the stories in these texts have such intense energy that it flows and transforms in all directions. Almanac is huge, epic, with the sense of a mighty effort, a whole mind's vast multivalent vision crammed into it. As with Ceremony its drift is hope. To read signs of hope, you need to be sensitive, to mark the return of the buffalo, to see how one boulder is different from another. One character even 'reads' body fat, which is also needed for survival and protection.
El Feo believed in the land. With the return of Indian land would come the return of justice, followed by peace.
December 24, 2021
Essential reading. Belongs on a shelf with things like Mosquito by Gayl Jones or 2666 by Bolaño, though I only say that in order to help orientate any potential reader considering whether to give this a go. You should. It is brutal, furious, funny (at times, and always blackly), terrifying, and horrifying. It is also one of those Big Books you need to give time to show itself, so reading it requires patience and trust that your author knows what she is doing.
Hers is also one of those voices we would all do well to listen to, or try to learn to listen to, now more than ever.
I read most of this in Covid-enforced isolation in my son's bedroom in the days running up to Christmas. I certainly think reading it in big chunks with no distraction helped, as perhaps did being in a slightly altered state from the virus and (thankfully mild) symptoms. Certainly gave me some interestingly unpleasant dreams...
Hers is also one of those voices we would all do well to listen to, or try to learn to listen to, now more than ever.
I read most of this in Covid-enforced isolation in my son's bedroom in the days running up to Christmas. I certainly think reading it in big chunks with no distraction helped, as perhaps did being in a slightly altered state from the virus and (thankfully mild) symptoms. Certainly gave me some interestingly unpleasant dreams...
September 28, 2015
Fucking wow.
This is not a pleasure cruise of a read. It's got a lot of things that would be a huge turn-off to many readers - drugs, violent sex, horrible things done to children and animals, disgusting characters of all sorts (racist, homophobic, sexist, abusive, drug-addled and/or drunk, pedophiles, scumbags), and more than can even be discussed on a surface level.
It's rough.
I've read complaints that Silko is an angry, bitter woman. So? Why can't a woman of color be angry or bitter? Does it make her message any less important? Not in my mind. She claims this story started out as a sort of drug-trafficking thriller, and it turned into this... 700+ behemoth filled with all this other stuff that flat-out hurts to read.
This isn't a book that should be enjoyed, per se. It's not a pleasurable read, but I feel it's prophetic and important. It goes deeper than the flawed characters, or the "flat" writing of Silko that I have seen complaints of - this is 500 years of history about a land (and a culture and a people) that doesn't belong to me originally.
There are many layers of story and history here, and they are woven together like a tapestry. It is non-linear, which can make it a frustrating read, but also requires a bit of responsibility from the reader. The Almanac of the Dead itself is seemingly what holds the story together, though I will admit that it wasn't always as central to the story as I would have liked. This is such an expansive story that I cannot deny that Silko didn't lose some grasp on some of the threads, but I feel the end result is still more satisfying than any other writer would have been able to accomplish. 700+ pages, something like 70 characters, 500 years of history. There is a mystery, there is some magical realism (of sorts), there is history. (Did I mention there is history? Because there is history).
All of the destruction and grittiness in this story is intentional. I feel the characters mirror what was done to the land, to the Native Americans, 500 years ago. While the story is about rising up and taking back what was taken from them, many of these characters seem to be doing the exact opposite of that. Which makes sense, really, if you consider how people (especially minorities) are beaten down until they have no memory of how they should be treated. These characters personify that treatment.
I don't feel that ever saying a story based on such a horrific past is too violent is ever a good enough excuse.
This is not a pleasure cruise of a read. It's got a lot of things that would be a huge turn-off to many readers - drugs, violent sex, horrible things done to children and animals, disgusting characters of all sorts (racist, homophobic, sexist, abusive, drug-addled and/or drunk, pedophiles, scumbags), and more than can even be discussed on a surface level.
It's rough.
I've read complaints that Silko is an angry, bitter woman. So? Why can't a woman of color be angry or bitter? Does it make her message any less important? Not in my mind. She claims this story started out as a sort of drug-trafficking thriller, and it turned into this... 700+ behemoth filled with all this other stuff that flat-out hurts to read.
This isn't a book that should be enjoyed, per se. It's not a pleasurable read, but I feel it's prophetic and important. It goes deeper than the flawed characters, or the "flat" writing of Silko that I have seen complaints of - this is 500 years of history about a land (and a culture and a people) that doesn't belong to me originally.
There are many layers of story and history here, and they are woven together like a tapestry. It is non-linear, which can make it a frustrating read, but also requires a bit of responsibility from the reader. The Almanac of the Dead itself is seemingly what holds the story together, though I will admit that it wasn't always as central to the story as I would have liked. This is such an expansive story that I cannot deny that Silko didn't lose some grasp on some of the threads, but I feel the end result is still more satisfying than any other writer would have been able to accomplish. 700+ pages, something like 70 characters, 500 years of history. There is a mystery, there is some magical realism (of sorts), there is history. (Did I mention there is history? Because there is history).
All of the destruction and grittiness in this story is intentional. I feel the characters mirror what was done to the land, to the Native Americans, 500 years ago. While the story is about rising up and taking back what was taken from them, many of these characters seem to be doing the exact opposite of that. Which makes sense, really, if you consider how people (especially minorities) are beaten down until they have no memory of how they should be treated. These characters personify that treatment.
I don't feel that ever saying a story based on such a horrific past is too violent is ever a good enough excuse.
Word by word, the stories of suffering, injury, and death had transformed the present moment, seizing listeners' or readers' imaginations so that for an instant, they were present and felt the suffering of sisters and brothers long past.
Read
October 5, 2014Half-way through, and I'm giving up. The flat, 3rd-person, short-sentence prose is numbing. I see vague connections between the dozens of sub-plots, but I can't keep them straight. The torture porn is seriously off-putting without anything to redeem or explain its inclusion so far (other than the obvious); most of all, there's not a single heroic character in the bunch. And from the reviews I've skimmed, it's only going to get worse.
This is not a novel, it's a manifesto (in case the chapter or two on Marx didn't give that fact away). It no doubt serves its purpose. Or rather, served. Almanac is well and truly rooted in an 80s/90s sensibility, not only the Native American uprising it (seems to) foretell, but the vision of the particular form of excess and decay that a society oppressed for 500 years by European colonialism will take: riddled by drugs, guns, pornography, rape, brutality and murder; homeless Vietnam war vets; serial killers; the rampant greed of real estate developers fueled by the drug of choice, cocaine. An already barren landscape being pillaged by the corruption and greed of petty thieves, gang-bangers, mafia families, third-world generalissimos, and governments in collusion with all of them.
Silko slammed Erdrich for not being political enough in a review the former did of the latter's The Beet Queen. I haven't read up on the feud, but there've been books written on it. Or at least chapters in books, which maybe I will some day read. I think that it's an interesting topic: how do these two paragons of Native American writing approach the politics inherent in the literature that they create? Where do literary style and choices play a role, and how?
Me, I'm Team Erdrich all the way. I like my novels novelistic: I like my characters complex; I like my language lyrical and poetic; I like plots that serve theme, but don't exist entirely to bang you over the head with it. And if, at the same time, these novels also illuminate the underlying politics (which Erdrich's most certainly do; and so do Boyden's, and Wagamese's, and Thomas King's, and Tompson Highway's, and ...), then that's a bonus.
As a novel, Almanac of the Dead uses plot (too many) and character (too flat) entirely in the service of anger, cynicism, and political intent, and so ... not my cup of tea.
This is not a novel, it's a manifesto (in case the chapter or two on Marx didn't give that fact away). It no doubt serves its purpose. Or rather, served. Almanac is well and truly rooted in an 80s/90s sensibility, not only the Native American uprising it (seems to) foretell, but the vision of the particular form of excess and decay that a society oppressed for 500 years by European colonialism will take: riddled by drugs, guns, pornography, rape, brutality and murder; homeless Vietnam war vets; serial killers; the rampant greed of real estate developers fueled by the drug of choice, cocaine. An already barren landscape being pillaged by the corruption and greed of petty thieves, gang-bangers, mafia families, third-world generalissimos, and governments in collusion with all of them.
Silko slammed Erdrich for not being political enough in a review the former did of the latter's The Beet Queen. I haven't read up on the feud, but there've been books written on it. Or at least chapters in books, which maybe I will some day read. I think that it's an interesting topic: how do these two paragons of Native American writing approach the politics inherent in the literature that they create? Where do literary style and choices play a role, and how?
Me, I'm Team Erdrich all the way. I like my novels novelistic: I like my characters complex; I like my language lyrical and poetic; I like plots that serve theme, but don't exist entirely to bang you over the head with it. And if, at the same time, these novels also illuminate the underlying politics (which Erdrich's most certainly do; and so do Boyden's, and Wagamese's, and Thomas King's, and Tompson Highway's, and ...), then that's a bonus.
As a novel, Almanac of the Dead uses plot (too many) and character (too flat) entirely in the service of anger, cynicism, and political intent, and so ... not my cup of tea.
December 8, 2020
It was one of my goals to read more indigenous authors in 2020, but I've decided to withhold judgment on Leslie Marmon Silko until I've read her other works. I know better than to punish a writer or a novel for not being what I wanted but this doesn't match the cover blurb or what I was hoping for. Instead of a family or community saga saturated in characters from various indigenous backgrounds, it is a novel about government corruption, police corruption, drug trafficking, people trafficking, unethical business practices, and people who place no value on lives other than their own. Most of the characters are white men and the author puts the reader inside their narratives, leaving me reading from uncomfortable perspectives page after page after page. By the time I got back to the characters I initially felt invested in, I didn't care as much about them after they'd been absent for 500 pages.
Most of the novel takes place in Tuscon but some characters and chapters are in Mexico, elsewhere in Arizona, maybe California. Current events are eco-terrorism, the early hints of the Internet (the novel was originally published in 1991), the AIDS crisis, and the ongoing commercial failures of the industries who had moved into Tuscon and Phoenix.
There is an underlying sense that those who are indigenous have developed various ways of coping with the dominant population (some comply, some become corrupt, some plan revolution, some stick to themselves) and the novel actually ends in a somewhat hopeful way, but it's a heck of a journey to get there. This book is dark and reminded me of the experience reading 2666.
The underlying premise according to the publisher blurb is this fragmented text handed down from ancestors to these elderly sisters but it really played such a minor role - I would have loved to see it more significantly a part of the text. With how much attention is given it in the beginning I was left without feeling it had done much. Same with many of the early characters, honestly. I think the author may have tried to do too much and just ended up not doing much. Publishers Weekly didn't disagree with me.
CW rape, murder, suicide, drugs, harm to children, harm to animals, kidnapping, etc.
Most of the novel takes place in Tuscon but some characters and chapters are in Mexico, elsewhere in Arizona, maybe California. Current events are eco-terrorism, the early hints of the Internet (the novel was originally published in 1991), the AIDS crisis, and the ongoing commercial failures of the industries who had moved into Tuscon and Phoenix.
There is an underlying sense that those who are indigenous have developed various ways of coping with the dominant population (some comply, some become corrupt, some plan revolution, some stick to themselves) and the novel actually ends in a somewhat hopeful way, but it's a heck of a journey to get there. This book is dark and reminded me of the experience reading 2666.
The underlying premise according to the publisher blurb is this fragmented text handed down from ancestors to these elderly sisters but it really played such a minor role - I would have loved to see it more significantly a part of the text. With how much attention is given it in the beginning I was left without feeling it had done much. Same with many of the early characters, honestly. I think the author may have tried to do too much and just ended up not doing much. Publishers Weekly didn't disagree with me.
CW rape, murder, suicide, drugs, harm to children, harm to animals, kidnapping, etc.
December 4, 2018
As damning and excoriating as ever, the second time through. Fearless. Unassailable. Meant to be hated, in a way. I hated it more and enjoyed it less this time through, knowing where I was going, and that really seemed to be the point of it.
First review:
This novel is exorbitantly, lavishly violent. It's a sordid kind of violence, violence done to and by characters with a pathological level of cruelty. It was impossible to not feel assaulted by it as I read. It jolts me right out of my complacency about the past. This is a novel about Native American genocide, about American genocide. It's about a holocaust that has been more or less lost to history in terms of its overwhelming magnitude, and where what is remembered has been kitsched over and transformed into popular entertainment. Silko set out to shatter the past as it has been preserved in our collective culture and to replace it with something far more damning and sad.
Much of the writing is staccato, scattered, shattered, and at times nearly incoherent. Silko tells a story of lives brutalized. It's a story where proper sentences would prettify and thus lie. The stylistic punches built up a level of dread in me as I read. There are scenes of such brutality and lack of humanity that they left me sick. I also frequently felt lost, and irritated by a prose style that felt deliberately blunted and ugly. ANd then I would think: this is right, this is the right way to tell such an ugly history.
Now and then would come chapters of soaring lyricism, interstitially spaced between the chapters of violence and cruelty. They fortified me. They allowed me to keep reading.
It's maybe my highest praise of a book when I can honestly say "I've never read anything like this book before." And I admire how ruthless Silko is, even though there are passages I wish I could un-read.
First review:
This novel is exorbitantly, lavishly violent. It's a sordid kind of violence, violence done to and by characters with a pathological level of cruelty. It was impossible to not feel assaulted by it as I read. It jolts me right out of my complacency about the past. This is a novel about Native American genocide, about American genocide. It's about a holocaust that has been more or less lost to history in terms of its overwhelming magnitude, and where what is remembered has been kitsched over and transformed into popular entertainment. Silko set out to shatter the past as it has been preserved in our collective culture and to replace it with something far more damning and sad.
Much of the writing is staccato, scattered, shattered, and at times nearly incoherent. Silko tells a story of lives brutalized. It's a story where proper sentences would prettify and thus lie. The stylistic punches built up a level of dread in me as I read. There are scenes of such brutality and lack of humanity that they left me sick. I also frequently felt lost, and irritated by a prose style that felt deliberately blunted and ugly. ANd then I would think: this is right, this is the right way to tell such an ugly history.
Now and then would come chapters of soaring lyricism, interstitially spaced between the chapters of violence and cruelty. They fortified me. They allowed me to keep reading.
It's maybe my highest praise of a book when I can honestly say "I've never read anything like this book before." And I admire how ruthless Silko is, even though there are passages I wish I could un-read.
December 13, 2015
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This was Games of Thrones, meets Breaking Bad, with engaging, graphic and enlightening prose. The book consists of snapshots into a slew of diverse and broken characters, who realize how ruthless life can be. This is dense and long (763 pg's the longest novel I've read), but that didn't diminish the wonderful experience of reading this book. At the core of this is the idea being reinforced over and over again that we must remember and know the history of our people. In America Native American history in school isn't taught and Christopher Columbus continues to be regarded as a hero. This book is a a step in the right direction, because it starts the conversation with the unflinching truth about the Native American genocide.
Alot of criticism of this novel talks about homosexual characters being portrayed as evil. But at I was reading I thought that was a unfair characterization. Every character was more nuanced than good or evil. There were some graphic and disturbing scenes which involved rape and molestation, but the author clearly wants you to be uncomfortable. The point is that your comfort is taken away, so you can better relate to the turmoil and ugliness described in the novel.
There is wonderful insights and thoughts that challenge the reader to look at things they may be used to turning away from. The spiritual connection that has been lost to the earth is a reoccurring theme, but did not come off as preachy at all. Religion is used to manipulate and profit. Characters are betrayed, lost and grasping for hope where they can. I was emotionally reminded of things that this book didn't directly address, but the intimacy described is relateable for everyone.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience an educational, engaging, and powerful glimpse into a different culture. My book club, didn't finish the book when we met on account of the length, but we all took memorable and important lessons from it. The ending seems unfinished, but it's not. This book makes you recognize and experience the power of stories, and made me immensely grateful.
"Those who can't learn to appreciate the world's differences won't make it. They'll die."
This was Games of Thrones, meets Breaking Bad, with engaging, graphic and enlightening prose. The book consists of snapshots into a slew of diverse and broken characters, who realize how ruthless life can be. This is dense and long (763 pg's the longest novel I've read), but that didn't diminish the wonderful experience of reading this book. At the core of this is the idea being reinforced over and over again that we must remember and know the history of our people. In America Native American history in school isn't taught and Christopher Columbus continues to be regarded as a hero. This book is a a step in the right direction, because it starts the conversation with the unflinching truth about the Native American genocide.
Alot of criticism of this novel talks about homosexual characters being portrayed as evil. But at I was reading I thought that was a unfair characterization. Every character was more nuanced than good or evil. There were some graphic and disturbing scenes which involved rape and molestation, but the author clearly wants you to be uncomfortable. The point is that your comfort is taken away, so you can better relate to the turmoil and ugliness described in the novel.
There is wonderful insights and thoughts that challenge the reader to look at things they may be used to turning away from. The spiritual connection that has been lost to the earth is a reoccurring theme, but did not come off as preachy at all. Religion is used to manipulate and profit. Characters are betrayed, lost and grasping for hope where they can. I was emotionally reminded of things that this book didn't directly address, but the intimacy described is relateable for everyone.
"The ancestors had called Europeans the 'orphan people' and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish or coldhearted clanspeople, Few Europeans remained whole."
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience an educational, engaging, and powerful glimpse into a different culture. My book club, didn't finish the book when we met on account of the length, but we all took memorable and important lessons from it. The ending seems unfinished, but it's not. This book makes you recognize and experience the power of stories, and made me immensely grateful.
October 28, 2015
Epic. Silko nailed the epicness of this story. She has tried to tell 500 years of North American Native history, since the coming of the white Europeans, with the outcome of anger and hostility, the degradation and defeat of the people but not the defeat of the spirit. The spirit remains strong.
This isn't an easy read at times. It's gritty, detailed, hard, cruel and at times stomach-turning. But it tells a sweeping, deep story of colonization, exploitation, anger, distress, hopelessness, corruption (so much corruption in so many different ways) in a way that is, while not pleasant, somehow disturbingly real. This is Life as we don't see it because this Life takes place in the dark corners. It's sad and scary to know that this life exists somewhere. One wants to take all this nastiness away from the people and let them see the brighter side of life.
Then, intertwined in all this grittiness, is the Earth and our connectedness/disconnectedness with it. The Earth can be separated from us but we can not be separated from the Earth. Connectivity. No one stands alone. One person's actions will touch us all in some way.
The people in this book (and there are many) are interesting and well portrayed & written but, for the most part, not likable. These are hurt, angry, greedy and/or downtrodden people with axes to grind and faults that put them outside of our normal vision. They are the addicts, the homeless, the perpetrators. There are few redeeming values. Yet they are real, have power, influence the events of their, and therefore our, world.
It's hard to describe a book like this. It's wonderfully told, hard to read (stomach) at times, gritty, hopeful, depressing, horrifying. There's an element of magical realism, giving the story some haunting and mystical sides. It tells the story of connectivity to each other and our world. It tells its story from the dark side; a different perspective than we're used to reading or hearing about.
Throughout this read I was reminded of Roberto Bolano's 2666. It has the same concept of grittiness and showing a dark side of the world that we don't see and yet exists and influences us.
This isn't an easy read at times. It's gritty, detailed, hard, cruel and at times stomach-turning. But it tells a sweeping, deep story of colonization, exploitation, anger, distress, hopelessness, corruption (so much corruption in so many different ways) in a way that is, while not pleasant, somehow disturbingly real. This is Life as we don't see it because this Life takes place in the dark corners. It's sad and scary to know that this life exists somewhere. One wants to take all this nastiness away from the people and let them see the brighter side of life.
Then, intertwined in all this grittiness, is the Earth and our connectedness/disconnectedness with it. The Earth can be separated from us but we can not be separated from the Earth. Connectivity. No one stands alone. One person's actions will touch us all in some way.
The people in this book (and there are many) are interesting and well portrayed & written but, for the most part, not likable. These are hurt, angry, greedy and/or downtrodden people with axes to grind and faults that put them outside of our normal vision. They are the addicts, the homeless, the perpetrators. There are few redeeming values. Yet they are real, have power, influence the events of their, and therefore our, world.
It's hard to describe a book like this. It's wonderfully told, hard to read (stomach) at times, gritty, hopeful, depressing, horrifying. There's an element of magical realism, giving the story some haunting and mystical sides. It tells the story of connectivity to each other and our world. It tells its story from the dark side; a different perspective than we're used to reading or hearing about.
Throughout this read I was reminded of Roberto Bolano's 2666. It has the same concept of grittiness and showing a dark side of the world that we don't see and yet exists and influences us.
November 25, 2021
Now that I've had enough time to think about all the bullshit I wanna throw into this review, prepare yourselves for a long ass text of me screaming at Silko.
First of all, the beginning was extremely triggering. Like, EXTREMELY. I had to stop several times and at one point I even spent like two hours crying. So that's that. Trigger warnings should be mandatory and I won't take any criticism on this. This leads me to my second point: language. I get why Silko chose to use this style; very raw, very in-your-face, and very direct. But I'm personally not a fan, especially since I expected to like this book because Ceremony is so beautifully written, and this one's prose seems to have been not taken care of in any way. And don't even get me started on syntax and redundancy.
Also, this motherfucker was innecessary long. The story wouldn't change a bit if this was 500 or even 400 pages long. The same information is repeated constantly and I just felt the urge to slam the book against the wall (and, honestly, maybe I should have).
I was hoping the Almanac would provide me with a wider perspective of Native American values; especifically, regarding writing and storytelling. You know, the book is named after the Almanac. But maybe that's just a me problem.
The only reason I gave this 3 stars is because I somehow got something out of it that I can use to write a couple of long essays, but it was quite a bittersweet read: this has so much potential, but it ended up being boring, repetitive, and triggering. I'm glad I've read Silko before, because if this was the first book I read from her I'd definitely not pick up any of her other works in the future. So if you didn't like this, you'll probably enjoy Ceremony. Or not. I take no responsibility over that.
First of all, the beginning was extremely triggering. Like, EXTREMELY. I had to stop several times and at one point I even spent like two hours crying. So that's that. Trigger warnings should be mandatory and I won't take any criticism on this. This leads me to my second point: language. I get why Silko chose to use this style; very raw, very in-your-face, and very direct. But I'm personally not a fan, especially since I expected to like this book because Ceremony is so beautifully written, and this one's prose seems to have been not taken care of in any way. And don't even get me started on syntax and redundancy.
Also, this motherfucker was innecessary long. The story wouldn't change a bit if this was 500 or even 400 pages long. The same information is repeated constantly and I just felt the urge to slam the book against the wall (and, honestly, maybe I should have).
I was hoping the Almanac would provide me with a wider perspective of Native American values; especifically, regarding writing and storytelling. You know, the book is named after the Almanac. But maybe that's just a me problem.
The only reason I gave this 3 stars is because I somehow got something out of it that I can use to write a couple of long essays, but it was quite a bittersweet read: this has so much potential, but it ended up being boring, repetitive, and triggering. I'm glad I've read Silko before, because if this was the first book I read from her I'd definitely not pick up any of her other works in the future. So if you didn't like this, you'll probably enjoy Ceremony. Or not. I take no responsibility over that.
May 17, 2009
Someone said a good book tells about a good character, and a bad book tells more about the character of its author. I believe this book is the latter, and I don't believe I would care to cross paths with Leslie Marmon Silko. Among the many fold things I disliked about this book (homophobia, long academic pretension, shock tactics, faux-spiritualism, and completely soulless characters), I found the anger in it to be the most disturbing. It was anger DISGUISED as prophesy and renewal, but in the end it was only about destruction and reveling in the apocalypse. I kept slogging through hoping for some sort of twist at the end that would give real understanding or development to the characters or some plot, but was disappointed. I will not recommend this book to anyone or keep it on my bookshelf. In fact, I need to read something much better to cleanse my palate after this book. Yuck.
December 15, 2021
Nice idea, horrible narration.
December 16, 2021
ni me lo voy a terminar pero vaya que para las pocas historias buenas que hay, me sobran unas 300 paginas mínimo. Demasiadas escenas desagradables y la forma en la que esta narrado hace que sea todavía muy pesado. Lo mejor del libro ha sido la historia de Angelita y Clinton, lo demás wasn't it. Dos meses he estado leyendolo para no terminarmelo, pero como ya no lo usare más y he hecho la ultima response pues fuck it.
November 12, 2021
haría una review como dios manda pero estoy hasta la pepitilla ya. if only el libro entero hubiese sido tan interesante como las últimas 50-60 páginas...
May 12, 2021
Fucking Brilliant.
May 22, 2008
This is a tough book. It's been ages since it took so much time and effort for me to finish a book. Silko creates dozens of characters in several locales and their stories are told only a little bit at a time, with little sense of how they relate to one another until the final section of the book. Even beyond the overwhelming size and scope of the book, Almanac of the Dead is a tough read because in it Silko presents big and frightening ideas. This is a book about the destruction of land and culture by Destroyers (white people), not just in the United States, but in the Americas broadly, in Africa, and even in Europe. Most of the book is dedicated to showing the results of this destruction. People are greedy, dissolute, violent, disconnected from their spiritual roots and from the earth. As the novel progresses, these people either destroy themselves and each other or find a place in the movement to overthrow the Destroyers.
It is a long process of development, leading to a conclusion that looks toward the future with a mixture of hope and fear. It is unclear how much violence will be a part of this revolution, how long it will take to work, or what will happen to the characters we have been following. Ultimately, the characters don't matter. They are expendable. This is a book about the big picture--and most of the characters themselves realize this (at least among the "good guys"). Similarly, looking at the big picture, it is argued that it may take 50 bloody years to create this change or it may take hundreds of more peaceful years; but it will happen. The Destroyers will be removed from power. Their time will pass. The question, then, is what will happen in the meantime? Will Indians across the Americas rise up and fight, will they sacrifice themselves? Or will they try to wait it out? And at the rate that the Destroyers are working, will the Indians survive in the meantime? None of these questions are truly answered at the end of the novel, but possibilities are given. The twins are leading a large group of people north from Mexico, there is an army of Indians coming down from the north of the U.S., there is a homeless army growing around Tucson, and there are multiple leaders, human and spirit, driving Indians toward a conflict with the Destroyers. Clearly, then, Indians are rising up to fight in one way or another. Some groups look forward to nonviolent empowerment and others plan for violent uprising, however. Although Sterling notes with apprehension that "when the shooting started, women and children, the old and the sick, the innocent and the weak, would die first" (753), indicating the dangers of a violent uprising, in the end even he sees the bigger picture: "Burned and radioactive, with all humans dead, the earth would still be sacred. Man was too insignificant to desecrate her" (762). All that matters is the earth and its liberation and this realization changes Sterling: "Sterling didn't look like his old self anymore. He had lost weight and quit drinking beer. The postmaster reported Sterling had let go all his magazine subscriptions. Sterling didn't care about the rumors and gossip because Sterling knew why the giant snake had returned now; he knew what the snake's message was to the people. The snake was looking south, in the direction from which the twin brothers and the people would come" (763). These concluding lines provide some hope for the movement, for the people, for the earth.
But after 760 pages of development, to be left still looking forward to the action is extremely frustrating. Looking at this book as a political novel, this conclusion makes sense. The book gestures outside of itself to the real world, to a future that could be created by readers. But the beginning and middle of the novel do not feel like that of a political novel. There is too much going on; there are too many characters calling for the reader's attention. Basically, it's too complex to be an effective political novel in the traditional sense, but its conclusion demands such a reading. Almanac of the Dead also falls into the category of speculative fiction. It describes a world that is so much like ours that it barely registers as speculative fiction, but this is what gives it power. Silko has the freedom within this genre to embellish, to create a force that doesn't yet exist in the real world, but this force is created in a world that feels so real, so matter-of-fact even, that we begin to believe it really does exist. As such, the book is a warning, a guide, a prophecy that we must fulfill.
It is a long process of development, leading to a conclusion that looks toward the future with a mixture of hope and fear. It is unclear how much violence will be a part of this revolution, how long it will take to work, or what will happen to the characters we have been following. Ultimately, the characters don't matter. They are expendable. This is a book about the big picture--and most of the characters themselves realize this (at least among the "good guys"). Similarly, looking at the big picture, it is argued that it may take 50 bloody years to create this change or it may take hundreds of more peaceful years; but it will happen. The Destroyers will be removed from power. Their time will pass. The question, then, is what will happen in the meantime? Will Indians across the Americas rise up and fight, will they sacrifice themselves? Or will they try to wait it out? And at the rate that the Destroyers are working, will the Indians survive in the meantime? None of these questions are truly answered at the end of the novel, but possibilities are given. The twins are leading a large group of people north from Mexico, there is an army of Indians coming down from the north of the U.S., there is a homeless army growing around Tucson, and there are multiple leaders, human and spirit, driving Indians toward a conflict with the Destroyers. Clearly, then, Indians are rising up to fight in one way or another. Some groups look forward to nonviolent empowerment and others plan for violent uprising, however. Although Sterling notes with apprehension that "when the shooting started, women and children, the old and the sick, the innocent and the weak, would die first" (753), indicating the dangers of a violent uprising, in the end even he sees the bigger picture: "Burned and radioactive, with all humans dead, the earth would still be sacred. Man was too insignificant to desecrate her" (762). All that matters is the earth and its liberation and this realization changes Sterling: "Sterling didn't look like his old self anymore. He had lost weight and quit drinking beer. The postmaster reported Sterling had let go all his magazine subscriptions. Sterling didn't care about the rumors and gossip because Sterling knew why the giant snake had returned now; he knew what the snake's message was to the people. The snake was looking south, in the direction from which the twin brothers and the people would come" (763). These concluding lines provide some hope for the movement, for the people, for the earth.
But after 760 pages of development, to be left still looking forward to the action is extremely frustrating. Looking at this book as a political novel, this conclusion makes sense. The book gestures outside of itself to the real world, to a future that could be created by readers. But the beginning and middle of the novel do not feel like that of a political novel. There is too much going on; there are too many characters calling for the reader's attention. Basically, it's too complex to be an effective political novel in the traditional sense, but its conclusion demands such a reading. Almanac of the Dead also falls into the category of speculative fiction. It describes a world that is so much like ours that it barely registers as speculative fiction, but this is what gives it power. Silko has the freedom within this genre to embellish, to create a force that doesn't yet exist in the real world, but this force is created in a world that feels so real, so matter-of-fact even, that we begin to believe it really does exist. As such, the book is a warning, a guide, a prophecy that we must fulfill.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 19, 2021
Listen. I get it, but…
August 2, 2008
As I've re-read this book twice, and regularly go back and read some of my favorite parts, I'm having trouble remembering what it was like reading it the first time around. It is a devastating portrait of the violence, greed, and moral corruption of colonization, making it often extremely difficult to read (there are several scenes of sexual violence that I skip when I re-read it). However, the violence is never, ever frivolous, rather, it feels like Silko demands that her readers bear witness to the full truth and horror of colonization so that we can begin to envision transformation. I think it can be very difficult to deeply and honestly portray alienation without wallowing in it or obscuring other options (granted, I think a lot of writers probably don't see other options). However, Silko infuses a very deep hope throughout the book. Her hope is not even for the characters she creates; rather, it is for a sense of justice that exists in a spiritual realm, and, as Silko has said, the anger of the earth. There's also an essay in "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit" about the process of writing "Almanac", which helped me to more deeply appreciate the book.
February 24, 2014
Intricately plotted novel covers southwestern U.S. history for the past five hundred years and into the future, though most of the action takes place in present-day Tucson. There is a huge cast of characters and when they reappear after a few hundred pages you can be forgiven if you've forgotten exactly who they are. Much of the plot describes the venality of the capitalistic way of life in North America. Drug dealers, arms runners, pornographers, corrupt judges, and murderers are among the people we meet. To add to the difficulty of reading this 762 pager is the fact that much of the story takes place inside the characters' heads. The novel is based on the Native American prediction (the Mayan calendar is one source) that after five hundred years of conquest, the earth will protect itself from the abuse it has suffered and only Natives will be left. This is a sweeping, epic story, but it took me weeks to read and it describes disgusting and shameful human behavior. Considering that it was published in 1991, the book is prophetic in much of its detail about future disasters, both man-made and natural. There are no wrong notes in the entire weighty tome--but it's so dispiriting that only the most motivated reader will make it to the end.
May 26, 2021
sick, violent, angry, bleak, relentless - so, probably the great american novel, because how could anyone look around and react any differently
October 12, 2009
I was determined to finish this and I did. I was so hungry for the narrative: drug dealing and real estate development in Tucson, an army of the homeless, military fortifications on the border, a tv psychic, persistent rumors of an indigenous uprising coming from the south. Some of these themes overlap with 2666, and it's also similar to 2666 for being a Big Book. But I just couldn't get past the writing. First of all, most of the book is written in the past perfect, for no grammatical reason I could tell. It's really weird and it creates a distancing effect where you're waiting to catch up to the "present" past tense of the book. And the characters are all underdrawn, crass, selfish, unsympathetic. And then there's the weird homophobia - I don't even know whether to call it that, but a near majority of the main characters are gay men, and they are sadists, misogynists, baby-killers, etc. Is this some kind of statement on queerness as a civilized disease? I don't know. The story of Leche's translation Yoeme's almanac is truly good and some of the best writing somes in the excerpts from the book that Silko creates. But on the whole I was really disappointed.
June 12, 2007
This is the book that helped me realize that time doesn't have to be the way we think. Both the past and the future are our partners. We need them both, and we have them both with us all the time. This is the book that made me realize that although Bush totally rots, his time and his influence are temporary. What I got out of it was, "We have Life After Bush in our hands already -- we can make it better."
It doesn't say anything about Bush, actually, since it was published a while ago. Actually Silko ended up predicting correctly a lot of historical events and movements -- the Zapatistas, the collapse of the Mexican economy in the 90s, "eco-terror" groups... She knows her stuff.
This isn't a very good review, but read the book anyway.
It doesn't say anything about Bush, actually, since it was published a while ago. Actually Silko ended up predicting correctly a lot of historical events and movements -- the Zapatistas, the collapse of the Mexican economy in the 90s, "eco-terror" groups... She knows her stuff.
This isn't a very good review, but read the book anyway.
July 17, 2021
Propelled relentlessly in all directions as its characters pursue their next gig, fix, pay check, hope. Righteous indignation burning brilliantly in the doomed night sky of the western world.
January 23, 2011
Not the greatest book I have ever read, but certainly worth the time it took to get through it. Silko has a bad habit of being incredibly reductive about some very polarizing issues, not to mention seemingly quite ignorant about histories and peoples relations to it. Not to forget her borderline homophobia and racism at times. But with as much wrong with this book as there is (and there's a lot) I really enjoyed it. The discussion of revolution and all the conspiracy theories was interesting, but it is telling that Silko didn't feel the need to go further and actually SHOW us the revolution she spent almost eight hundred pages building up. A good (and surprisingly fast) read that will probably offend but also entertain, and maybe even inform. But probably not in the way the writer intended. Oh, and don't expect resolution/closure aside from -spoiler- character death, that would be a bit too conclusive for the kind of story written here.
Read
December 28, 2011It was emotionally painful to read this book. So little redemption, and so varied an assortment of reasons to despair about human nature and the direction of the world, made it feel like a task to keep turning the pages. I'm glad I finished it, and I think it says things that are important to've been said, but I couldn't wait for it to be done. Drug trade, organ trade, sex trade, the rich discounting the poor, the poor despising the rich, betrayal personal and professional, a widespread movement toward chaos, violence and dissolution... It's a book whose anger is earned, rooted in the relations between Native Americans and indigenous Mexicans and Europeans. If you're sensitive, this book will hurt you. Read with care or not at all, and not when you're feeling depressed or delicate.
April 12, 2014
Imagine Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee crossed with Infinite Jest, plus a dash of The Women of Brewster Place. That's basically what Almanac of the Dead feels like. This is some great storytelling in its interweaving of characters, its evocation of the desert Southwest (me gusta!) and its force-to-be-reckoned-with politics. It leaves you wishing that the predicted uprising would really happen. Is that last sentence so very fifteen-sixteenths European of me, to assume "we" are safely ensconced here?
Maybe it really will happen....even I would pray, for that.
Maybe it really will happen....even I would pray, for that.
December 2, 2020
insanely vulgar & difficult to read but i guess i appreciate the project as a whole 🤔 Silko, u wild...
December 17, 2015
I feel like it is maybe immoral to imagine the death by starvation and thirst of literally millions without being willing to imagine these deaths and disasters in any specific psychological detail. The part with Alegria in the desert is about the only part of this book I can think of where a character's death (or near death, anyway) isn't played either (a) essentially for satiric/allegorical effect (or for lurid, sadistic horror), or (b) referred to entirely in passing (moments where characters, while relaxing at home, recall that all of the water and electricity has been shut down in Mexico City DF, condemning thousands & millions of impoverished people to slow starvation or murder, such revelations taking a paragraph or so.)
When writing about revolution, about the moral obligation to revolt ("One day a story will arrive in your town," one of the best passages), I feel really, really troubled when an author isn't willing to describe the consequences of such revolt in immediate and human terms. I mean it is easy to think about deaths on a monumental scale, but the death counts in this book feel like they're more about numeric effect, terms in a rhetorical argument for dehumanization of an adversary. The whole book feels like it's engaging with horror in passing, in summary. Trigg has a habit of fellating homeless men while draining their blood to sell on the biomaterials exchange, but do we actually care about any of these homeless men specifically, or are they just horrors, notes in an overall motif of horror and blood and ruin?
About dehumanization: the people who deserve murder are sorcerers, destroyers, not humans. Likely, but? I want to sign on for a book about the end of 500 years of European dominion over native lands, as prophesied by a gigantic stone snake; I want to see the total reclamation of native lands here promised. The analysis in this book, the historical connections between uprisings and movements across pretty much the entire hemisphere: all of that is tops, and the book comes alive when it gets didactic about this stuff (one of the reasons I really like the parts with Clinton and his radio addresses.) But I also want that reclamation to hurt more than it seems to hurt in this book. If it's necessary, as the book argues, for a blood sacrifice on a massive scale to appease the spirits who've been dishonored by colonialism, then I want that blood sacrifice to seem like a sacrifice, rather than a fantasy predicated on the idea that It's Okay If Everyone Dies Because They Weren't Human Anyway. I want it not to be a fantasy: I want to be able to believe in the total return of native lands, and I can't here because I can't recognize most of the people in this book who implement the systems that prevent that return as humans, as banal. These feel like cruel caricatures of humans.
For a book about the total collapse of all European colonial legacies in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere, very little actually seems to be at stake from page to page. So much of this book's narration involves wandering around settings, hearing characters obsess and make plots among themselves while they go about their business--dealing drugs, buying guns, having joyless sex, doing cocaine, taking part in golf dates where they laugh evilly about their sadistic sex practices, torturing people for sport, watching snuff films--little of which adds up to forward plot momentum. These drifting scenes start to alternate, toward the end, with news flashes about how BY THE WAY the Mexican government has toppled / all Europeans have been driven out of Africa by heroic revolutions there / everyone is dying of starvation in Mexico City DF / etc. There are a few plots that feel engaging--Menardo's in particular--but even there, we hear Menardo talk about how he's in love with his bulletproof vest for so many dozens of repetitive pages that What's Going To Happen is obvious and anticlimactic when it comes. I feel like I have no psychological access to any of the characters besides Sterling, sometimes Seese and Lecha, sometimes Root, sometimes Clinton. I feel like imagining other lives is what I come to fiction for. Is this wrong?
Any of the individual vignettes and plots in this book I'd read a different novel about--one with the exact same plot. even, including the blood van plot, the basset hound sex plot, the baby dismemberment plot, etc.--yet one that seems to care about these people, rather than viewing them either as subjects for pity/damaged motes in God's Eyes, or as disgusting slime who Ought To Be Wiped Out (and who Get What's Coming To Them in the end.)
There are moments that really, really work--"One day a story will come to your town," the scene where a page of the Almanac is cooked into a stew to appease a cannibal, Alegria's walk after the promised "motor homes" don't arrive for her, Sterling's Dillinger tour of Tuscon, etc. The overall structure is really exciting and the premise is one I wanted to see happen on the page. I do not get to see it. Instead I see a lot of Reservoir Dogs-ish Drug Dealing Drama, sadism and torture, flat prose, homophobia.
(There is a huge section of the book that states pretty baldly that AIDS was developed by homosexual Nazi scientists in a secret bunker to erase lower classes of people from the world. There is a part where it talks about how crooked cops are trading tapes of GRS by trans people to collectors, along with tapes of interrogations and murder of desaparecidos and infants. If these things do not bother you, if they don't seem to you to be worth docking a few stars, why not?)
I honestly think this is a mess, but there aren't other books like it that I know of, and there ought to be.
When writing about revolution, about the moral obligation to revolt ("One day a story will arrive in your town," one of the best passages), I feel really, really troubled when an author isn't willing to describe the consequences of such revolt in immediate and human terms. I mean it is easy to think about deaths on a monumental scale, but the death counts in this book feel like they're more about numeric effect, terms in a rhetorical argument for dehumanization of an adversary. The whole book feels like it's engaging with horror in passing, in summary. Trigg has a habit of fellating homeless men while draining their blood to sell on the biomaterials exchange, but do we actually care about any of these homeless men specifically, or are they just horrors, notes in an overall motif of horror and blood and ruin?
About dehumanization: the people who deserve murder are sorcerers, destroyers, not humans. Likely, but? I want to sign on for a book about the end of 500 years of European dominion over native lands, as prophesied by a gigantic stone snake; I want to see the total reclamation of native lands here promised. The analysis in this book, the historical connections between uprisings and movements across pretty much the entire hemisphere: all of that is tops, and the book comes alive when it gets didactic about this stuff (one of the reasons I really like the parts with Clinton and his radio addresses.) But I also want that reclamation to hurt more than it seems to hurt in this book. If it's necessary, as the book argues, for a blood sacrifice on a massive scale to appease the spirits who've been dishonored by colonialism, then I want that blood sacrifice to seem like a sacrifice, rather than a fantasy predicated on the idea that It's Okay If Everyone Dies Because They Weren't Human Anyway. I want it not to be a fantasy: I want to be able to believe in the total return of native lands, and I can't here because I can't recognize most of the people in this book who implement the systems that prevent that return as humans, as banal. These feel like cruel caricatures of humans.
For a book about the total collapse of all European colonial legacies in the Western Hemisphere and elsewhere, very little actually seems to be at stake from page to page. So much of this book's narration involves wandering around settings, hearing characters obsess and make plots among themselves while they go about their business--dealing drugs, buying guns, having joyless sex, doing cocaine, taking part in golf dates where they laugh evilly about their sadistic sex practices, torturing people for sport, watching snuff films--little of which adds up to forward plot momentum. These drifting scenes start to alternate, toward the end, with news flashes about how BY THE WAY the Mexican government has toppled / all Europeans have been driven out of Africa by heroic revolutions there / everyone is dying of starvation in Mexico City DF / etc. There are a few plots that feel engaging--Menardo's in particular--but even there, we hear Menardo talk about how he's in love with his bulletproof vest for so many dozens of repetitive pages that What's Going To Happen is obvious and anticlimactic when it comes. I feel like I have no psychological access to any of the characters besides Sterling, sometimes Seese and Lecha, sometimes Root, sometimes Clinton. I feel like imagining other lives is what I come to fiction for. Is this wrong?
Any of the individual vignettes and plots in this book I'd read a different novel about--one with the exact same plot. even, including the blood van plot, the basset hound sex plot, the baby dismemberment plot, etc.--yet one that seems to care about these people, rather than viewing them either as subjects for pity/damaged motes in God's Eyes, or as disgusting slime who Ought To Be Wiped Out (and who Get What's Coming To Them in the end.)
There are moments that really, really work--"One day a story will come to your town," the scene where a page of the Almanac is cooked into a stew to appease a cannibal, Alegria's walk after the promised "motor homes" don't arrive for her, Sterling's Dillinger tour of Tuscon, etc. The overall structure is really exciting and the premise is one I wanted to see happen on the page. I do not get to see it. Instead I see a lot of Reservoir Dogs-ish Drug Dealing Drama, sadism and torture, flat prose, homophobia.
(There is a huge section of the book that states pretty baldly that AIDS was developed by homosexual Nazi scientists in a secret bunker to erase lower classes of people from the world. There is a part where it talks about how crooked cops are trading tapes of GRS by trans people to collectors, along with tapes of interrogations and murder of desaparecidos and infants. If these things do not bother you, if they don't seem to you to be worth docking a few stars, why not?)
I honestly think this is a mess, but there aren't other books like it that I know of, and there ought to be.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 346 reviews