Traditional & Contemporary Native American Stories

The Yellow Woman Stories

What do Native American writers have to tell us about our lives today and what do their stories inherit from the more traditional, oral tales, replete with mythological figures and symbols? This week we'll be reading a set of Yellow Woman stories that show how a contemporary writer, Leslie Marmon Silko, uses the familiar imagery to enrich the story of a woman facing choices about family life versus illicit love. It would be easy to read this story as a simple tale of adultery, a woman abandoning her family responsibilities for the sensual pleasures she experiences with the stranger, Silva. Yet Yellow Woman is not a simple character and her story, as I read it, does not lend itself to simple moral pronouncements of right or wrong. Read Paula Gunn Allen's introduction to the Yellow Woman stories (p. 210-211) for an exploration of some of the themes and complexities of these stories. Note especially her discussion of what Yellow Woman represents, "sacred ears of corn that link persons to our Mother, Iyatiku. The loss of [Yellow Woman] portends loss of rain, of livelihood, and of connection between the people and the sacred place where Iyatiku lives, Shipap" (210).

When I read the Yellow Woman stories, I think about what this figure represented to the people of the Cochiti Pueblos, people whose lives were inextricably linked to the land, people whose main sustenance came from the crops of corn they grew. The most precious object given as a sacred talisman to children at birth was a small ear of corn to be worn in a pouch hung around the child's neck. Yellow Woman and Deer Man are the central figures of Pueblo mythology: their connection to the community, their harmonious coupling ensure the continuance of the people. The loss of such a figure-Yellow Woman's disappearance-equals disaster. The traditional stories relate her abduction and eventual return to the tribe; in some of the stories, she returns pregnant with a son or twins who become important figures in the tribe.

What does this old story offer contemporary readers? What are our fears, our temptations? As your read Silko's story, pay attention to her confusion about her identity. Why does she start feeling like Yellow Woman? What is it about Yellow Woman's story that she relates to? What is her struggle? Why does she make the final choices she does?

Some of you will be put off by the repetition and simplistic style of some of the oral Yellow Woman stories. An oral tale, to be remembered and passed on, used repetition as a memory device for listeners. Read the stories with a focus on the themes and different ways each represents the events and central figures.

Note: for more information about this complex figure of Yellow Woman, see Silko's book Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today (Simon & Schuster, 1996) on reserve in the Gavilan library. (If the campus is not accessible and you're interested in the essays, please contact me and I will mail them.)

"An American in New York"

The themes of LeAnne Howe's story "An American in New York" are especially poignant for readers now, after the incidents of September 11. Like many of us in the United States, the narrator is of mixed heritage: in a parenthetical remark she tells us she is "part white" (253). Her story explores the ironies of our national preoccupation with race, identity, and difference. As you read, watch how the narrator tries again and again to "fix" her sense of identity or establish herself as different from others, to set her case apart from, say, the immigrant Irish coachman or Nigerian cab driver. Over and over again those attempts to set herself apart, to set her case above theirs or to justify her anger or bitterness, fail hopelessly. Pay particular attention to the multiple levels of irony the author uses to tell her story.

Return to homepage