Kelsey Jacobsen, Spring 2008
When analyzing Leslie M. Silko’s “Yellow Woman” through a Post Colonial lens, one must acknowledge that there is much controversy over whether or not the Native Americans were officially colonized. In this case, I have used Tyson’s definition of colonization, which says “any population that has been subjected to political domination of another population” (Tyson 417) is to be considered a colonized people. In this way we can approach Silko’s tale about a modern day pueblo woman engaged in Native American folklore from this post colonial angle. Further, we can examine the cultural colonization of Native Americans and how othering, or dehumanizing, affects the individual’s idea of self in Silko’s story.
Mainly, othering is a way for the colonizer to take control away from the ‘other’ people, or the ‘savages’. The colonizers, in this case the Americans, create a false stereotype of the Native American Indians which strips them of their individuality and forces them to lose understanding of who they are and where they came from. By thinking of the colonized peoples as less than human and encouraging them to think of themselves as inferior, the dominant population maintains control and power. Silko draws attention to what this attitude of supposed “inherent difference and inferiority” (Konkle 463) of Native Americans does to shape their concept of themselves. The narrator of this story will not accept the idea that this man who she spent the night with is a ka’tsina, or sun spirit. She also will not accept that she is playing the role of Yellow Woman: “I’m not really her- I have my own name” (Kelly 429). However, her name, beyond Yellow Woman, is never revealed. This lack of identification shows us that she is unclear about her identity outside of her Native American heritage. She identifies herself by her pre-colonial culture and yet she will not accept that culture.
We also see the narrator’s inner struggle when the man known as Silva explains to her, “what happened yesterday has nothing to do with what you will do today” (Kelly 429). Yesterday, the narrator was a woman who knew the stories and folklore of her heritage but did not understand that their value crossed into her life. To her, they were simply a thing of the past. In fact, the narrator makes one or two feeble attempts to connect herself to the ‘real’ world where she has “been to school and there are highways and pick up trucks that Yellow Woman never saw” (Kelly 430). Silko’s largely natural settings, however, overshadow the narrator’s attempts to shove away the past and show the reader that the narrator is beginning to reconnect with her own cultural identity. Any value she places in seeing things like pickup trucks and highways can be seen as a residual effect of cultural colonization, for she belittles the value and truth of pre-colonial folklore for something more material and tangible.
Beyond the effects of othering, we also see her dealing with double consciousness, a “way of perceiving the world that is divided between two antagonistic cultures” (Tyson 421). She is seeing and understanding the world in two different ways, which at the beginning of the story appeared to her to be completely irreconcilable. Julie Abner, in The Fusion of Identity, Literatures, and Pedagogy: Teaching American Indian Literatures, writes that “identity for Native Americans is a complex and highly controversial issue… [They] are the only group of people who must prove their heritage and cultural identity by carrying a tribal ID or Bureau of Indian Affairs blood quantum card” (Abner 2). Silko captures this identity confusion within the narrator’s checked yearning to become Yellow Woman, a folkloric figure who is stolen away by gods and spirits for years at a time. The best example appears through the use of symbolism when the narrator, who is only playing at being Yellow Woman, has decided to go riding along a ridge with the ka’tsina. On one side of the ridge is her pueblo and on the other side is the place she is going to. Her riding in the middle, balanced between both places can be symbolic of her struggle with balancing two ideas of herself. Earlier, she even says, “I had meant to go home. But that didn’t seem important anymore,” (Kelly 434), showing that her sense of home and belonging has now shifted; she is beginning to understand that the feeling of belonging she desires must begin within herself and her own cultural identity.
This symbolic point of balance between inner belonging and external belonging is the first time we encounter someone else in the story, and he is the white man representing the colonizers. He appears in uniform to represent his authority. After approaching Silva and Yellow Woman suspiciously he dismisses Silva’s story that the two had hunted the meat they were carrying, saying “The hell you have, Indian” (Kelly 435) and attempts to dehumanize Silva and, indirectly, Yellow Woman. He refers to them based on a stereotype rather than by name. By calling him “Indian” the officer strips away the unique and varied culture between tribes, for he does not understand or care about the sometimes extreme differences between Pueblo, Navajo and many other tribes. For example, our narrator and Silva are not from the same tribe, yet he groups them together based on the stereotype he believes. He emphasizes this when he later says to Silva, “Don’t try anything, Indian” (Kelly 436). What we have are “Native tribes [that] are simultaneously politically autonomous… and in the familiar colonial position of inferiority” (Konkle 463). For example, in the text the narrator refers to the “tribal police” (Kelly 433), which shows the tribes have their own rules and regulations. Yet once the narrator and Silva leave their designated area of political freedom, they are subjected to othering and domination by their white colonizer.
The officer’s role leads the narrator, who has made a full transformation into Yellow Woman, back to her family. Now that she has accepted herself as a part of her pre-colonized culture, she brings it back to her ‘real’ or present day world: “I was sorry that Old Grandpa wasn’t alive to hear my story because it was the Yellow Woman stories he liked to tell best” (Kelly 437). The narrator is clear about who she is within herself, despite outside attempts to stereotype her as an ‘Indian’. She knows herself to be Yellow Woman, and accepts her own connection to her cultural identity and her part in continuing it. She incorporates two cultures and ideas together to become a hybrid culture. .
In this story, Silko reconnects to the Native American oral tradition. Jami Hacker in Traditional Voices Speak: Storytellers in Contemporary Native American Texts describes that to be a Native American storyteller one is “responsible for passing the culture from generation to generation” (Hacker 1). The magic that passes between the storyteller and the listeners is very unique to the Native American culture. Storytellers rely on “spoken word to record religious beliefs and historical events” (Hacker 1). Looking at this story as a postcolonial critic, it’s immediately evident how the circular narration reflects the style of oral tradition. Unlike most canonized works, Yellow Woman does not build to a climax and then finish by tying everything up neatly. Actually, there is no real end to this story, nor is there a real climax; it simply leaves us waiting for the next tale. This suspenseful feeling is truly reflective of Native American oral tradition.
Another way the text’s style celebrates traditional storytelling is that it models the narrator after traditional storytellers. To quote Paula G. Allen in Traditional Voices Speak, “yellow women stories are always female-centered, always told from Yellow Woman’s point of view” (Hacker 2). As we learn very quickly, the narrator of Silko’s tale is a female who is cast in the role of Yellow Woman. The use of first person draws the reader in in much the same way people would be drawn to someone speaking directly to them. In this way, Silko is remaining true to the old cultural traditions even though by transcribing the tale she reinvents its discourse. This creates a hybrid of two cultural styles of communication.
Leslie Silko’s “Yellow Woman” is a woman’s search for a true connection to her Native American, and Pueblo, culture and heritage. Silko recreates an amazing story by using imagery and symbolism to describe the inner struggle of a Pueblo woman. Also, by structuring it so it feels as though we are listening to someone speak, it’s even more necessary for the narrator to embrace her role as Yellow Woman, for it is the only way she could believably tell the tale.
Works Cited
“Traditional Voices Speak: Storytellers in Contemporary Native American Texts” By: Hacker, Jami Huntsinger; Weber Studies: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal, 1995 Fall; 12(3). (journal article)
“Indian Literacy, U.S. Colonialism, and Literary Criticism” By: Konkle, Maureen; American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, 1997 Sept; 69(3): 457-86 (journal article)
“The Fusion of Identity, Literatures, and Pedagogy: Teaching American Indian Literatures” By: Abner, Julie L.; Studies in American Indian Literatures: The Journal of the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, 1996 summer; 8(2): 1-5 (journal article)
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006. 417-418
Kelly, Joseph, ed. The Seagull Reader: Stories. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Compan, Inc., 2008. 428-437.