I will tell you something about stories, [he said]. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.
— Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
New horrors require new medicine. Published in 1977, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko is not exactly a new book, but within its pages is the most potent and necessary medicine for this moment. In an introduction to a new edition published last year, Tommy Orange (author of There There) says it is “close to what I would call sacred in fiction.”
The novel follows Tayo as he returns to the Laguna Pueblo reservation carrying the deep trauma of being a prisoner of Japan during World War II. Far from being welcomed as a hero, he comes home to alienation from his community and the country he fought for. From Tayo’s story of spins a larger story of land and nature, the profound losses of modernity, and, ultimately, healing.
There’s a lot to grapple with in this nonlinear, near-sacred book. We will engage in a guided conversation of the book and what it can mean as we face a world of hurt–and the potential to heal.