Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Ceremony

Ceremony
Ceremony
Author: Leslie Marmon Silko
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Paperback
reviewed on + 34 more book reviews


From back cover:
Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soliders find easy refuge in alchohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution.

Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, to the ancient stories of his people. The search itselft becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defates the most virulent of afflications, despair.