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Leslie Marmon Silko is a fairly rad chick, also quite the accomplished writer to boot--but she likely would not tell you any of that himself. When she released Ceremony in 1977, she was unwilling to accept the name of "first female Native American novelist." As she points out in this interview, a whole lot about Native American history has been lost.

"There could have been a Native American girl long ago that we don't know about," Silko speculates. Sounds like someone's been eating her fair share of humble pie.

Nevertheless, Ceremony earned Silko an area at the history books and caused The New York Times book review to phone her "the most accomplished Native American writer of her generation." Whoa, that is some heavy compliments, particularly when you consider that Silko's generation was responsible for what could come to be known as the "Native American Renaissance." And Leslie Marmon Silko was right in the center of everything.

Back in 1981 Silko became one of the first recipients of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, which afterwards came to be known informally as the "Genius Grant." We are still excited about that prize we have in the conclusion of little league football when we were seven.

However, each one of these accolades aside, what really impresses us about Silko's writing is the way she uses it to handle the prickly theme of race. The author's knack for broadcasting the tumultuous history of relations between Puebloans and white Americans likely has a great deal to do with her own mixed heritage (she is Laguna Pueblo, Mexican, and Anglo American). Throughout her characters, which also embody similar multiethnic identities, and she discusses racial tension and conflict with honesty and sensitivity.

While Ceremony was clearly vital in the 1970s, it is possibly even more applicable today. After all, the USA has its original multi-racial President, also more young Americans are identifying themselves as being of "mixed race" than ever before. We don't think that it's too much of a stretch to call Silko a visionary.

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