Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko
A Pueblo veteran comes home to the land that can heal him.
For you if
you want to understand Indigenous healing traditions as a living practice rather than a historical artifact
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$18 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Tayo is a Laguna Pueblo veteran returning from WWII — the Pacific theater, Japanese faces that kept becoming the faces of his uncles, a war the US government needed him to fight but couldn't integrate him into as a full human being on his return. Silko weaves the novel between Tayo's psychological unraveling and the Laguna ceremonial tradition that slowly heals him. The land is not metaphor. The ceremony is not symbol. Both are literal and necessary. The first novel published by a Native American woman and still the most formally complete.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North America
- Voice
- Written by a North America author
- Topics
- world war ii
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Trauma, time travel, and tinfoil hats.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
War’s dumbest logic, perfectly told.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass
At three, he stops growing and drums at adult lies.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Mother Night
Kurt Vonnegut
Nazi propagandist. American spy. Both true. One man.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut
Trauma, time travel, and tinfoil hats.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun’s Thanksgiving Story
Danielle Greendeer
A truer Thanksgiving, told from the source.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Amuleto
Roberto Bolaño
Locked in a bathroom while history happened.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Season of Anomy
Wole Soyinka
Nigeria's Nobel laureate, writing through a genocide.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
