Leslie Marmon Silko: Beyond borders

Leslie Marmon Silko's works are customarily classified as ethnic (Native American literature) or regional (Southwestern literature). But her later works (Almanac of the Dead, Sacred Water, and Gardens in the Dunes) continue and amplify a motif of border crossings, both literal and figurative, introduced in her earlier works. By transgressing borders in space and in time, she transcends her regional and ethnic categorization while maintaining roots in the traditional Native American culture of the American Southwest. By blurring borders between genres and between literary forms, Silko manages to work within the literary traditions of the dominant culture while testing and expanding them and refusing to be limited by them. By crossing borders between text and image, Silko disproves the myth that Native Americans are a vanishing race of primitives and challenges our preconceived notions of art and literature.; These border crossings allow Silko to resist "minority" stereotypes. Instead of writing works that lend themselves to ghettoization as ethnic, regional, or women's literature, Silko boldly claims a place for her work in the broader category of world literature. As Silko's Native American characters find common cause with other marginalized people of the world, her works move toward a pan-ethnic, international literature grounded in hybridity.