Reading Laguna Literature in Palestine: Ceremony by Silko

• In Event: Learning Otherwise: Indigenous Resistance, Critical Methods, and the Power of Counterstory

Abstract

Blending poetry, narrative, memory, and scholarly insights, threaded with the thick uncertainty of the global landscape, a Palestinian Bedouin graduate student, a US collaborator, and a fictional character explore what it means to create new truths in a devastatingly complex context. Through reading the 1977 Laguna novel Ceremony by Silko, the authors trace the connections between the main character, Tayo, a member of the Laguna tribe in New Mexico, to the lived experiences of Author 1, a Bedouin (a member of the Tammari tribe in Palestine). Drawing from critical theory and feminist epistemologies, the authors engage autoethnography in highlighting parallels between the lived experiences of Palestinians and members of Native American communities in the US.

Author

• Saeid Alhajahjeh, Al-Quds Bard College, Abu Dis