986 silko, Leslie Marmon
through a dark, satiric lens. The novel is told from
the point of view of at least 33 main characters,
none of whom is without major flaws. In order to
create a just postcolonialist society, Silko asserts,
the oppressed must work together to overthrow an
unjust social order that has caused great environ-
mental damage, decimated indigenous populations
and marginalized their ways of being, embraced a
nauseatingly full range of sexual perversions, and
generally subjected everything and everyone to a
pervasive Western colonial immorality. In order
to achieve justice, this apocalyptic work suggests,
a new, equitable social order must be achieved—
restored, actually, since the indigenous peoples are,
by the novel’s end, taking back the Americas to
redirect the use of the land to support everyone
(indigenous and otherwise) who is committed to
this healthy collective vision.
Almanac’s darkly comic retributive justice is
apparent in scenes that highlight the perversities
that have made the colonized and technologized
Western hemisphere—and greater world—unten-
able for everyone (the exploited and the exploiters).
These include Silko’s indictment of the criminal
justice system via many conflicts and scenarios,
including the scene on which literary critics often
comment, in which a Tucson judge glories in hav-
ing sex with the basset hounds he raises for this
purpose. Judge Arne finds sex with human beings
too repulsive—and the text indicates that he was
probably molested by his own grandfather. Silko
is pointing out that judicial power in the hands of
traumatized, perverse misanthropes cannot possibly
enact true justice.
Ironic, economically based justice occurs in many
scenes in the novel. One example is the artist who
has profited from an exhibition of suicide photo-
graphs of his ex-lover. The artist is later presented
with photographs that are supposedly of his own
infant son, eviscerated for his organs. He reacts by
jumping on a horse, which he rides to his and its
death. When the man who showed the artist the
baby pictures catches up with his corpse, he begins
clicking photographs, noting to himself that the
prints, coming on the heels of the original suicide
photos, will find a receptive market. Art and other
commercial ventures that glorify mutilation and
death for profit (such as the films of abortions and
female circumcisions mentioned in the novel) can
never produce a just humanity. Silko is indicting
present-day society’s penchant for perverse, exploi-
tive entertainment that is disrespectful of human
life, to say the least.
Historical justice is enacted throughout the
novel as well. For example, when the philander-
ing Cuban pseudo-Marxist, Bartolomeo, commits
crimes against history, he is executed. The charac-
ter’s name suggests a lingering historical connection
to Bartolomé de Las Casas, the infamous priest
who was Columbus’s chronicler and a New World
slavemaster. The Spanish attempted to dismiss and
eradicate the people’s culture, such as in the case
of the Catholic priests’ destruction of the Mayan
codices (books of hieroglyphics, only four of which
survived). The story of the people’s enslavement and
slaughter at the hands of the Europeans has likewise
been buried under the amnesia of European global
“progress.” When Bartolomeo extends this historical
disrespect through his actions in the novel’s present,
he is executed by those who demand the simple
justice of appreciation, rather than denial, of the
people’s experience.
In her almanac of the millions of indigenous
dead, Silko argues that cultural memory must be
rescued, protected, appreciated, and vindicated. Her
darkly humorous construction of those reminders
and retributive actions enacts a literary justice. In
addition, the Yaqui people’s almanac in the novel is
a real collection of scraps and fragments—memo-
ries and events—that one of the main characters
is transcribing, to preserve. Silko’s novel serves as a
reminder of history on these two levels. History is
the sacred story of the people. Retrieving and telling
that history, and preserving it for future generations,
keeps the people alive. Silko’s most emphatic mes-
sage with this confrontative text is that justice is
being enacted, simply, in the continuance of indig-
enous life and values, and in the continuing memory
of the dead (the ancestors) that the living carry.
Almanac concludes with indigenous activists on the
move to take back the land, so that everyone willing
to build a just society can work to live in equitable,
sustainable health and peace.
Elizabeth McNeil