Almanac of the Dead 987Sex and SexuaLIty in Almanac of the Dead
Excessive or aberrant sexuality is a hallmark of
cautionary trickster tales common to tribal oral sto-
rytelling traditions throughout Central and North
America. In Almanac of the Dead, Leslie Marmon
Silko uses this narrative strategy to shock readers
into gaining greater awareness of the indigenous
history of the colonized Americas and to show read-
ers how antisocial abuses are bound only to escalate.
A major character in the novel, Yoeme, is a trick-
ster-like “she-coyote” revolutionary who uses her sexu-
ality as a political tool. She marries a Spaniard and has
children by him in order to watch him to make sure
he and other colonizers keep their word to the indig-
enous people. The sexuality of Yoeme’s twin grand-
daughters (who become, after Yoeme, the next keepers
of the sacred almanac) is also conniving. Having been
abused by their uncle in childhood, Zeta enters into
a sexual relationship with the owner of a smuggling
operation as an adult, solely to gain business power
for herself. After gaining that power, she gives up sex
altogether. Zeta’s experience shows that even celibacy
can be another form of excessive sexuality. Zeta’s sister
Lecha, a psychic who locates only the dead, has many
lovers. She plays a trickster-like ploy by arriving at
Zeta’s to give birth and then leaving several days later,
claiming she will be back on Tuesday, but not stating
which Tuesday. Thus, Zeta ends up raising the boy.
Critics who have commented on the depictions
of homosexual men in Almanac have wildly diver-
gent views on what Silko is asserting through these
characterizations. Virtually all of the homosexual
men are white and sociopathic. While one critic
argues that Silko is homophobic in this novel, and
that her homophobia is part of an indictment of
whiteness in which white sexuality is always per-
verse, another believes that Silko’s socially destruc-
tive homosexual characters successfully represent a
pattern of brutal European male selfishness.
A minor figure in the novel who interests critics
is Tucson’s federal judge, Arne, a grotesquely comic
character whose sexual preference for dogs consti-
tutes another way that Silko shows people avoid-
ing positive commitment to human society. Arne’s
trickster-like attributes of an overly large penis and
warped sexual compulsions carry him to remark-
able extremes. He thinks that sex with humans is
disgusting, probably having developed his aversion
to human touch from childhood sexual abuse,
including having been taught the art of bestiality
with farm animals by his grandfather. In adult-
hood, after tiring of prostitutes of both sexes, the
judge’s erotic tastes refine to what he is convinced
is a civilized passion for the “pure and noble” bas-
set hounds he breeds. Underlying this grotesquely
comic sexual transgression is the greater social irony
that, as a judge, Arne is one of the individuals who,
of all citizens, should know right from wrong—in
a legal sense that is based on a presumably acute
personal integrity, a moral consciousness that would,
also presumably, be closely monitored by the greater
integrity of the society. But Judge Arne is as indif-
ferently corrupt in his civic duties as in his personal
life. In Arne’s various sex scenes, Silko criticizes the
very basis of European American justice.
To push completely beyond the limits of readers’
numbed or callous acceptance of the perverse, Silko
references a number of even more unimaginable sex
crimes. Most readers probably have not yet imagined
that there are those so negating of life that they
want to see films of abortions, autopsies, organ har-
vests of children, or what one character claims are
the increasingly popular videos of infibulation (the
cultural practice of genital mutilation) performed
on little girls.
Not all of the sexual references in the novel are
perverse, but even lighter comedic moments still
speak to the power dynamics of sex. Silko tells the
hilarious story of a widow’s failed seduction of Ster-
ling, a character who is banished by his tribe after
allowing white filmmakers access to a sacred site.
Edith, the widow, hates Sterling, not because he had
unintentionally allowed the site to be defiled but
because he had refused to have sex with her—which
may have been a life-preserving move on Sterling’s
part. A joke is told in every Laguna village about
how Edith killed off several former husbands as they
tried valiantly to satisfy her sexual appetite.
In Almanac of the Dead, sex is power. The trick-
ster-like characters use sex for political gain, engage
in aberrant or excessive sex for profit or pleasure, or
are otherwise definitely not attuned to sexual inter-
course as sacred human interaction.
Elizabeth McNeil