MULTIVOCALITY, STORYTELLING AND THE DISRUPTIVE VOICE OF FEMININITY IN LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S CEREMONY

Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony is a Native American novel about the post-traumatic stress disorder of Tayo and his ceremony for recovery through living native stories and tribal ways. In the novel, Silko incorporates native stories and presents Native American culture and stories as subverting the ruling white culture. Though the main character of the novel is male, female figures, both human and mythical, play a crucial role in this subversion because they lie at the heart of the Native American culture and stories. In Ceremony, Silko identifies spinning and storytelling, as in Western culture, with femininity and highlights the role the voice of femininity plays in the stories of Tayo's healing ceremony. Relying on Bakhtin's idea of dialogism and the undermining role of another's word in authoritative discourses, this article aims to study how the Indian American Laguna culture subverts and decentralizes the white authoritative discourse with its stories and how the word of the other emerges as feminine voice in the novel.