Gregory McNamee
The best parts of [Silko's] memoir recount moments that many desert dwellers will instantly recognize: the near-ecstasy that comes when a cloud decides to open up and spatter a little rain on the ground, the feel of shuddering summer heat on the skin, "how luxurious it feels to move through this yellow dawn light." … Silko writes of many things, with affectionate portraits of friends and family and sharply observed notes on history, personal and universal.
… But apart from dropping a tantalizing hint or two … she avoids the one subject that students of her work have been wanting her to address: her development as a writer, one who is now considered among the best Native American novelists.
—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Novelist, essayist, and poet Silko (Gardens in the Dunes) find in her deeply meditative memoir-cum-journal an exquisite harmony between the native ways of her ancestors and the cycle of nature that unfolds in the high desert of Arizona where she has lived for 30 years. Practicing speed walking over the steep trails of the Tucson Mountains, Silko gained an un-self-conscious state in which she observed the changes in nature and spied turquoise, an important signifier of water and rain for the indigenous peoples of the area. Stories of her growing up in the pueblo of the Laguna tribe in southeast New Mexico alternate with her daily reflections living among the companionable rattlers, macaws, pack rats, and grasshoppers: born in 1948 of mixed parents, Silko was early on made aware of the rich heritage of the elders such as in the grinding songs of the old women, yet she also felt the shame of the pueblo people in the loss of their land to the American government and the Indian slave trade. The bulk of her beautifully composed memoir takes place at her Tucson ranch, where she records the rhythms of drought and rain, and recognizes in the visitations of animals and spirits she calls "Star Beings" a fluid and delicate life's balance between human and nature. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
Praise for The Turquoise Ledge:
“Engaging . . . Silko writes of many things, with affectionate portraits of friends and family and sharply observed notes on history, personal and universal . . . At dazzling moments, she pulls seemingly disconnected themes together: turquoise, rain, Aztec mythology and language, the otherworld and other worlds and, yes, snakes . . . The best parts recount moments that many desert dwellers will instantly recognize: the near-ecstasy that comes when a cloud decides to open up and spatter a little rain on the ground, the feel of shuddering summer heat on the skin.” —The Washington Post
“Evocative . . . Less an autobiography than an exploration of [Silko’s] relationship with the natural and spiritual worlds—and it’s a very close relationship . . . there’s nothing soft about her spiritualism or her environmentalism. She knows better than most that the strong kill the weak, and sometimes devour them.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Leslie Marmon Silko writes in the language of the spirit—reading her words as she constructs a portrait of herself for this memoir is not only like being inside her head, it is like eavesdropping on her silent conversations with her gods…she thinks about things she has lost and about people in her past. She thinks about the ghosts she has seen and what is left after the people one loves pass on . . . she thinks about the importance of animals in her life . . . sentence by sentence, the reader is given an enormous amount of useful information about how to get the most out of life, beginning in the present moment.” —The Los Angeles Times
“Leslie Marmon Silko has painted a map out of words, allowing us to not only see the world, but walk within it with the grace of one who bows toward all living things. Encompassing both Earth and Sky, The Turquoise Ledge is more than a memoir. It is a personal mythology born out of the genealogy of her ancestors. Silko listens and locates her own story in place, through memory, language, and gesture. Portraits of grasshoppers as Star Beings; a quartz crystal found in the shape of an owl; a piece of turquoise that pierces the heart; this book is a stone in hand, a talisman brought home, that both heals and inspires. Gravity is the word that comes to mind.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“Wildly informative, joyously unselfconscious, this sinuous sharing of observation, obsession, and taking care is a treasure—a classic of desert writing. In these end times when humankind’s disrespect for the earth has reached the murderous depths of true mental illness, Silko’s fresh, vivid, and slantywise correspondence with beings so refreshingly not-us is as restorative as desert rain. She blesses us with her ghost dogs, her snakes and birds and star beings. This is just a marvelous book.” —Joy Williams
