Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit

The narrator describes her great-grandmother, Grandma A’mooh, as a dark and handsome person who “is remembered as a stern, formidable woman who ran the show” (104). Despite the narrator being of mixed-race heritage, her grandmother was always very supportive of her and treated her no differently. Silko remembers how her grandmother called her granddaughter (A’mooh), which is where Silko got her grandmother’s nickname from. A’mooh married a white man twenty years older than she was. Although marrying an older man is not strange in Pueblo culture, marrying outside of the community demonstrates A’mooh’s acceptance of others, and was less common.

Similarly, even though Silko struggles with her mixed-race identity, she never felt as though A’mooh noticed. Instead, Silko only felt love and acceptance from her great-grandmother:

Her love and acceptance of me as a small child were so important. I had sensed immediately that something about my appearance was not acceptable to some people, white and Indian. But I did not see any signs of that strain or anxiety in the face of my beloved Grandma A’mooh (61).

Silko’s great-grandmother embodies the acceptance inherent within Pueblo culture. Her great-grandmother shares with her Bible stories and narratives of Apache raiders in the same breath, never differentiating between the importance of information or qualifying which stories belong to whom. In this way, she embodies the positivity of cultural exchange, which helps the narrator find solace in her heritage.

More than anything, the narrator sees A’mooh as a repository of female strength:“When Grandma was eighty-five, she still chopped her own kindling” (62). A’mooh possesses both the emotional and the physical strength necessary to act as a positive role model for Silko. In A’mooh, Silko finds her own strength in identity and self-esteem. 

Like many of the other older female characters within the essays, Aunt Susie is a storyteller. However, Susie is also experimental in her storytelling. Silko states that Susie was “one of the first generation of people at Laguna who began experimenting with English—who began working to make English speak for us, that is, to speak from the heart” (54). She takes the language of the colonizers and appropriates it for Pueblo usage. As Silko is later writing in the English language, it is understandable that Susie serves as a kind of mentor for Silko. Susie demonstrates how the written language can be used to enhance Pueblo understanding of their own culture and stories.

Even though Susie represents the positive aspect of mixing cultures, this understanding of the English language stems from a place of trauma. As a child, Susie was sent to Indian school in Pennsylvania for six years, which the narrator equates with being sent to prison. She understood the power of books via the laws that subjugated Native Americans; however, all this knowledge was at the cost of her own well-being. Therefore, even though she demonstrates the positive aspects that a mixture of cultures can have in understanding one’s own traditions, it is also important to note the cost that she and other Native Americans paid for this knowledge. This knowledge, therefore, is inextricable from the backdrop of US violence perpetuated against Native Americans.

Aunt Susie also informs the narrator’s understanding of death, and, by extension, of life. Susie lived past 100 years old. She believed that death was a journey, or rather a continuation of the journey of life. In this way, the souls of the dead did not cease to exist but rather continued in a place beyond the reach of the living. This characterization of death informs the narrator’s own beliefs on the subject.

Thought Woman is a character who appears throughout many of the essays. She goes by many names, including Mother Creator, as the Pueblo people believe that she is responsible for thinking the universe into existence. Although, in this way, she is a mythological or divine character, the way Silko refers to her is the same way Silko refers to her family members and herself, differentiating the Pueblo concept of divinity from Judeo-Christian notions of divinity. Although the narrator treats Thought Woman with respect, it is the same respect she shows to every being. As such, Thought Woman is just another character within the essays even though she is divine, demonstrating the divinity the Pueblo people believe exists in every living and nonliving thing.

Thought Woman represents the importance of names evidenced within the Pueblo community. In her thinking the universe into being, she “named things and / as she named them / they appeared” (125). Although the Pueblo community believes in the fluidity of identity—and so a name is not necessarily the categorization evident in Anglo traditions—names are nevertheless important as they communicate a measure of respect. Because Thought Woman is able to create things by naming them, it would seem that the name of things themselves are sacred or divine. In this way, Thought Woman also demonstrates the divine aspect of every living and nonliving being. 

Yellow Woman seems to be Silko’s favorite character within the ancient stories. Silko feels a kinship to Yellow Woman, who disregards community traditions in order to save the clan. Further, Yellow Woman is not afraid to use her sexuality in order to ensure the survival of the clan. In one story, she falls in love with a Buffalo Man and bears his children, which allows the Pueblo people to be able to hunt the buffalo because they have that spiritual connection. Silko also views Yellow Woman as representing the beauty of all women: “Kochinninako is beautiful because she has the courage to act in times of great peril, and her triumph is achieved by her sensuality, not through violence and destruction. For these qualities of the spirit, Yellow Woman and all women are beautiful” (72).

Silko views Yellow Woman as representative of the procreative power of all women. Yellow Woman is able to use the power of her sensuality in order to save her people, demonstrating the positive aspects of female sexuality. This character then sharply contrasts with the vast majority of female characters within Anglo-Western literature. In Anglo-Western literature, female procreative abilities are usually divorced from their sexuality, such as via the Madonna-whore dichotomy. However, within Pueblo culture, female sexuality is inextricable from the power of procreation, as evidenced through characters such as Thought Woman.