Silko’s Fluid Self within Native American Oral Tradition

미국 원주민 구전 전통을 통한 실코의 유동적 자아쓰기

This article examines how Leslie Marmon Silko draws upon Native Americannarrative techniques to resist conventional Euro-American models ofautobiography. Silko denies a single and static identity and gleans from NativeAmerican tradition a more fluid understanding of personal identity. InStoryteller, characters metamorphose themselves into other characters. In theprocess, consciousness is shared with not only other human beings, but alsowith all of the nature. In addition, Silko effaces her own authorship and placesherself in a part of storytelling. Taking such a stance, she allows thecommunity to recall and retell a story and engage in a communal process ofbuilding a meaning. She requires others to participate in constructing storiesand interact each other. Her ways of writing accompanies a disregard ofconventional notions of chronological order. The layout of the book and therepetition of time and events possess orality by using cyclic rather thanchronological structure. In Storyteller, Silko denies a commanding narrativevoice, in effect sublimanating an Anglo notion of self identity and inscribes afluid self who speaks for and within the Native American community.