According to Bird, Indians’ acceptance of the image of themselves as a vanishing and inferior people demonstrates the effects of colonization: they have internalized images and ideas about Indians from mainstream culture. Colonization works by converting the colonized people to the beliefs of the majority, creating self-hatred that leads them to abolish their differences in order to assimilate. An example of this is Bird’s mother refusing to teach her their native language, which left Bird feeling alienated from her history. Bird sees Silko's novel Ceremony as a ”decolonizing text” that exposes internalized oppression. Ceremony challenges these patterns of thought and representation by inviting readers to identify and name them, thus freeing readers, Native and non-native alike, to envision a future where difference from the white mainstream is not stigmatized. Ceremony is therefore a “critical fiction,” defined by bell hooks as works that use language and imagination to challenge readers’ acceptance of oppressive structures. Silko achieves this in Ceremony by employing a number of subversive strategies. Silko makes the reader view the world through native eyes, displacing the usual white narrator. She creates a close relationship between the mythic and realist worlds that Tayo must learn to understand, transcending western notions of linear time. Additionally, her use of fragments underscores the connections between the land, the people, and the stories that are so important to Indian cultures. Language and stories are demonstrated as a powerful means of challenging received ideas. Silko uses Auntie’s Christianity as a way of exploring that religion’s negative, colonizing effects. She employs mixed blood characters to challenge the separation caused by colonizing discourse and makes Tayo’s healing dependant on his understanding and rejection of the colonized version of himself and his culture. Bird teaches Ceremony to attempt to decolonize student’s minds.
My reflection on the above:
Reading this over, I think I expressed her main points and translated her jargon effectively. I did not focus on the autobiographical elements of her article. I chose to focus on her argument points about the novel, but I have to admit that the personal writing in the essay makes it more interesting. It also sets it off from your more standard lit crit essay. She has some absurdly jargoned out moments; I am baffled as to why she felt she had to do that. At other times, her theorizing is useful.
I could not have done a good job with 150 words. Reading my students’ summaries, I see that some are not summaries at all (worrisome), some cover one or two points of the article, some go for a general overall version. Some are really good, but few, if any, cover the main points completely. Many of you struggled with the typical features of a summary.
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