Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit

Silko reflects on the beginnings of this collection of essays, which started at the same time she wrote her widely-known novel, Almanac of the Dead. Silko was writing small prose pieces about the desert, rocks, and rain as well as taking pictures of the landscape. She also collected articles concerning these topics and was contracted to write other nonfiction pieces, though she struggled with them.

Silko speaks to the inseparability of the Pueblo people from the land and their stories, which she tried to mimic in her essays and photographs. She remembers her grandparents kept old family photographs and that she was excited to see that even as the people and dress changed, the place “remained the same” (15). She also remembers leaving her yard as a child to go see dancers at the plaza, which she was not supposed to do. A group of older kids told her that some dancers ate wood, and she went to see them, but an adult stopped her and took her back home. The narrator remembers only being afraid of white outsiders and never being afraid to go off exploring Laguna on the back of her horse, Joey, preferring to be alone with her imagination.