In a contest of witchery among an assembly of Native American witches, one tells the group about white-skinned people who will come across the ocean. The storyteller explains how the newcomers will "grow away from the earth," pollute the land and water, bring diseases, and kill the native people out of fear. When the witch reveals that the events of the story will begin to happen as he tells it, the other witches ask him to take back the tale and its destructive spell. "But the witch just shook his head.... It's already turned loose./It's already coming./It can't be called back." This story, published in both the books Ceremony and Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko, illustrates one of Silko's main themes as a writer: the direct impact that storytelling has on life and history. "It's a whole way of being," Silko told Kim Barnes in an...