SOURCE: "Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony: Healing Ethnic Hatred by Mixed-Breed Laughter," in MELUS, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring, 1988, pp. 83-94.

In the following essay, Evasdaughter asserts that, "the celestial laughter" Silko evokes in Ceremony "shows that Indian civilization is living and has the potential to transform anglo culture."

In Ceremony, Leslie Silko brilliantly crosses racial styles of humor in order to cure the foolish delusions readers may have, if we think we are superior to Indians or inferior to whites, or perhaps superior to whites or inferior to Indians. Silko plays off affectionate Pueblo humor against the black humor so prominent in 20th-century white culture. This comic strategy has the end-result of opening our eyes to our general foolishness, and also to the possibility of combining the merits of all races. Joseph Campbell wrote in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space of the change in mythologies away from the local...