In the following excerpt, Hirsch focuses on "Yellow Woman" and other pieces in Storyteller as he examines how Native American oral traditions shape the structure and themes of her collection.

Comprised of personal reminiscences and narratives, retellings of traditional Laguna stories, photographs, and a generous portion of her previously published short fiction and poetry, this multigeneric work [entitled Storyteller] lovingly maps the fertile storytelling ground from which her art evolves and to which it is here returned— an offering to the oral tradition which nurtured it.

Silko has acknowledged often and eloquently the importance of the oral tradition to her work and tries to embody its characteristics in her writing. This effort, as she well knows, is immensely difficult and potentially dangerous, and this awareness surfaces at several points in Storyteller. She recalls, for instance, talking with Nora, whose "grandchildren had brought home / a . . . book that...