Locating gender in a native american community: the places occupied by women in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony

Abstract

This article's aim is to analyze the space, place and gender relations in Native American culture in the novel Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko, and the concepts discussed by Doreen Massey, Jody Berland, Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose. The novel, whose focus is on the healing process of a Native American young man, a World War II veteran, shows how the space, place and gender relations in the Native American culture differ from the ones we see in the patriarchal family structure common to the western culture. In this way, I intend to discuss this difference between the spaces and places occupied by women and man in both cultures.