This was my third blog post for english class.
Yes, I also turned this in. Just as it is.

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Ceremony.

Where do I even begin? From the insane hallucinations to the dusty world of Tayo’s dreams, there is so much to write about. The first ten pages of the reading really stuck to my memory. Why? Because it is impossible for any breathing person to not feel compassion for the children who must scrounge for food from their own “mother”. It was impossible for me not to feel depressed and angry for the children who had to fend for themselves and learn all the evils of the world before they could stand on their own two feet.

When I read the excerpts of the lives of those starving children, I can’t help but be enraged. When we think “mother” in our society, she is a woman who nurtures, cares, and cherishes. Our mother is one that gave birth to us and does everything in her power to ensure our happiness. She feeds, she teaches, she loves. So what right does this prostitute have in bearing children? Mothers should be responsible for their young, because they brought them into the world. This dark, dreary, corrupted world. Sex, prostitution, starvation, degradation. Honestly, that child would have been better off dead than to endure all this bullshit. Although it is still unclear who the desperate, crying child is, I myself think that it is Tayo. Tayo, the half-breed with the shameful, whore of a mother who left her accident on her caustic sister’s doorstep.

Tayo’s mother has given Tayo nothing but grief. Can you imagine going through life always searching for approval of existence? For the recognition and pride you will never truly achieve. All because your mother decided she was gonna be a bitch and have a child that would never find peace with himself. His half-breed blood ostracized him from all corners of humanity - he wasn’t white and he betrayed the Indian. Tayo was not only left without a world to fit into, he had to always yearn and wait for his mother, his god damn poor excuse for a mother. Always waiting and waiting for food, whether it be for the “belly” or the soul.

I have to say, I am surprised Silko has such negative connotations of women in her writing. Although female writers aren’t required to write about women in a better light, in our readings so far, that has been the case. In Ceremony, however, we are introduced to some of the worst characterizations of women in all of Indian autobiography.

It makes you wonder, why?

Should mothers be allowed to have a child, if they know it will live miserable lives?
Would killing a child leave it happier than if it were to be alive in this situation?
Why does Silko have such negative female figures as opposed to Zitkala-Sa and Winnemuca?