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New West Book Review

Rattlesnake Whisperer: Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Turquoise Ledge”

By Jenny Shank, 12-13-10

The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir
by Leslie Marmon Silko
319 pages, Viking, $25.95

Leslie Marmon Silko has a thing for rattlesnakes, and I’m a little worried for her.  I don’t want her to end up like the subject of Werner Herzog’s documentary “Grizzly Man,” who loved grizzly bears too much for his own good.  But I don’t think the rattlesnakes will turn on Silko; as she details in her new memoir, The Turquoise Ledge, she respects them so much that she understands their habits and knows how to keep out of their way even as she allows them to remain living inside her house (she has one rattlesnake house pet), under it, and around it.  Silko is perhaps the ideal human inhabitant of the desert where she lives outside of Tucson.  She treads lightly there, looks out for the flora and fauna, gingerly rescues trapped snakes, and draws her inspiration for writing and painting from the land around her, as well as from the traditions of her Pueblo ancestors.

The Turquoise Ledge encompasses many different narratives, including a loosely-structured account of a few years in Silko’s life spent walking in the desert, observing nature, and fuming over a neighbor she calls “machine man,” who uses heavy equipment to remove boulders from public land for use on his property.  Silko also weaves in an account of her family heritage and early years in New Mexico, discussing her Laguna Pueblo, Cherokee, Mexican, and European relatives.  The book is also a naturalist’s diary, as Silko describes and explains the many natural phenomena she witnesses, especially cataloging the turquoise rocks she finds that originate from a “turquoise ledge” in the ground on which her house stands.

The Turquoise Ledge is also the testament of a woman who believes in stories.  Silko includes many traditional Laguna tales that occur to her when she’s out on her walks.  Because these stories are passed down from people who inhabited the same land for thousands of years, they fit right in with the environment and make sense of what Silko sees.  Silko writes, “What I love about stories is they can survive and continue in some form or other resembling themselves regardless of how good or how bad the storyteller is, no matter what language they are told or written in.  This is because the human brain favors stories or the narrative form as a primary means of organizing and relating human experience.”

Silko also frequently writes about the menagerie that lives with her, including birds, snakes and dogs.  She spends most of her time taking care of these animals when she’s not writing, walking, or working on an art project that she set for herself during a yearlong “illicit holiday from writing,” of completing a series of portraits of the “Star Beings.” She explains, “Many indigenous tribes in the Americas and Australia have ancestral stories about the stars that came to Earth.  The Star Beings came to contact human beings; or perhaps we are their descendants.” She is compelled to paint portraits of these Star Beings, and feels them internally ordering her around, letting her know whether or not they like the way they’re depicted, and telling her to get back on the job when she’s stopped for too long.

Silko comes across as a gentle, thoughtful, and considerate person through The Turquoise Ledge, so it is a welcome jolt near the end of the book when she decides to enact a curse on her neighbor.  The authorities didn’t heed her complaints about her neighbor’s destructiveness, so she feels that’s her only recourse.  She paints white crosses, a symbol of the Star Beings, in washable tempura paint on all the boulders it appears her neighbor intends to dislodge. 

Comically, a new-to-Tucson neighbor who doesn’t know Silko did the cross painting tells her she thinks they are “gang graffiti.” The “machine man” moves some of the boulders to block the path to the arroyo.  Silko writes, “Apparently the machine man had a similar response to the appearance of the white crosses of the Star Beings and thought an urban gang had driven miles out of town to the big arroyo to paint ‘gang graffiti’ on the rocks he was excavating.  The boulders he pushed over with the machine were intended to block the arroyo from further visits by gang members.”

The meandering The Turquoise Ledge is full of intriguing episodes like this one, lessons in Nahuatl linguistics, and moments in which Silko displays winning joy, such as on a walk, when she exclaims to a cloud she particularly admires, “Ah what a beauty you are.  Just look at you!” It’s not always clear where The Turquoise Ledge is heading, but it reads like a desert nature walk with a fascinating companion.

More New West Books & Writers Articles about Leslie Marmon Silko:

• Letters to a Young Poet: “The Delicacy and Strength of Lace”

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