Silko's "Yellow Woman" and the Question of Consent

In my World Lit course, my students recently read "Yellow Woman" by Leslie Marmon Silko. It's a fascinatingly strange and enticing story.

It often leaves students baffled -- and I can't blame them. The story is rotted in the oral traditions of Laguna Pueblo and other Native American tribes. The myths of Native Americans are beautiful, complex, magical and oftentimes (at least by the the standards of modern, Western-civilization), they are vague and even anti-climactic.

Take for example the climax of "Yellow Woman." The Man (who seems to have abducted the female protagonist) is about to draw his gun on a rancher. The protagonist rides away on her horse, and we hear four gunshots -- but we never learn the outcome of that intense situation. Vagueness and the unknown abound within Native American stories -- just as the abound in our modern everyday lives (as much as we may not like it).

This is my third time reading this story, over the course of the last four years. Each time I approach it, I seem to focus on something new. This time I've been troubled over the issue of consent.

Is the protagonist held against her will? Is she a victim? Or has she, in a moment of disassociation, run away willingly with this mysterious stranger? There are times where she prepares to leave, but then continues to stay with him... Yet there are other times in which she is afraid of his ability to hurt her... It's very troublesome to say the least (which might well be the author's intention). It does make me think of various romance genres from the mid 20th century in which women are whisked away by a Barbarian, or Viking, or Scotsman, or some other such Fabio-type Alpha-Male -- and even though the heroine is swept away against her will, those stories are presented with a romantic gloss.

I found a great interview video from the late 1970s on YouTube. If you decide to watch it, you'll notice that Leslie Silko presents a series of narrative fragments, each quite similar to her "Yellow Woman" plot. She also relates a supposedly true story about a woman in her community who was being surrounded by a large number of men. The encounter, at face value, sounds very unnerving to me, and yet Leslie and her friends are quite light-hearted as they talk and listen. She follows up that story with her overall point: By sharing these experiences -- good, bad, and ugly -- you are adding your narrative to the collective, the story of humanity, and thereby others might hear your story some day and know that they are not alone.

Enjoy!