Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

The Unseen Book Club

Leslie Marmon Silko, Laguna Pueblo author and prominent figure in the first of wave of the Native American Renaissance, spent ten year crafting Almanac of the Dead, published in 1991. Almanac is a sprawling, prophetic, epic novel populated by coke smugglers, arms dealers, sex workers, homeless veterans, scheming businessmen, corrupt politicians, and the people worldwide whose dreams are troubled by the fallout of the spiritual death of European descendants, or touched by the hope, however violent and tenuous, of the re-ascent of indigenous and African gods in the Americas. Much of Almanac takes place in Chiapas, Mexico, the plains of Colombia, or Los Angeles, but the story centers around Tuscon, Arizona and Lecha, a TV psychic who has given up her career and returned to the ranch of her smuggler sister Zeta, to transcribe the Almamanc of the Dead, a centuries old palimpsest of stories, memories and observations given to her by her Yaqui grandmother. Meanwhile, the colonial border societies of Arizona and Chiapas careen towards their reckoning with the disaffected and the dispossessed.

We are joined by friend and scholar E Ornelas to talk about non-linear time and ‘Native Slipstream,' the solidarity through the rejection or refusal of the racial order of colonial white supremacy, prophecy and political conjunctures, indigeneity and revolutionary politics, and are continuously astounded by Leslie Marmon Silko’s mastery of narrative craft.

Check out E’s band, E.T.
https://e-t-music.bandcamp.com/music
Music of Crepusculo Negro can be heard here:
https://crepusculonegro.bandcamp.com/
The lyrics accompanying the Vohlan/Blue Hummingbird on the Left split release are available on the Metal Archives
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Volahn/Debajo_del_s%C3%ADmbolo_del_Sol

Unseen Book Club
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Art by Eli Liebman: https://elimack.weebly.com/