Yellow Women and Leslie Marmon Silko's Feminism

"Tending to the past"

“…After eloquently outlining the nightmare of heartbreaking loss through the relatives who were given up "to the stars as food for the battle," the poem signifies the possibility of miracles. 60 Harjo writes that "all acts of kindness," large or small, "are lights in the war justice." Harjo presents a remarkable vision, that all acts of compassion, no matter how small, are central to the possibility of justice as well as the possibility of miracles; therefore, there is no such thing as an insignificant act of kindness.…”

“…In keeping with the theme of restoration is the title poem, "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky," a mythic narrative embedded within a contemporary world. The story 60 Ibid., 2. 61 Ibid.…”

“…59 Levinasian scholar Adriaan Peperzak argues that the danger in seeking to systematically generate definitions of otherness is that the "foreign being, instead of maintaining itself in the impregnable fortress of its singularity…becomes a theme and an object." 60 The Other is effectively objectified as a quantifiable element within the demarcations of so-called 57 Ibid., 125. rational thought. The attempt to defineand thereby destroy -the Other's alterity is part of the Levinasian concept of a totality.…”

“…59 Ophelia, as she is re-exposed within Trethewey attributed to the way in which "she seems to pull / all movement from her slender limbs / and hold it in her heavy-lidded eyes." 60 Through poetic interpretation, Ophelia's nude bodyuncovered and defenselessbecomes secondary, as the reader is invited to focus on her eyes in recognition of her power. Trethewey transfers historic attention on the experiences of Storyville's mixed-race sex-workers, and inspired by the women themselves, envisions them as agents in their own lives.…”

“…Yet, she is thwarted by the gaze of strangers: "I walk these streets / a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes / of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, / a negress again." 63 Ultimately, Ophelia is not able to 60 Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia, 3. 61 A persona poem consists of a rhetorical device through which the poet invents a character that will speak in the first-person throughout the poem.…”