Pueblo Indian Culture Analysis

Leslie Marmon Silko describes the importance of stories and storytelling in the Pueblo culture in “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective.” Silko explains that the “Pueblo expression resembles something like a spider’s web-with many little threads radiating from the center, crisscrossing one another,” rather than “being taken from point A to point B to point C” (pg 48 pp 1). Silko writes that “the origin story constructs our identity-with this story, we know who we are. We are the Lagunas. This is where we come from. We came this way. We came by this place. And so from this time we are very young, we hear these stories, so that when we go out into the world, when once asks who we are or where we are from, we immediately know:

Characteristics like tall, handsome, heroic, brave, and chivalric was portrayed in these stories. This week, stories like Cinderella and Snow White illustrates how femininity is (or should be) portrayed by females. Characteristics like submissive, naïve, and physically beautiful while cooking and cleaning was portrayed in these Disney princess films (Mod. 2 Lec. 4 Slide 11). As these differences of masculine and feminine are portrayed through films and stories, Peggy Orenstein writes about the effects it has been causing in “What’s Wrong with Cinderella?” Orenstein writes “princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married, and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their values derive largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists” (pg 23 pp 3). Orenstein describes that these portrayal of femininity and masculinity is influencing girls and boys gender identity. That “girls can choose all kinds of things to wear, but boys can only wear pants,” that boys get “teased so ruthlessly about his new, beloved pink bike that within a week he refused to ride it” or that fathers “would think that it was “bad” if boys played with “girls” toys (pg 21 pp