Yellow Woman

Yellow Woman Summary | Detailed Summary

"Yellow Woman," a short story by Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko, was first published in 1974.

Yellow Woman is both the title to this story as well as the name of the Pueblo legend that has been handed down through generations of native oral tradition. In the legend, which has a number of variations, a young woman will typically agree to leave her village with a spirit-walker (ka'tsina), forsaking her family and her village to ensure a benefit for the entire community in return, such as a supply of food or other security for the village.

Silko's "Yellow Woman" begins with an unnamed young woman as its narrator. The story is set in the present time, and the young woman is has been lying on the edge of the river that flows past her village. It is evident from the tone of the account that the young woman feels a connection to the beauty and the spirituality of this place - she is watching the sun rise above the New Mexico landscape.

The young woman has just awoken. A stranger, with whom she had met and then had sex with on the riverbank that night is asleep beside her - she feels his legs against her as he sleeps.

The young woman had been alone in this natural setting when she first went to the river - her family, including her husband, a baby, her mother and her grandmother, are at her home in the village nearby. Through the tone of her narrative, she conveys of herself a sense of her own physical beauty and resolve as she describes the river and the land around her.

She had intended to return to her home and her family, but she lingers, describing a compulsion to remain at the side of this man until he awakes. The tone of the story, from this point forward to its conclusion, has a surrealist element, and the boundary between the woman's fantasy and her reality is very blurred.

When the stranger awakes, she learns that his name is Silva. The woman recalls the Yellow Woman legends told to her by her grandfather, and she senses that the stranger on the riverbank might be ka'tsina, the spirit walker of the Pueblo legend. At this point in the narration of the story, the present day meeting between the young woman and Silva, and the Yellow Woman Pueblo legend, begin to merge in the narrator's account.

The legend and the reality become one in the mind of the young woman when Silva tells her that she will accompany him to his cabin. The scene from the riverbank now shifts abruptly, as the young woman describes the brown sandstone and the river water replaced by dark, lava colored hills, with a corresponding sense of distance from the village.

It is clear that the narrator now believes herself to be living the Yellow Woman legend in the manner of the stories that were told to her as a child. Although she never steps beyond her narration to describe herself as the Yellow Woman, it is evident that this is now her role. As if fulfilling a destiny, the young woman expresses the thought that her child can now be cared for by her mother, and that her husband can find another woman as a partner. There is no suggestion in the narrative that the young woman was particularly unhappy or unfulfilled in her family or village life. However, her attraction to Silva is so great that the young woman appears prepared to remain with Silva for an indefinite period.

When the young woman arrives with Silva at his cabin, they are in the mountains. Silva tells her, as she makes him a meal, that Silva has a reputation as a notorious cattle thief among the nearby Texas cattle ranchers. The young woman determines that Silva must be a Navajo, and not a Pueblo Indian, as she believes that a Pueblo man would not steal another's cattle.

From Silva's cabin, the young woman can see where the Texas ranchers have farms, Navajo lands, the Mexican people and the boundaries of her own pueblo.

As night falls at the cabin, the young woman describes the conflict between her physical fear of Silva and her sexual desire for him. She does not attempt to either flee or to protect herself from Silva, and Silva ultimately forces himself upon her - "You don't understand do you, little yellow woman? You will do what I want." After Silva has sex with the young woman, he falls asleep, and she continues to watch him. The young woman tells of her ongoing physical desire for Silva even after having been sexually forced by him.

The next morning, Silva asks the young woman to accompany him to the town of Marquez. Silva intends to sell meat that is clearly the product of his cattle rustling. Silva arms himself with a rifle and they set out by horse along the trail. Silva and the young woman travel with meat strapped to their horse. As they progressed along the trail, the young woman describes how they encounter with a fat, white Texas rancher, who on seeing the meat strapped as their cargo, concludes that he has in fact met Silva, the reviled cattle thief.

Silva tells the young woman to go back to his cabin. As she leaves, she hears four gunshots - she does not return to the scene of the confrontation to investigate, and in fact returns to her own village and family. On her return, she resolves to tell them that a Navajo kidnapped her. She smells a meal being cooked, and she hears her mother telling her grandmother how to make Jell-O salad.

The young woman believes that Silva (or the ka'tsina) would one day return to the riverside near her village. She tells of how she wants to kiss him and to touch him again, a longing for Silva that evidently will continue through her own existence with her family in her community.