Some people have naturally strong, powerful voices. They can be murmurs and rather ordinary in their explicit contents, yet curiously strong. One such person is Leslie Marmon Silko, undoubtedly one of the greatest American novelists living.
Here is what she says about her childhood:
My earliest memories are of being outside, under the sky. I remember climbing the fence when I was three years old, and heading for the plaza in the center of Laguna village because other children passing by had told me there were KA'TSINAS there dancing with pieces of wood in their mouths. A neighbor, a woman, retrieved me before I ever saw the wood-swallowing ka'tsinas, but from an early age I knew I wanted to be outside: outside walls and fences.
Simon Ortiz ed., Speaking for the Generations (1998)
OUTSIDE is really the keyword. Personally, I would never want to die INSIDE any human-made structure, let alone a hospital. I want to leave this world outside, under the sky, in the immediacy of the elements.
Thus I belong to Leslie's pack.
