Yellow Woman

Yellow Woman

Factual Information

"Yellow Woman" is a short story written by Leslie Marmon Silko, originally published in the 1974 anthology, The Man to Send Rain Clouds: Contemporary Stories by American Indians, edited by Kenneth Rosen. [2]

Characters

Yellow Woman

Yellow Woman is a female who leaves her family to have a brief sexual encounter with a Navajo man. Yellow Woman is not her real name.

Silva

Silva is the Navajo man that Yellow Woman runs away with for a brief time. The story leads you to believe he is a cattle thief and maybe even a murderer.

Grandfather

Grandfather is just a memory to Yellow Woman now because he is dead. He told her all the stories about Yellow Woman.

The Rancher

The Rancher is a fat white man who has a sour smell to him. He and his people have been looking for Silva for a long time because he's a thief who rustles their cattle for the meat.

Plot

The plot of "Yellow Woman" is about a woman who meets a Navajo man named Silva while out walking one day. She becomes intrigued by this man and leaves her family behind to be with him. She has sexual intercourse with him all the while she is confused about why she would do something so wrong. [1]

Themes

A few themes of this story are myth, heritage, and desire. The desire comes from how she feels when she is with him. The myth is about how she wants to live out the stories she has heard from her grandfather about a woman called Yellow Woman.

Works Cited

1. Silko, Leslie. "Yellow Woman" Reading and Writing about Literature. New Jersey: Upper Saddle River, 2002.
2. Silko, Leslie. "Yellow Woman" Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta. World Liturature Website 2001-2005 <http://www.fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/silko/yellow_woman.htm>.