Almanac of the Dead

Almanac of the Dead

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author	Leslie Marmon Silko
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	1991
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages	763 pp
ISBN	0-671-66608-8
OCLC	23942058
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PS3569.I44 A79 1991

Almanac of the Dead is the second novel by Leslie Marmon Silko, first published in 1991.

Overview

Almanac of the Dead takes place against the backdrop of the American Southwest and Central America, focusing on the conflict between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans. It follows the stories of dozens of major characters in a non-linear narrative format, switching between the present day, lengthy flashbacks, and occasional mythological storytelling.

The novel's numerous characters are often separated by both time and space, and many seemingly have little to do with one another at first. A majority of these characters are involved in criminal or revolutionary organizations - the extended cast includes the Zapatista Army of National Liberation revolutionaries, arms dealers, drug kingpins, an elite assassin, corrupt politicians, and a black market organ dealer.

Driving many of these individual storylines is a general theme of total reclamation of Native American lands, as well as a celebration of the value of storytelling.

Critiquing the limitations of the American Indian Movement, the novel presents readers with the model of "tribal internationalists," individuals who work with international alliances to reclaim their Indigenous land. However, several literary critics have been critical of the novel's depiction of homosexuality, as the novel features male homosexual and bisexual characters who are variously abusive, sadistic, and cruel.

Plot

Part One: The United States of America

The opening section consists of eight books with smaller chapters totaling 234 pages. In this section, the following characters are introduced: Lecha, Zeta, Seese, Sterling, Yoeme, Calabazas, Ferro, Paulie, David, Eric, Beaufrey, Jamey, Root, Mosca, Mahwala, Sarita, and Liria. These characters are the core the expository elements and conflicts of the opening section. Most of this section takes place in Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern California.

Part Two: Mexico

This section only has two books: "Reign of Death Eye-Dog" and "Reign of Fire-Eye Macaw". It also consists of interconnected shorts and totals around 91 pages. All the characters from Part One disappear; Menardo, Iliana, Alegria, General J, Green Lee, El Grupo, Bartolomeo, Angelita La Escapia, El Feo, and Tacho are introduced. All the events occur in Tuxtla, Chiapas, or in and around Mexico City. While the narrative stays in the third person omniscient, Silko plays more loosely with the point of view of characters. Sometimes just moving through various characters' consciousness within scenes or over spans of time. The opening pages have a first person narrative.

Part Three: Africa

This section of the novel consists of three books: "New Jersey", "Arizona", and "El Paso". It spans 117 pages. In this section, some of the characters from Parts One and Two re-appear: Menardo, Alegria, Zeta, and Lecha are mentioned, while others return fully to the center of the narrative. Other characters are introduced: Max Blue, Leah, Trigg, Rambo-Roy, Clinton, Sonny Blue, Bingo, Angelo, Marilyn, Peaches, and Judge Arne. Sterling, Ferro, Paulie, Seese, and Jamey close out book three's final five chapters.

Part Four: The Americas

This section takes place in Mexico and Colombia. It is split into two books: "Mountains" and "Rivers," and totals 100 pages. Not only are the lives and desires of Menardo, Alegria, El Feo, Tacho, Bartolomeo, and Angelita La Escapia further fleshed out, we finally get access to the shadow characters of Beaufrey and Serlo. In the "Rivers" book, the latter two characters have gone to Colombia with David to make deals, ride horses, sniff coke, and indulge any of their other desires. Beaufrey and Serlo's personal histories are also developed and they are shown to be narcissists obsessed with the pure blood of their European ancestors and making an alternative world away not only from Black, Native, Asian, or mixed people but white people who they claim to be of lower-class rank and status. While Serlo claims he is an asexual heterosexual, Beaufrey is gay, has a fetish for torture videos, and is revealed to be using David for nothing more than sex and emotional manipulation. Both Beaufrey and Serlo are also revealed to be part of what made Seese and David's child Monte disappear, while explicitly stating how much pleasure they had in watching David and Seese suffer through the abduction.

Part Five: The Fifth World

The fifth section of the novel continues to have the various storylines and plot points converge. At nearly 140 pages, it is the second longest section of the novel. It is made up of three books: "The Foes," "The Warriors," and "The Struggle". In the first book "The Foes," readers get more detailed pieces of what is contained in Almanac of the Dead, while also understanding the other traumas Lech and Zeta experienced as young women. Simultaneously the sisters learn of La Escapia, El Feo, and Tacho (who like them are twins) and their resistance efforts. Seese's plot point is also re-centered, and we learn she was also from Tucson where she worked as a stripper for Tiny, who for most of the novel was a tertiary character. Mosca and Calabazas' characters are further developed as well. Mosca's character develops an obsession for the Blue family and their businesses in Tucson, while Calabazas is shown to be compassionate, yet losing his edge. Readers also learn about Liria and Sarita's work on the border. All these characters' worlds become explicitly connected to Max Blue and his family in "The Warriors" book. This is due to Mosca's plan that makes Sonny begin to a feud with the Tucson police. Judge Arne's character also gains more space within this section and is shown to be as powerful as Max Blue and deranged as Serlo or Beaufrey. The third book, "The Struggle" finds Alegria crossing the Mexico-U.S. border, while we are introduced to a new character, Awa Gee, who is a close friend of Zeta. Awa Gee is a Korean computer scientist that hacks the U.S. government and develops weapons for the poor. Awa Gee becomes a vital component of Zeta's plan. Beyond Awa Gee, readers are given more access to Ferro's lover Jamey. By the end of this section, three more major deaths occur.

Part Six: One World, Many Tribes

This is the shortest section of the novel at 53 pages in length. It has one book called "Prophecy". Two new leaders of the resistance movement named Wilson Weasel Tail and the Barefoot Hopi deliver dramatic and dynamic speeches at a convention attended by mostly young white people. Lecha, Zeta, Awa Gee, Clinton, Rambo-Roy, Angelita (on behalf of the twin brothers), Root, Calabazas, and Mosca all meet and exchange their perspectives and strategies with the two leaders. A rebel cell called the Eco-terrorists also attends the convention. The attendees present various short discussions of their philosophical views. In the end, many characters' narrative arcs are not completed, and other characters are killed off, while others close out the book in "normative" ways. More importantly, the conclusion reinforces the idea and symbol of an almanac as always updated, but never completed.

Characters

Lecha - A “well-known psychic ... returning home” after years of being away because she is dying of cancer. Lecha “has come home to get things in order before she died.” She is Zeta's twin sister and has the ability to see into people's lives and futures, or what the Western world characterizes as a Psychic. She exploits this gift for some time in her life even becoming a TV personality before she decides to return to the work left by her grandmother. Lecha is also part of Calabazas' organization and has traveled around the Americas.

Zeta - Lecha's twin sister. She stayed in Arizona and raised Lecha's son Ferro. She, before Lecha, decided to return to the work left to them by their grandmother. Zeta and Lecha's mother were an indigenous woman from Mexico who was impregnated by a white man. After their mother dies, the twins' father returns for a strange short period in their lives. Zeta has also tied to Calabazas' organization.

Seese - A young white woman who was living in San Diego where she became an addict and fell in love with a bisexual man named David. They had a child, who was later abducted and possibly killed. When Seese watches Lecha on TV she drives to Tucson to find her.

Sterling - An older Laguna Indian from New Mexico who is exiled from his tribe/community after he fails to protect them from a Hollywood film crew that disrespects their native lands. He has wandered across the American Southwest since his twenties and loves to read crime histories of early America. He is recruited by two of Calabazas' men while drinking at a bar and works as a gardener for Lecha, Zeta, and Calabazas.

Yoeme - Lecha and Zeta's Maya grandmother. She abandoned her family (Lecha and Zeta's mother) when she was young because she knew they were not strong enough to survive the colonial violence of white settlers. Yoeme returns to the twins' life, teaches them harsh lessons and histories of the American Southwest, and hands them a book called The Almanac of the Dead that she wants them to finish in due time.

Calabazas - An old Yaqui Indian who has run a clandestine business and organization between Tucson and Sonora for over 40 years. Lecha was his lover for a short time, and he has a wife named Sarita. For most of his married life, he desired Sarita's younger sister Liria.

Ferro - Lecha's son. He was overweight and effeminate as a young boy and was teased a lot as well. He also harbors a lot of resentment for his mother and Zeta, even though Zeta raised him in the same cold and calculating ways Yoeme raised her. Ferro is gay and has two lovers: one in his recent past named Jamey, and another named Paulie. Ferro also works with Calabazas.

Paulie - Works at the home Zeta and Ferro live at. He controls the many dogs on the land. He was in prison with Ferro and is now his lover.

David - A bisexual artist from San Diego. He was a former escort before Beaufrey fell for him and took care of him. Beaufrey eventually helps David become a well-known artist. David is at the core of a love triangle with Seese, Eric, and Beaufrey. He and Seese have a child named Monte who was more than likely kidnapped and killed by a jealous Beaufrey.

Eric - A young gay man from a conservative family in Texas. He moves to San Diego to live his truth, but also falls in love with, and becomes a lover of David. Like Seese, Eric becomes an addict and is also hated by Beaufrey.

Jamey - Ferro's lover who is addicted to cocaine.

Root - Is part white, Mexican, and Indian. His mother was a German woman who married a dark mestizo man in the Army. Root is Lecha's on-and-off lover and is highly intelligent. However, he had a serious accident that gave him brain damage and altered his motor functions. Despite his disabilities, Root is one of Calabazas' most trusted transporters.

Mosca - A dark-skinned Mexican who is also one of Calabazas' transporters. He loves to drink and do drugs and is possibly autistic. He is also fascinated with Root's accident, which he tries to contextualize and mythologize.

Mahwala - The eldest of Calabazas' Yaqui tribe. She shares and communicates the land's and tribe's history to Calabazas.

Sarita - Calabazas' wife from the Brito family in Sonora. Her father married her to Calabazas to pay a gambling debt, and she is also said to be highly religious (Catholic).

Liria - Sarita's younger sister. She is said to have been the one to give Calabazas his name as a young girl during one of the early transports between him and their family.

Menardo - An indigenous Mexican from Chiapas. Menardo and his exploits make up the majority of this part of the text. He is a self-loathing Maya who tries to conceal any indigenous part of his self and family history. As a youth, he is fat and dark-skinned and therefore teased, so he grows up with a chip on his shoulder. He starts an insurance company that is fledgling until a major earthquake hit (a possible allusion by Silko to the major natural disaster of '85), and he pulls off a miraculous feat that makes the community members adore him. He gains many customers and other opportunities open up for him. Even though he is portrayed as a sort of lucky fool, Menardo's wealth only grows. He marries a woman named Iliana and gains monetary connections from Tucson to Guatemala.

Iliana - A local from Tuxtla whose family claims they are direct descendants of the colonizer Juan de Oñate. She grows up spoiled, and loves expensive things, but can't bear children for Menardo. She spends most of her time with the other wives of El Grupo. Her family hates Menardo.

Alegria - A woman from Venezuela that was educated in Spain. She is a white young architect working for a major firm in Mexico City. She is assigned to build Menardo's lavish house for Iliana. She lives with her boyfriend Bartolomeo in Mexico City. Alegria begins an affair with Menardo as she designs and constructs his home. Iliana suspects nothing.

General J - Is from Guatemala and is part of Menardo's inner circle. He, like others in the novel, denies he has ties to any indigenous blood. He hates communism and is actively strategizing with Menardo to quell rising rebellions within Mexico. He is basically Menardo's muscle but not in any way shown to be a subordinate of his.

Green Lee - An arms dealer from Tucson. He is another of Menardo's connections.

El Grupo - Is made up of characters that are just given names like The Police Chief, The Judge, The Governor, and The Ambassador. They occupy a central place in this part of the novel as they are the men Menardo is constantly in communication with about their money, their wives, and the state of Mexico as a country.

Angelita La Escapia - An indigenous Maya woman from Mexico City. She is the head of a leftist rebel cell that is tracking Menardo's activities. She reports back to her indigenous community members who grow suspicious of her love of Karl Marx's book Das Kapital. Her love for Marx is rooted in the idea that he is the only white man who has ever told the truth, through rigorous research and evidence, about the savagery of white people and capitalism. She views Marx through an indigenous lens and constantly speaks of his materialist shortcomings. She is also involved in a relationship with Bartolomeo, though she is plotting on him as well because he is a white Cuban who also thinks indigenous people are stupid.

Bartolomeo - A white Cuban who runs a communist center in Mexico City. He is supposed to be sleeping with Alegria to get information for his group about Menardo and others. He is generally represented as someone who is only in it for himself.

El Feo - is from the same indigenous community as Angelita La Escapia. He was sent to keep an eye on her but agrees with the ways she is organizing and moving forward.

Tacho - Menardo and Iliana's indigenous chauffeur. He deals with Menardo and Iliana's constant micro-aggressions but also helps decipher Menardo's constant surreal and violent dreams. This allows Tacho to keep Macaws in their backyard. Tacho is depicted as observant and calculating. He is tied to the same cells as Angelita, Bartolomeo, and El Feo.

Max Blue - A Vietnam War veteran known as a mafia figure/boss in New Jersey. During his time in the war, he survived a plane crash which is a sort of omen for Max. The opening of Part Three has him surviving an assassination attempt that kills his brother Bill. These events are said to change Max and make him retire from organized crime. He moves his family to Tucson, where he spends all his time playing golf.

Leah - Max's wife. She works in real estate and constantly cheats on Max because he has no interest in having sex with her. Max knows of Leah's infidelities and does not care. Though she is not fond of Arizona, Leah does manage to hustle and obtain large amounts of valuable property in the area.

Trigg - An alcoholic businessman who lost his ability to walk in a car accident. Trigg is also racist, and sexist, and becomes Leah's primary lover. He is so obsessed with power and regaining his ability to walk, that he builds a blood and organ bank with the help of his assistant Peaches, and a homeless veteran named Roy. Ultimately, readers come to find that Trigg has other means to gain donors to his organ and blood banks.

Rambo-Roy - A Vietnam War veteran. He works for Trigg but uses the money he makes to organize other homeless men, veterans in particular because he has a vision to build an army to overthrow the government. He does not trust Trigg and has a crush on the assistant Peaches.

Clinton - A Vietnam War veteran. Clinton is also the first central Black character of the novel. He is homeless like Roy, and they become partners in plotting a resistance. Clinton's focus is on liberating Black Americans from the shackles of American historical, religious, and economic bondage. Outside of Max Blue, Clinton is the most prominent figure of Part Three. He retells how he survived Vietnam, his days in college, the history of Black Indians, and how he looks to center pre-colonial African spirituality in his daily life.

Sonny Blue - Max's son, but Leah is not his biological mother. He had inherited a small portion of the family's business running slots and vending machines, yet this is not enough for him. Sonny negotiates a gun and drug deal with people in Mexico. Sonny is also cruel to Leah and his younger brother and like many other characters overtly sexist and racist.

Bingo - Max's other son, who is not only picked on by Sonny but is pathetically mediocre all his life. He developed a cocaine addiction once he found out about his father's life and business. Alongside his brother, he cares for the slots and vending machines.

Angelo - Max and Leah's nephew. Angelo's father did not want to be part of the family business, but he does. Angelo begins to work with his cousin Sonny, but Bingo does not trust the woman Angelo is in love with. Angelo also believes Sonny is money hungry and untrustworthy.

Marilyn - The woman Angelo is in love with. She also seems to have strong feelings for him but chooses to go back to be with her husband.

Peaches - Trigg's assistant. She knows all of his secrets and hints at them to Roy. Peaches is smart and calculating.

Judge Arne - Is caught up in a small scandal tied to Ferro's lover Jamey. He is not worried about it though, because Arne has found someone else on who he can place stronger blame on. Judge Arne also plays golf with Max Blue.

Themes

Part one

This segment of the novel seamlessly transitions between the perspectives of various characters, delving into the intricate histories of their lives and families. It lays out a convoluted web of conflict and violence. However, the portrayal of this violence and strife also questions how we narrate and envision events.

Silko's approach in this part of the text challenges the dominant white settler colonial narratives of the American Southwest. But beyond challenging these narratives, the novel re-envisions them and questions what has been portrayed as historical fact.

In the present timeline of the text, Silko constructs a 'narrative blanket' that serves a significant purpose. It doesn't merely blur the black-and-white 'us versus them' narrative of white settlers perpetrating brutalities against various indigenous North American tribes. Instead, Silko highlights the diverse ways in which indigenous people clashed among themselves, and how Mexicans showed the same type of ferocity towards Indigenous people as the whites did, and vice versa.

This isn't to deny that what Silko refers to as the days of the Death-Eye Dog largely resulted from the aggressive colonial imposition by white settlers. However, Silko traces, even amidst genocide, numerous instances of intercommunity betrayals. Simultaneously, she brings attention to the significant organized formations of resistance and survival efforts by indigenous peoples, predominantly Yaqui and Apache groups in this section.

A recurring theme throughout the text is the story of Geronimo. Silko reshapes the narrative taught in schools and popular media, forming something more dynamic and grounded. Her narrative is rooted in the power of envisioning different worlds, particularly those committed to resistance movements.

Furthermore, by the end of this section, the reader is shown the origins of the Almanac of the Dead. It is a terrifying section that places youth at the center of bravery and survival, and also plays with orality and the need for knowledge to be passed down through generations; even if those communities have few people left to tell their stories.

Part two

Themes of the subjugation of indigenous peoples and their continuous resistance remain constant throughout this part of the novel. The characters' perception, imagination, and understanding of the world continue to be deeply influenced by violence. However, while the first part of the book primarily offers a contemporary indigenous perspective, the second part focuses on the descendants of the colonial victors and the people of color who aspire to fit into the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy's worldview.

Silko doesn't shy away from a candid portrayal of white or white-passing Latinos. She consistently brings attention to their European ancestry, their relentless pursuit of material possessions, their use of sex for power, their jealousy, their scheming nature, and their dehumanizing ideology that belittles, exploits, and ultimately loots anything not white, white-passing, or sophisticated. Characters like Bartolomeo and Alegria are depicted as bourgeois and dismissive of the indigenous people they encounter.

Menardo, an indigenous Maya man, dark-skinned, overweight, and from a low-status family, only attains success by consciously denying and discarding any remnants of his Indian heritage and perspective. This setting breeds micro-dictators and their private armies. In many respects, characters like Menardo, General J, Green Lee, El Grupo, Iliana, Alegria, and Bartolomeo exemplify the Death-Eye Dog era, as referenced at the end of Part One. Their world is driven by money, sex, violence, and fear, leading all life toward a path of suffering.

Yet Angelita, Tacho, and El Feo (and sometimes even Alegria) all provide sparks of hope and rebellion seen against the dark and deranged madness of the other characters.

Part three

Despite its expository nature, like the other sections, this part of the novel largely seems to stall the previously escalating conflicts and action. Readers might question the introduction of a new set of characters that, for the most part, appear unrelated to the other sections and lack dynamism. However, Silko's pacing in this section of the book seems to be a conscious choice.

The vivid imaginative theatrics are scaled back, except for in Clinton's passages. As readers, we can see the characters in Part Three mirroring the power and bloodthirst found in Part Two's characters. Men with money and a predilection for violence exploit and lust after the bodies of the poor, the homeless, women, and people of color. The borderlands are depicted as a space where many are at the mercy of deranged men.

By the end of Part Three, it becomes apparent that Max Blue is not as passive or withdrawn as we were initially led to believe. His son has connections to significant characters in Mexico, and characters like Bingo, Sterling, and Ferro become increasingly wary of the relationships people are maintaining. Furthermore, the relationship between Ferro and Paulie is developed further when it's revealed that Sesse is transcribing the Almanac digitally for Lecha.

Organizing rebellion remains an important component of the narrative. Silko makes sure Clinton and Roy, much like Angelita La Escapia and Tacho, are forming some type of resistance to the madness within the text.

Lastly, on symbolic or aesthetic levels, Silko subverts the typical look, body, and background of normative protagonists and antagonists. Characters are not fully able-bodied. They are loved for or embrace being fat; they are not stereotypically beautiful or attractive and in fact tend to be taken advantage of. Homeless characters are not ornaments to main characters, and many characters move through the spectrum of LGBT sexuality, and the old are just as essential as the young to the plot. It's an element of storytelling, in particular within American narrative, that is often treated as an afterthought. Readers of Almanac of the Dead are forced to invest in characters we have been socialized to hate, stigmatize, and marginalize.

Part four

The "Rivers" section of part four is possibly the most emotionally "grey", stylistically cold, and visually macabre. It serves as a stark contrast to "Mountains" which is full of action, emotion, and redemption. In Part Four, the reader begins to sense that Silko's mapping and exploration of death and violence across the Americas is not going to end well for any of the characters. From a craft perspective, the reader is also understanding that each small chapter within the "books," while told from a sort of omniscient third-person perspective, is in many ways tied to the POV character of the section. For instance, Angelita La Escapia is the POV character for "On Trial for Crimes Against Tribal Histories". That section is different than "Sangre Pura," where Beaufry is the POV character in mood and some ways. This is consistent throughout the novel and challenges the reader to grasp the complexity of the characters' interwoven conflicts. Lastly, there are four major deaths in Part Four.

Part five

Power, visions, sex, and violence are pretty much the norm this deep into the text. The threat of war is on all characters' minds, and each is strategizing their survival. Silko also seems to be very intentional on what side all these characters appear to be on while foreshadowing that many partnerships are not to be trusted.

Silko also shows how the various characters and their communities foresee the future coming about. The novel begins to take on more color and design. Character features, the spaces they inhabit, the color of things in and around them, and the small details that signal emotion or mood changes are written into the sentences more frequently. As the story begins to near its resolution, the many characters we've been following all appear more visually and viscerally through the words of the text.

Publication history

Although the print edition of Almanac of the Dead features a "Five Hundred Year Map," e-book versions of the novel omit the map. The map depicts Silko's stylized version of the heart of the novel's geographical, historical, and conceptual narrative extent, with lines radiating outward from Tucson, Arizona to New Jersey in the northeast, San Diego in the west, and Tuxtla Gutiérrez in the Mexican state of Chiapas in the south. Other cities and towns in the US and Mexico are accompanied by character names and notes that pertain to both the novel's narrative and historical events. Almanac of the Dead's complex linked narratives largely unfolds within this mapped space, although episodes also take place in or reference previous events in numerous other places (including Colombia and Argentina, and the map names Alaska, Cuba, and Haiti as part of a graphic representation "in a transnational perspective") showing "the history of the modern/colonial world system from a particular local history" centered on Tucson. The map presents itself as a map of "Mexico" alone, with no mention of the United States of America and without showing contemporary state or national borders. In an interview, Silko explains that she "drew that map in Almanac as a 'glyphic' representation of the narrative. This 'glyph' shows how the Americas are 'one,' not separated by artificial, imaginary 'borders.' The landscapes, the spirits of the places are known by the narratives that originate in these places." The map corresponds roughly to the novel's complex structure, which consists of six named parts divided into books and named chapters.

Much of the story takes place in the narrative "present", although lengthy flashbacks and myths tied to indigenous knowledge are also woven into the plot.