Recognised today as one of the most powerful and persistent political voices of contemporary Native North America, Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on March 5 1948, to Virginia and Lee Howard Marmon. Of mixed Mexican, Native American, and Anglo-American ancestry, Silko was raised with her two younger sisters, Wendy and Gigi, at the Pueblo of Laguna. Some fifty miles west of Albuquerque just off Interstate 40, formerly Route 66, Laguna is situated on lands originally reserved for the use of the indigenous Keresan peoples by a Spanish land grant of 1689, and subsequently recognised by Congress with the issue of a land patent in 1898.
Laguna, and all that it represents both culturally and geographically, is central to an understanding of Silko's work, and she has
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Citation: Tillett, Rebecca. "Leslie Silko". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 March 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4072, accessed 23 November 2024.]
