Yellow Woman: Identity and Authorship in Native American Stories

Introduction: The Pluralistic Nature of Yellow Woman

Who is Yellow Woman? Unfortunately for the reader who prefers everything in a narrative to be neat, orderly, and clear-cut, this is a question with many different answers. As difficult as it is to define Yellow Woman in specific terms, one can make several general observations about her. For starters, there is a pluralistic quality to Yellow Woman — she is, in essence, a metaphor for many different things.

In the preface to the Yellow Woman stories in the collection Spider Woman's Granddaughters, this fact is made explicit: "Yellow Woman, like the tradition she lives in, goes on and on. She lives in New Mexico (or that's what they call it at present), around Laguna and other Keresan pueblos as well. She is a Spirit, a Mother, a blessed ear of corn, an archetype, a person, a daughter of a main clan, an agent of change and of obscure events, a wanton, an outcast, a girl who runs off with Navajos, or Zunis, or even Mexicans. She is also a mother of little war twins, consort of the sun, granddaughter of the one who plays with stars, somehow (obscurely?) related to Grandmother Spider..." (Allen 211).

Perhaps the overall point the author is making is that Yellow Woman is whoever the reader or listener wants her to be. There is a fluidity to her meaning and her character from story to story, from tradition to tradition. This becomes more apparent the more one reads the different variations of the Yellow Woman narrative. It can therefore be assumed that one may choose how to identify with the different Yellow Women across multiple narratives in whatever manner he or she sees fit.

Yellow Woman as Victim in Traditional Narratives

That said, one must also consider that this interpretation may in fact be the inverse of how one should go about defining Yellow Woman. In other words, Yellow Woman is not so much defined by the reader or listener; rather, she is defined by the speaker or the storyteller. Because Yellow Woman is in many ways amorphous — a character who has been refashioned and repurposed over the ages — it may be that to truly understand who she is from story to story, one must examine the authors who have recreated her.

To develop this idea, one should juxtapose the styles found in different narratives to get a sense of how each author has chosen to render her own Yellow Woman. In "Evil Kachina Steals Yellow Woman," the author has opted to make Yellow Woman — and Yellow Women generally — victims. She is, and they are, victims of the Evil Kachina. The author writes, "Therefore he always takes away the Yellow Women. He has fooled many poor Yellow Women. They all died there on the ice" (215). The Evil Kachina abducts, kidnaps, and often kills Yellow Women, so much so that the reader begins to sense that Yellow Women represent female vulnerability as a collective condition. Although he does not kill the central Yellow Woman in the story, he impregnates her and abuses her. She, like the others, is vulnerable to his attacks.

Is the author of this early Yellow Woman narrative a vulnerable woman herself? Is she commenting on the plight of Native American women? Were they considered property — something to be possessed? All of these questions are important to discovering who the author's Yellow Woman truly is.

Silko's Modern Yellow Woman

Turning to the later variations — in particular Leslie Marmon Silko's adaptation, "Yellow Woman" — it becomes evident that Yellow Woman is no longer a helpless victim or a damsel in distress, but a willful participant in her own abduction. Silko's Yellow Woman is a modern woman, one who faces modern challenges and who is arguably shaped in the image of Silko herself.

Silko's Yellow Woman is free to choose whether she should stay with her captor or leave him. Moreover, there is a delicate, complicated relationship between her and her captor. She is not a victim, but a willful — perhaps reluctant — participant. The following passage renders the internal struggle she experiences when embraced by her captor:

"And again he was all around me with his skin slippery against mine, and I was afraid because I understood that his strength could hurt me. I lay underneath him and I knew that he could destroy me. But later, while he slept beside me, I touched his face and I had a feeling — the kind of feeling for him that overcame me that morning along the river. I kissed him on the forehead and he reached out for me" (Silko 224).

Conclusion: Authorship Defines Yellow Woman

Looking at the different narratives, it is highly probable that each author has re-envisioned Yellow Woman to represent aspects of life that are important to her. This would explain both the variation among the narratives and why Yellow Woman, viewed from a distance, appears so amorphous. In short, to understand Yellow Woman, one needs to understand the authors who have recreated her over the years.