Domestic Resistance: Gardening, Mothering, and Storytelling in Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes

Leslie Marmon Silko began her most recent work, Gardens in the Dunes (1999), intending to write a novel that would not be political. Following the publication of Almanac of the Dead (1992), which was simultaneously hailed as one of the most important books of the twentieth century and condemned for its angry self-righteousness, Silko specifically sought nonpolitical subject matter for her next project. As she explained in an interview,

everyone was complaining—not everyone, but some of the moaners and groaners about my work, who think that Chicano or Native American literature, or African American literature, shouldn't be political. You know, easy for those white guys to say. They've got everything, so their work doesn't have to be political. So, I was like, oh, okay, so you want something that's not political. Okay, I'm going to write a novel about gardens and flowers.

("Listening" 163)

Silko initially planned to focus her novel on two women and their gardens, with "[a]bsolutely no politics" involved (161). However, after researching the history of gardens, she found that she "had actually stumbled into the most political thing of all—how you grow your food, whether you eat, the fact that the plant collectors followed the Conquistadores. . . . I realized that this was going to be a really political novel too" (164). Silko's belated recognition of the political nature of gardening underscores how seemingly innocuous domestic activities carry significant import for cultural preservation and strategies of resistance.

As displayed throughout Gardens in the Dunes, gardening reflects social values and the complex ways that humans relate to and conceive of the natural world. This can have profound repercussions for oppressed people, for as Terre Ryan argues, "Silko's gardens demonstrate that imperialism begins in our own backyards" (115). In locating the basis of colonial power in what may be perceived as an incidental pastime, Silko demonstrates how fundamental domestic acts bear profound political significance. Gardening reveals basic beliefs about the relationship between humans and the earth. For example, Grandma Fleet honors Indigenous values by recognizing the old gardens as a source of food, shelter, and identity, and she passes this respect for the earth on to her grandchildren. By contrast, many of the white characters in the novel adopt a more domineering and colonialist approach to the natural world; Edward develops a lucrative orchid business, and Susan recreates her garden each year for her aesthetic pleasure.

Although gardening is the key trope of Silko's novel, her additional emphasis on mothering in Gardens in the Dunes serves as a critical corollary to the ways in which domestic activities encode political positions. By drawing explicit parallels between the act of gardening and that of mothering, Silko further suggests the politicized nature of caretaking and indicates that treatment of the earth reflects attitudes about maternity and female power. While both gardening and mothering involve creation, cultivation, and the propagation of life, these acts are also united by how many Native American cultures perceive the earth. As Mary Gopher explains, "In our religion, we look at this planet as a woman. She is the most important female to us because she keeps us alive. We are nursing off of her" (qtd. in Farley 77). In linking gardening and mothering, Silko affirms Lisa Udel's contention that there is no separation between caring for children and caring for the earth: "Many Native women valorize their ability to procreate and nurture their children, communities, and the earth as aspects of motherwork" (Udel 43). Udel further explains, "women of color engage in activities to keep their families unified and teach children survival skills. This work is viewed as a method of resistance to oppression rather than gender exploitation" (51). Through their emphasis on cultivation and preservation, the forms of gardening and mothering practiced by the Sand Lizard people of Silko's novel can be understood as critical modes of domestic resistance against both cultural and physical genocide. This approach is intimately connected to a relationship to the earth grounded in a...