Lullaby

1. "Lullaby"  by Leslie Marmon Silko (short story)

2. "Passive Voice" by Laura Da’ (poem)

These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the paired texts.

Pre-reading Prompts

1. Before approaching the primary paired texts, consider the importance many Native American cultures place on language and storytelling by reading this excerpt about storytelling in the Laguna Pueblo community from an interview with Leslie Marmon Silko:

The education of the children is done within the community, this is in the old times before the coming of the Europeans. Each adult works with every child, children belong to everybody and the way of teaching is to tell stories. All information, scientific, technological, historical, religious, is put into narrative. It is easier to remember that way. So when I began writing [. . .] [a]ll I knew was my growing up at Laguna, recallings of some other stories that I had been told as a child.

Take a moment to reflect on stories you heard when you were growing up—especially oral stories, or stories you were told verbally­. If you can’t remember one, ask a parent or another close elder to share a story from the past. Write a paragraph that describes the topic of the story, and what “scientific, technological, historical, religious” or other kind of information you may have learned from it. Do you agree with Silko that storytelling or narrative is a powerful tool for teaching? Why might stories or narratives make information more memorable? Focusing on the paragraph you just wrote, do you discern any culture-specific values that are embedded in the story?

2. In her short essay "Presence: The Heartspeak of Indigenous Poets", Laura Da’ writes about the fundamental relationship between language, culture, and identity from a modern angle. She focuses on the changes that followed Europeans’ arrival in ‘America’, and refers to “the heavy history of a country that has weaponized words in so many unspeakable ways.” Write down and explain in a brief paragraph two examples of ways this country—the US—has weaponized words against certain populations in the past or Da’ acknowledges her ongoing “struggle with language—the English that America force-fed down” her ancestor’s throats. In what ways does language shape a person’s perspective on events? What happens to the culture of a community if its members can no longer communicate through their shared language? Write a one to two-sentence response to each question and discuss with your class.

Post-reading Analysis

The title of Da’s poem, “Passive Voice,” refers to a grammatical construction in which the subject of a sentence—the ‘actor’—appears after the verb (the ‘action’), or is only implied. As Da’s poem suggests, the passive voice is commonly used on historical markers. If forcing Native American children to learn English is a means of weaponizing language, how is describing the atrocities Europeans committed against Native Americans with the passive voice a form of passive aggressiveness, or ‘aggressive’ denial? And how does Da’s lesson on passive voice turn that aggression against itself? In Silko’s “Lullaby,” Ayah remembers what “the old ones always told her about learning their [English] language or any of their ways: it endangered you.” But had she learned English more thoroughly, like the students in Da’s poem, she would have understood the consequences of signing her name and refused. Is this a legitimate counter-argument to Ayah’s conviction that learning English “endangered you”? Why or why not?

Answer each of the following questions with a short paragraph of three to five sentences. Use details from both texts to support your responses.

1. To help her students identify passive voice sentence constructions, the speaker of “Passive Voice” tells them to insert “by zombies” after the verbs. Although any subject would suffice, the speaker chooses to use zombies. Why? By analogy, who are the ‘zombies’ in “Lullaby,” and how do they “pinch the meat” of the children’s “young red tongues”?

2. In the first paragraph of “Lullaby,” the narrator observes that Ayah “was an old woman now, and her life had become memories.” Focusing on the conclusion of the story, in particular, explain what important function memories serve in Ayah’s life. Why is significant that Chato has been losing his memory? What kind of memory loss does “Passive Voice” focus on, and why is it happening?

3. The speaker in “Passive Voice” figures historical markers as “stripped hands/ breaking up from the dry ground.” Why are the hands “stripped”? How does this description of the ground compare with how Ayah remembers the ground in the arroyo? What might these representations of the earth signify or symbolize, given the thematic concerns of the texts?

1. Zombies work well as a stand-in subject because they are deadly, but also because they are “flesh-hungry” and, in this respect, they conjure thoughts of the ‘meat’ (or the subject) of the sentence being consumed or “claimed” (by zombies). The poem’s fifth stanza provides a sampling of inscriptions on historical markers which recount deadly violence against Native Americans. All of them use passive voice to avoid naming the perpetrators of the violence, the white/European colonizers, so the stand-in subject ‘zombies’ represents them. In “Lullaby,” the ‘zombies’ are the “white doctors” who seem to act on instinct—not unlike the undead—and who “pinch the meat” of Danny’s and Ella’s tongues by taking them away and teaching them to speak “English words.”

2. At the end of “Lullaby,” Ayah remembers “how it was when Ella had been with her,” and she remembers a lullaby “that her grandmother had sung” and “her mother had sung.” These memories give Ayah “a rush so big inside her heart” that reconnects her with her lost love ones, so when she sings the lullaby’s words “We are together,” she feels the truth of it. Chato’s memory loss is significant because it symbolizes his disconnection from his community, which has seemingly come about because he has learned the white people’s language and “their ways.” “Passive Voice” addresses the erasure of historical memory—specifically, the memory of white violence against Native Americans—which is facilitated by the way history is written (by white people).

3. By minimizing the subject’s connection to the action, passive voice sentences figuratively “strip” responsibility from the subject’s “hands.” Further, just as “Passive Voice” includes the image of “dry ground,” when Ayah recalls the sheep grazing in “Lullaby,” she imagines the “dry sandy arroyos where sparse grass grew.” Both texts convey the impression of dry, almost barren earth. This state of the earth may symbolize the dwindling lives of the Native Americans who once flourished on the lands; or, more generally, it could represent how Euro-Americans have exploited the land and are now out of harmony with it. 

Complete the activity below, incorporating details from both the story and the poem over the course of your work. Be ready to share your work with peers, as well as an analysis of your process (such as how your ideas evolved or surprises you encountered).

1. Read Kevin M. Levin’s piece about Historical Markers published in Smithsonian Magazine. In the sixth paragraph, Levin notes that historical markers’ “narrow and celebratory view of local and national history left little room to highlight stories of minorities.” Whose “stories” are missing from the markers the speaker in “Passive Voice” refers to? According to Levin, why are these stories missing?

Now read this historical marker for Pueblo of Laguna, where “Lullaby” takes place. Record what history you learn from the Laguna Pueblo marker. Consider the history the marker alludes to, but leaves out. For example, what caused the Keresan speaking people to become refugees? And what was the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Look for the answers to these questions and any others on scholarly sites (such as this AP US History Study Guide) and briefly record what you learn. Recalling the subtitle of Levin’s Smithsonian article—“Who Tells the Story has a Significant Impact on What Story is Told”—think about Ayah’s story. If she were to create an historical marker for the Laguna Pueblo, what it would say? Draft a text for her marker, taking into account not only what “Lullaby” reveals about Ayah’s values and truths, but also the following comment by Silko about storytelling and historical knowledge in the Laguna Pueblo culture:

[I]t is a culture in which each person has a contribution to make. [. . .] The oral tradition stays in the human brain, and then it is a collective effort in the recollection. So when he is telling a story and she is telling a story and you are telling a story and one of us is listening and there is a slightly different version or detail, then it is participatory when someone politely says I remember it this way. It is a collective memory and depends upon the whole community. There is no single entity that controls information or dictates but this oral tradition is a constantly self-correcting process.

Create a hand-written display or slide-show that presents the three sets of ‘history’ you have assembled: the information on the original Laguna Pueblo marker, examples of the facts or stories it left out, and the ‘story’ Ayah might put on a marker. In a two to four-sentence paragraph, explain what accounts for the differences between these three ‘stories’ about Laguna Pueblo using supporting material from “Lullaby,” “Passive Voice,” or the readings in this activity.

2. In An Interview with Leslie Marmon Silko, Silko shares her beliefs about the relationship between people and nature:

I believe that human beings are a force of nature. Huge mass migrations like what happened in Rwanda [. . .] people are like water, like waves. So we are natural, we are part of the natural world, we are not separate. There is some yearning, some longing, we know that we are part of the trees, and the earth, and the water. Although Christianity and other sorts of things have tried to come in and separate us.

Ecocriticism is an “earth-centered approach” to studying literature. Echoing Silko’s words, this summary of ecocriticism explains that “second wave” ecocriticism challenges “some of the long-standing distinctions between the human and the non-human, questioning these very concepts.” Looking again at “Lullaby,” find three to four passages that break down distinctions between the human and non-human. Focus, in particular, on how Ayah perceives the land, the animals, and even the sky in her world. How does Ayah’s connection to the natural world compare with that of the sixth graders “on summer vacation” in “Passive Voice”? Identify lines or images in the poem that provide cues to the type of human-nature relationship it is presenting. In a hand-written or electronic T-chart, create three bullets on how each text presents the human-nature relationship, along with specific quotes to support your ideas.

Now consider how the mindset that humans and nature are separate has produced harmful consequences in the real world for both nature and humans. Identify a local or global issue in which human activity has caused a change in nature that has adversely affected humans. Find one or two articles about the issue, with images. Create a paper-based or digital slide-show presenting the images, and include your own short summary of the human-caused problem described in the articles. Remember to cite your sources.