What we Leave Behind: Exploring Multiple Environmental Legacies in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes

Abstract

Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Gardens in the Dunes (1996) is unlike her earlier novels both in its reliance to a considerable degree on straegies of the traditional European realist novel and in its inclusion of a variety of global locations. Once again, it is a deeply political novel concerning abuses of indigenous peoples at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. But it is also a novel about gardens and in this essay I approach its issues from an ecocritical perspective, exploring its depiction of a range of gardening and horticultural practices and its valuing of ancient legacies. I attempt to evaluate the ability of the Gardens in the Dunes to offer a visionary view of sustainable agriculture.