Great American Writers (Reader Response)

This novel was a tough novel to read. I generally enjoy picking up a good novel and reading it in one sitting, but I found myself dreading picking up this novel for fear of finding another raunchy sex scene. Contemporary art tends to include some kind of sex scene. For Leslie Silko to be considered a great American author she needs to realize that literature does not need raunchy sex scenes but wholesome literature.

Upon reading these sex scenes it did not bother me at first. I just related the novel to the romance novels I read in my spare time. There was a huge problem with this though. I was not reading Leslie Silko in my spare time. I was reading Leslie Silko to learn. I was reading Leslie Silko to prove that great American authors are not always dead white males. I read this novel because I wanted to prove that it does not take a dead white man to write a good novel but in the gross scenes of this novel I really struggled with this.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, was novel was based on adultery. A woman, out of sin, conceived and was being persecuted for her sins by wearing a scarlet A. Hawthorne got his message across and even included adultery without raunchy sex scene. He included an encounter between the woman and the father of her child but there was no description of the contact between these two people. Hawthorne is considered a great writer and is included in the literary canon. Hawthorne made some very important statements in his novel and still did not include raunchy sex scenes.

Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, visited the idea of sex but did not go into details with what happens between the two main characters. The reader knows sex is occurring between these two individuals but never has a graphic picture painted for them. Hemingway is also considered a great writer. Hemingway made the literary canon as well and did not need to include as many sex scenes.

If Leslie Silko could leave out the sex scenes and include more meaningful scenes in her novel I would be more open minded in including her in the literary canon. But frankly I do not need my children to someday read this novel in their senior English class because it is a member of the literary canon. I can not accept the fact that this is a great American work when parts of this novel, if put into picture, could be considered pornographic. Great American works should be works that could be allowed in a high school classroom. As mature adults reading this novel we can handle these scenes, but I do not think that high school students could handle the graphic content of this novel. Hemingway and Hawthorne can be read in a high school classroom, even though both novels include sexual acts. Leslie Silko could have reached me, as a reader, more by excluding these scenes. Silko is defying the idea that great writers are rich, dead white men, why can’s she defy the fact that contemporary literature must contain some type of sex.