Word: hillerman
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Luckily, the Navaho religion, which Hillerman repeatedly describes as "fascinating," does not demand absolute privacy: "the more you know, the better," Hillerman says. What he knows is part of the attraction for him; the emphasis on avoiding excesses and fulfilling familial responsibilities strike a chord in his own life...
...First you sort it out and find out how racist you are," Hillerman says. 'And then you say, 'How much of culture is based on race?' If you're like me, you find out it doesn't matter that much...
What does matter, Hillerman says, is the common thread that being raised "poor, rural, immensely dependent on the weather, [and] in relative isolation," gives. It is this shared experience that makes him more comfortable at the Two Gray Hills Trading Post in northern New Mexico than at a faculty meeting at Albuquerque's University of New Mexico, where he taught journalism for several years...
...However, Hillerman says that sharing a sense of cultural past brought on by economic circumstances does not always prepare him for covering religions that are not his own. Although he often double-checks his facts with Navaho friends and attempts to watch ceremonies he is going to describe, matters get especially tricky when he moves outside the Navaho and places his characters in settings where religion is an intensely private matter...
...avoid writing about the kachina religion because they have a theology and philosophy that requires secrecy," Hillerman says. "Knowledge of the uninitiated ruins the power." When faced with a scene in which a character would participate in the ceremony, Hillerman finds an outside narrator. That narrator "doesn't see hardly any of it because I don't want to be wrong." But he admits, "even then you make a mistake." Describing a time when he placed a ceremony outdoors instead of inside a hogan, he approaches it philosophically, accepting the purist's criticism...