What is the most prominent role of race in the story “Yellow Woman”? What effect does it have on the story’s development? Include two specific examples from the story to support your assertions.

Race—or rather, racial identity—is a common theme throughout Leslie Marmon Silko's "Yellow Woman." In order to answer your question, we must look deeper into the unnamed narrator's struggle with her identity as a Pueblo Native American. Through her affair with a Navajo man named Silva, she contemplates her existence as a mortal and her connection to one of her grandfather's stories. As she travels further away from her home and family, she appears increasingly willing to accept the possibility that she is, in fact, the Yellow Woman.
In a way, the narrator's confusion over her identity actually serves to strengthen her connection with her Pueblo heritage. Though she uses the story of the Yellow Woman to justify her affair with Silva, the narrator frequently reflects upon the similarities between her own life and that of the mythic figure:

I was wondering if Yellow Woman had known who she was—if she knew that she would become part of the stories. Maybe she'd had another name that her husband and relatives called her so that only the ka'tsina from the north and the storytellers would know her as Yellow Woman.

This quote is mirrored in the narrator's understanding that she, too, has a name "that her husband and relatives called her." She is also aware of the fact that she does not live a mythical existence:

I will see someone, eventually I will see someone, and then I will be certain that he is only a man—some man from nearby—and I will be sure that I am not Yellow Woman. Because she is from out of time past and I live now and I've been to school and there are highways and pickup trucks that Yellow Woman never saw.

The main thing to look at here is the fact that the narrator inadvertently calls into question the way mythical stories are created. When taking both quotes into account, you can see that she is not simply assuming the role of a mythic figure. She knows that eventually, she "will be sure that [she is] not Yellow Woman," but at the same time, she speculates on the possibility that the myth comes from a real-life encounter. In doing so, not only does she strengthen her connection to her identity as a Pueblo, she also gives plausibility to the Native American form of storytelling.
In addition to the above, there are a few other routes you can take when looking at how race affects the story. For instance, you can discuss how Leslie Marmon Silko describes the four different "racial identities" (Pueblo, Navajo, Texan, and Mexican). You can also compare and contrast the narrator (Pueblo) and Silva (Navajo)—specifically, how and where they live.