In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story.Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to the story.

This assignment was extremely eye-opening. It’s not hard to argue that the person who is telling a story and how they tell it changes the story itself and how it is received. By following the assignment directions, I saw the difference in reception of the story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” change and shape the reception and interpretation of the story. I read the story silently by myself, read it out loud to my roommate, and had another roommate read the story out loud to me. Each time reading changed the story and shed a new light on the effects that changes in medium can have on translation.

The first step of the assignment was to read this story silently to myself. This story made a certain amount of sense. I immediately categorized it as a fairy tale or folk tale after seeing that, in the beginning, the syntax really confused me. I got the general meaning of the sentences, but got lost in each individual sentence and was distracted from the main story many times, and at times had trouble vizualizing exactly what was happening. The ending, also, didn’t really resonate with me as much as I thought it would—I think because of how much I was slowed down by syntax. As Thomas King writes in “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial”, “Non-Natives may, as readers, come to an association with these communities, but they remain, always, outsiders” (King, 189). I felt like an outsider looking in at this story. This culture isn’t my culture, and I had assumed even before reading that this story would not fit into my traditional “modern western” idea of a story and its plot. I could clearly see that this story was meant to be told out loud, as King alludes to in Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.

While reading this story out loud to my roommate, I knew that I would get really into telling the story. I had already pictured how I might read it out loud, and I was right about many of the choices I would make. I found that I was being very physical, I gestured almost every sentence. There are a lot of physical descriptions, and the way that the story is set up there are many  repetitive space descriptions within the story. For one example from many, discussing spears, the story reads, “Handlebar so big,” (73). With this, I gestured with both of my hands out. Once read aloud, it becomes more obvious that this tale was meant to be read out loud to another person.This made such an alarming difference in my understanding of the story as opposed to when I just read it silently. It felt more like a performance of a meaningful play, or something similar—which could possibly be tied into feeling as an outsider.

When I had my other roommate read the story aloud to me, I was shocked at how different an interpretation I had of the story even after hearing it twice. My other roommate had been present for my reading, and she isn’t white—she wanted to be the one to read the story, and believed that as someone who hasn’t benefitted from white privilege, she might be able to give a different interpretation of the story. I think that, when hearing the story from another person, you feel a sense of community within the characters and their communities. You can see the emotion of the characters and their values.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190.

Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.

I wipe the fog off the mirror.

The bathroom fan doesn’t work. We’ve texted our landlord about it, and he keeps saying he’ll come to fix it, but he hasn’t come. So when we take showers, we have to open the crank window as wide as possible to let out the steam, so the mold on the ceiling doesn’t overtake the entire bathroom.

I miss home. I miss my working bathroom fan, the bathmat that wasn’t soggy. I miss being able to shower for more than 10 minutes before the water becoming cold.

I look over and see the crisp winter air battling the steam of the bathroom. My breath joins the battle. I have fifteen minutes to get dressed, do my makeup, grab my school stuff, and get to the bus stop. So I hustle.

On the bus, I listen to my sad playlist. I can’t stop thinking about home. I miss home.

I barely know my roommates. It’s been a month since I’ve moved here, to attend school. I like them, of course… but I miss my parents, my friends, my cats. I miss the sunny weather and the way my house smelled.

I barely make it to class. I barely listen to the lecture. I attend two more, same drill, and wait for three crowds of people to board the bus before I can get on one. I stand the whole ride home.

My roommates are laughing in the kitchen when I get home. I greet them. They ask about my day, and I give some bland response. I ask about theirs, and they explain their classes. I put a pot on the stove. The burner won’t turn on. With this house, it seems like there’s always something, I think unenthusiastically.  I try one..two…three more times before the flames finally explode up and around the pot. I’m boiling water for spaghetti, which has somehow become my broke-student-attending-university-meal. I stare at the noodles. My roommates talk about what scary movie to watch, and I pipe up with some dumb slasher film that used to scare my pants off.

To my surprise, they agree. We laugh about the over-the-top gore, the blood raining down from the skies, the shrieks that the female actresses give before anything has even happened. I feel a bit better. We say goodnight, and all I can think about is how much fun that was.

The next morning, I get up. I sigh about my inevitable cold shower, the freezing air coming in from outside, and riding the bus. By the time I get to class, I’m miserable again. I count down the hours until I can ride back. I’m tempted to take a taxi instead of riding the bus, even. I just miss home.

By the time I get to the house, I just want to sleep.

“Hey!” I hear my roommate shout from the living room. They’re playing a board game.

“Come play with us,” she grinned, “I need another person to beat!”

I thought about sleeping, but there was something drawing me to the living room.

“What game?!” I ask, setting my bag down and joining them.

The next morning, I get up. I’m a little less anxious for my cold shower, the bus ride, and my classes. I let the inevitable rush of cold water motivate me to get out faster, and I make a cup of coffee with the extra time. I pay attention to the lecture, and I find that with my attitude improved, I actually enjoy the subject. I decide to call my landlord about the shower, and he says he has the tools to fix it and is coming over later tonight.

And I realize… I’m starting to feel at home.

I wrote this story from experience, with a few of the details changed slightly, to represent that a large part of my definition of “home” lies within the people around me. I was feeling extremely depressed when I first came up to UBC, and my roommates are a very large part of why I don’t feel that way anymore. Being separated from my community back in my hometown was really jarring for me, and it took me awhile to accept that I needed to start building a new one here to start feeling at home. My house is old and rickety and has a whole slew of problems, which can sometimes be annoying, but I’ve come to like them. I’ve come to love my home.

I have a great story to tell you.

Once, a very long time ago, before there were houses and cars and maps and stories—before there was language or community or stories to even tell, there was a small, childlike creature.

The creature was lonely. It existed in a place that was neither here, or there… of course, there was no way to know this, as there were no maps, and nowhere to precisely “be”.

But there it was. It existed. It was an enigma.

It was puzzled with it’s own existence—but not as we are. It was less, “Who am I?” And more, “How am I?”. It posited this question over and over, until it created its own reality.

This reality would eventually become what we know as our world. But nothing even close to resembling our world existed yet. This world was darker. But this darkness was not bad, or evil—yet. This darkness was simply dark because there was no light. It was as if there was a lump of coal (despite coal not existing) sitting in a pile of soot.

So the creature created something. Because it was lonely. The mere existence of the creature in a place, that was here, was not enough. So the creature created water. It put the water on the lump of coal in the pile of soot, and suddenly the lump of coal almost resembled our world as we know it. There was the coal, and the water.

But it wasn’t enough. The creature was still lonely, and the slow lapping of the water reminded the creature of this. So it created flora. It covered almost any surface on our world that wasn’t already covered in water: and some that were.

But again, it wasn’t enough. The creature was craving something more. This was a beautiful creation that this creature had made, but it needed more. It couldn’t stand being so… lonely.

So it made fauna. It created life. But the life did not interact with the creature—it couldn’t.

So the creature created humans. But the humans, despite looking at the creature, did not show gratitude towards the creature. And it was still lonely.

So the creature made the life flawed. It made us flawed.

For fauna: it created the circle of life. It created the need to destroy to survive. It created evil in humans hearts, to curse the life that the creature had made.

It may be haunting to hear about why we live with evil, why the creature still watches us in envy. But, of course, it’s too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. You now know why we are cursed with the existence of evil.

Reflection:

In creating this story and retelling it, I found that my personality came out. The repetition was something that I relished, and that I believe drew my friends and family into the story, but also the interaction with me. I relished telling this story, and the sense of community that telling the story gave me. I appreciated being able to create my own story, although admittedly it was hard to come up with something at first. I sort of decided to focus on a single and all-powerful omnipotent being, similar to, as King points out, Genesis does (King, 24). I loved reflecting on why this was–I’m not religious even in the slightest, and I usually appreciate a story that isn’t so static as the one I’ve just told. But I enjoyed telling it. Whether or not I would enjoy hearing this story, I have no idea. I’m sure my personality will get lost over the internet, but I enjoyed this assignment nonetheless.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2010.

While language contains a lot of different aspects (gestures, tone, and grammar, to name a few),  words are the most basic aspect of communication. We type, talk, and text words every day to communicate our feelings, intentions, and stories. As Chamberlain says, “Words make us feel closer to the world we live in,” (Chamberlin, 1). So why is this?

The most obvious answer to this question (the question of why we feel connected through words) seems to be that words are how we communicate. I think that an interesting aspect of communication is storytelling. Passing along information, beliefs, and values through storytelling is, what TIME argues, makes us human. We connect through stories, and expand our world views. Growing up, learning lessons, and developing a moral compass can all stem from community and family stories being passed down. The TIME article mentions a few interesting aspects of storytelling that I believe reflect the power of words. The first example of words being important to us and connecting, is that the villages with more powerful storytellers resulted in more people being generous in regards to sharing food with each other. This is a strong example of how storytelling, and words, can improve the bonds between our communities and our connection with each other as humans. Words can have a powerful impact upon not only our society, but ourselves. Humans want to be liked by our peers and be held in high regard, and our communication (and words) have a large impact on this.

Language, and more specifically, our words and stories, shapes our culture. This quite literally relates to Chamberlain’s quote above. Our culture, and the world that we live in, is shaped by the stories that we tell and the way that we communicate with each other. How else would culture be shaped? The very notion of community is built on the fact that we can talk to one another, pass on traditions, and develop a mutual understanding between one another. I believe that this is what Chamberlin is alluding to when he refers to stories, “[Bringing] us [closer] to the world we live in by taking us into the world of words,” (Chamberlin, 1).

Sources:

Carlson, Benjamin. “Yes, Language Does Shape Culture.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 Oct. 2013, www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/07/yes-language-does-shape-culture/340451/.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

Kluger, Jeffrey. “How Telling Stories Makes Us Human: It’s a Key to Evolution.” Time, Time, 5 Dec. 2017, time.com/5043166/storytelling-evolution/.