Archives: Canadian Literature

The Roaring Map, Unheard

Lesson 2.3; Assignment 2.6 –– Colonialism

3) In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.”

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After going over the short account of the case pertaining to the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en claims to ownership of land, as well as the judgement of McEachern, the “map that roared” is referred to by Sparke as one that “evoked the resistance in the First Nations’ remapping of the land: the cartography’s roaring refusal of the orientation system, the trap lines, the property lines, the electricity lines, the pipelines, the logging roads, the clear-cuts, and all the other accoutrements of Canadian colonialism on native land” (468). In short, it is a map that carries the roars of protest and unrest of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people with regards to their claims of the now “Canadian” land, and Judge McEachern who heard its spirit, and yet did nothing.

I’ve been drawing and colouring and labeling the map of Canada for as long as I could remember––being from a Canadian international school, more often than not we would be given the Canadian map and asked to something with it. All of those times it had to do with the land as the Europeans saw it: label the provinces and territories, the capitals, draw the resources of each part of Canada, draw the major trade routes, etc. What the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en map showed was a different Canada, one that they have been drawing over and over again. It’s a view of the land in their eyes, and when represented in court, discounts all of present Canada as everyone else sees it. It’s unknown, strange; it’s not Canada, it’s the First Nations’ land. The map stands as a depiction of the tribes and their settlement as well as their livelihood, and to accept it would mean to accept their claim to the land, one that is blatantly refused. This highlights the very issue of stories and the land, of who was here “first” and who had to rights to something when the very nature of the idea of “rights” are contested by two different groups with differing meanings of the word.

By producing their own map, the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en are pronouncing their entitlement to the land in some way, or to show that this is what Canada is supposed to look like, not what is depicted by the settlers and the colonizers. The redrawing of the land is akin to the First Nations’ reclaiming their land, as if an illustrated representation on paper marks the physical land in the same way. A map of the same land, but also a map of something foreign, roaring for legitimacy.

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Works Cited

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map That Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 463–495. Web. 02 Mar 2016.

Contact: Land and Stories, The One “True” Version

Unit 2.2, Assignment 2.4 – Origin stories

Q1) …Why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

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In The Truth About Stories, King tells of the two creation stories of the pregnant Charm falling through the sky, and of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis. He distinguishes the two stories by describing how he tells them differently and pitches the two against each other as representations of two separate ideologies of religion or thought processes inherent in the natives versus the Europeans. I think King presents this dichotomy in an effort to have his readers consider the ideas beyond––a way of saying that the dichotomies exist, I have shown them to you, now what is underneath that?

King talks about the authoritative voice he uses in his retelling of the Genesis creation myth, and how that is the basis of the European thinking related to hierarchies and power dynamics evident in the culture associated with royals and nobles versus peasants and slaves. On the topic of authority, there has been psychological studies which have identified individuals feeling powerful when in an authoritative position. Studies such as Milgram’s Shock Study and Zimbardo’s Standford Prison Study presents authority as being an idea which could cause people to act wildly out of the norm. In Patros et. al’s report of the “Underlying Effects of Authority: Past to Present”, they state that “[a]n unequal balance of power in a group setting can lead otherwise normal human beings to behaving tyrannically”. If, in such extreme cases, authority has been proven to have such adverse effects on people, then the effect of the “authoritative voice” used by King to tell the story of Adam and Eve is one which establishes power and dominance over the more peaceful and balanced Charm creation story. As Lutz writes in “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again”, “stories function to redress power relations between the native and newcomer” (13), and this is made apparent in King’s address of the difference in style of the telling of the creation stories.

The dichotomy between the two is not so much as a dichotomy but rather, perhaps, a pyramid, because there always needs to be one “true” story, and the one with the most authority, the one which seems to hold more power and command sits at the pinnacle whilst the plethora of other tales are spread underneath and creates a base of which the authoritative story has power over. In short, because of the nature in which the Adam and Eve story is told, it is unconsciously being labeled as a “true” story for containing authority.

King uses this distinction to highlight the inherent differences in the stories and therefore the opposing ideologies of a power driven culture versus a balance driven culture. Through the dichotomies he presents to readers, he is able to also emphasize the parts which do not fit so tidily into the row of dichotomies, of the influences and interplay of histories and stories of natives and Europeans outside of the obvious contrasts. By doing so, King paints the larger picture of the dynamics of the relationships between the two different peoples and the complexity of maintaining and managing such relations when the other is presented as otherworldly.

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Works Cited

Cherry, Kendra. “The Milgram Obedience Experiment.” About Psychology. about.com, 16 Dec. 2015. Web.

     19 Feb. 2016. <http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm>.

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European

      Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. PDF.

Patros, Jennifer, et al. “Underlying Effects of Authority: Past to Present.” URC. Undergraduate

     Research Community, 5 Nov. 2006. Web. 19 Feb. 2016. <https://www.kon.org/urc/v6/

     patros.html>.

“The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The BBC Prison Study. N.p., 2008. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.

     <http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/bbc-prison-study.php?p=17>.

Revelations of Home

Assignment 2.3 –– Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find.

After reading the posts of my fellow students, I realized the ones I read focused on the idea of home as constantly moving, or rather, uncertain. Because I am an international student, that idea resonates with me, as there is always a discrepancy between the “home” in Hong Kong and the “home” in Vancouver. There is the struggle where family or friends try to assert that one place is your home, but you’re not sure yourself, because you belong to both places yet neither of them at the same time. There is also the knowledge of a distant home, but not being able to identify with it or being unable to feel comfortable because there isn’t the same sense of security as opposed to the one you grew up in, even if that “home” is supposed to be the home.

My Sense of Home

Unit 2.1, Assignment 2.2 –– Home and what it means to me.

February 8th is the first day of the Chinese New Year of 2016 , and this is the time of year where my homesickness is at its worst. I’m not talking about just missing home, but aching for home, for Hong Kong, or as some of my friends have called it “Home Kong”. I remember my first year away from home I was experiencing that longing so badly that as soon as I heard gongs and drums from outside I immediately ran to my window to try and hear it better. Chinese New Year for me is like Christmas for some people; I get good food, see relatives I only see once a year, get caught up in the festive atmosphere, and most importantly, I get lai see (red pockets). But now, being away from all that, I’ve realized it’s more than just what we do, but it’s more the tradition of it––everything from preparing the house and the food, the fortune box, the red banners with golden imprinted letters of some auspicious phrase… The feeling surrounding Chinese New Year, the sense that “home” is more than place, that it includes traditions and culture, but also the people that celebrate and help create the festive, joyful atmosphere where I can fully immerse myself in.

Hong Kong New Years Fireworks Celebration

Hong Kong New Years Fireworks Celebration

Then these same people go on and cause something like the #fishballrevolution. The immediate reaction and the initial thought is: “This isn’t home. How can this be Hong Kong?”

Many of my friends have been posting on social media sites about this riot over fishballs and commenting that this is not the Hong Kong they know, nor is it the place they grew up in. But it is one and the same, just that circumstances have changed. When people talk about Hong Kong, we talk about the people of Hong Kong like they are an entity separated from the mainland China. Talk to any Hong Konger and they will tell you vehemently that we are not a part of China. We are, but we aren’t. We are more polite, more proper, more “civilized”, more free. The discrepancy between the peaceful civilized identity we built and the violence during the fishball riot is hard to reconcile, and so our response is that of denial. How can this be Hong Kong when we have always boasted of our civility to only act like barbarians over fishballs? Granted, this is a result of the #umbrellamovementHK and its unresolved tensions between the government and the people, but still.

I made a post titled identity crises back in 2014 for another class, talking about the colonization of the city I grew up in and how that has affected the people and their perceptions of their home. Hong Kong is an international city and the most visited city in the world, but underneath all the glamour and bright flashing neon signs is the identity that is shifting constantly, balancing between becoming the international city from Chinese backgrounds. That is who I am too. An international student from an international school, not quite local enough to be truly a Hong Konger, but not really Canadian enough to be Canadian either. So what is my sense of home? I’m not really sure anymore, but I feel it’s beginning to shift too.

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Works Cited

Chor, Laurel. “Graphics showing why ‘Hong Kong is not China’ go viral.” Coconuts Hong Kong. N.p., 2 July 2015. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.
<http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2015/07/02/graphics-showing-why-hong-kong-not-china-shared-widely>.

Iyengar, Rishi. “6 Questions You Might Have About Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution.” Time. N.p., 5 Oct. 2014. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.
<http://time.com/3471366/hong-kong-umbrella-revolution-occupy-central-democracy-explainer-6-questions/>.

Kwong, Vincent. 元旦日旺角舞獅2015. Youtube. N.p., 1 Jan. 2015. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obEB6gT9YbA>.

Moss, Stephen. “Is Hong Kong Really Rioting Over Fishball Stands?” the Guardian. N.p., 9 Feb. 2016. Web. 9 Feb. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2016/feb/09/hong-kong-fish-ball-revolution-china-riot>.

How Evil Came to the Little Boy’s World

Lesson 1.3, Assignment 1.5 –– This week is story time! I have a great story to tell you. It begins like this:

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a little boy. Now, this little boy was very naughty and he loved pranks, because he loved to have fun. To other people though, they saw him as nothing but trouble.
He would leave the shepherd’s gate open and let the sheep run loose, watching as they ran all over the place. He would let the pigs run through the streets with paint buckets tied to their necks so it dyed the town in all colours of the rainbow. He would take the baker’s bread and put it in the most innocent people’s baskets just to cause a scene. This little boy was not bad by nature, but he just loved to have fun, though he would always come home with some prank played on him. Not that he minded though, as long as people were having fun, right?

He wasn’t really afraid of getting scolded either, because the villagers would never get seriously mad, and surely they know he means no harm. It’s for the fun of it, you know? And so the boy kept doing what he was doing, each prank more elaborate and diabolical than the last.

But one day, after the boy played a particularly bad prank that resulted in some people getting hurt, the villagers have had enough. They refuse to keep up with his antics any longer, and anything they did to give him a taste of his own medicine was met with either laughter, a smile, or went completely unnoticed. So the villagers consulted the wise woman of the town, because she was the eldest, the wisest, and the mother of many. The wise woman listened to the villager’s complaints, nodding at appropriate times and waited for them to finish. When they have said their piece, the old woman thought and thought, and decided the best way to deal with the little prankster boy was to tell him a story.

“A story? What good would that do?” criticized a villager.

“Stories are wondrous things,” replied the wise woman, “And they are dangerous.”

So the old woman invited the little boy to her cottage one evening, after he had successfully pulled another couple pranks during the day, and gave him some dinner and a little dessert as well. Then, she started telling her story about a little boy in a land far far away, once upon a time, that loved to play pranks on people. The story included some details of pranks, some antics and some fun, but those things did not last. The story was overrode with misfortune and misery, accidents and injury, pain and trouble, and suffering and sadness shadowing any fun the pranks could ever provide. The little boy put his hands to his ears and shook his head, refusing to listen to the story, but the old woman continued anyway. Her voice reached the little boy through his closed ears, and when she was done, the little boy, crying, said “Okay, I understand. But what you said was not very fun. Take it back. Call the story back!”

But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. And the little boy dared play a prank again.

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When I began the story, I feel like I assumed a persona, or a type of storyteller-vibe. I could tell I was speaking softer and with more clarity than I would normally in everyday conversation. I was also speaking slowly and more articulate than usual. The story isn’t very flushed out, and I’m not sure if I represented it in the right way, but the “evil” was the little boy’s realization of his actions through listening to the old woman’s stories. Though the one written by King is about how evil came to the world as a whole, I think everyone also realizes and recognizes a sense of “evil” themselves. In their own world, when evil came, whether through criticism or self reflection; the evil that is entirely their own.

Chamberlin: “Different Ways” Leading To The Idea Of Complete Denial of Others

Assignment 1.3–– This weeks question:

Figuring out this place called home is a problem (87).  Why? Why is it so problematic to figure out this place we call home: Canada? Consider this question in context with Chamberlin’s discussion on imagination and reality; belief and truth (use the index).Chamberlin says, “the sad fact is, the history of settlement around the world is the history of displacing other people from their lands, of discounting their livelihoods and destroying their languages” (78).  Chamberlin goes on to “put this differently” (Para. 3). Explain that “different way” of looking at this, and discuss what you think of the differences and possible consequences of these “two ways” of understanding the history of settlement in Canada.

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Chamberlin discusses many different perspectives of looking at the history of settlement in Canada. The “different way” of looking at how displacing people from their lands, “of discounting their livelihoods and destroying languages” is that they are also “dismissing a different belief or different behaviour as unbelief or misbehaviour, and of discrediting those who believe or behave differently as infidels or savages” (78). This reminds me of the sociological concept of the “other” and of the fear or apprehension associated with the unknown, the unfamiliar, the strange. By taking away or dismissing the Aboriginals’ belief and behaviour, the settlers have effectively eradicated their identity (because that is what defines people, of who they are: their behaviour, their beliefs), writing off complex history and culture by slapping “laws” and “treaties” across their faces.

The two ways of understanding the history of settlement in Canada, then, following Chamberlin’s description, has more to do with the complete disconnection of every aspect between people and place. The eviction of Aboriginals from their homes not only took their land, or as W. E. H. Stanner puts it, their “hearth, home, the source and locus of life, and everlastingness of spirit”, but also their identity and their very existence as a society and community. Not only does it remove them from their land, but it also labels them as being “wrong” or “unnatural” because of their different beliefs and behaviours. This kind of unsettlement of the Aboriginals truly marks them as “homeless”, as they are forcibly removed physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally from their homes. They are, in a manner of speaking both literally and figuratively, denied the essence of their being. And yet, the idea of home still has lingering remains in their language, their stories, and their songs.

Chamberlin says on page 81 that “[a]boriginal people around the world… have turned back to their own languages and literatures to find ways of recovering the idea of home, and to tell their tales”, that “they feel like strangers in the languages they now speak, in the livelihoods they have been forced to take up, in the literatures they are given to read”. Here is an example of the idea of home: it holds no physical place, no belonging but only that through language and histories of ancestors and past generations. While taking a music class in high school, we studied Inuit throat singing as part of our curriculum, and the idea of the Aboriginals returning to their languages and traditions reminded me of the revival and raising awareness of this type of entertainment between women when men are out hunting. Throat singing is a part of the Inuit identity, and the interest of a younger generation in the art is a step towards them rediscovering the “differences” in behaviours and beliefs which were denied by others centuries ago, knowing that that difference is what makes them feel at home.

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Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print. 22 Jan. 2016.

Griffith, Sian. “Keeping Inuit Throat Singing Alive in Canada | All Media Content | DW.COM | 18.03.2015.” DW.COM. 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 22 Jan. 2016.
Zuleyka, Zevallos. “What Is Otherness?” The Other Sociologist. 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.

Hello! (:

Hi, everyone! Welcome to my Canadian Literature page! This is the second time I have used a blog for a class so for convenience sakes I just decided to categorize my posts so I don’t have to make a completely new one and fumble through again. Feel free to browse around!

My name is Cherie, and I am a third-year English Lit. major and Management student here at UBC. Many people have asked me why I’m pursuing a major in English and they always ask “what are you going to do with that? Are you going to be a teacher?” to which the answer is a resounding “no” because I, sadly, just do not have enough patience. In response to those inquiries, I’ve decided to do something about it by enrolling in the dual degree program offered here in order to quell the “what are you going to do with your life” questions, because I honestly don’t know and giving the “I’m in management” answer somehow seems to satisfy them better than “I’m in English Lit.”.

Moving on! I’m an international student from Hong Kong, and I have lived there all my life so the big move to Vancouver was an entirely new experience for me. Most of the time I’m just struggling with how cold it is here (it was 24˚C in HK when I went back this Christmas break. Yay… Global warming..!)

Being from a small city, my holidays generally consisted of traveling and exploring the South East Asia area with family and friends. Needless to say, I really like to travel, and have even visited Tokyo to see a friend there on exchange this past Christmas break.

Tokyo from Roppongi Hills, looking at Tokyo Tower

Tokyo from Roppongi Hills, looking at Tokyo Tower 

It was really fun because I got to do things I wouldn’t normally do with my parents–– really getting into the local and small, out of the way shops to try their food or look at their crafts. I would say my dream is to travel the world, but who doesn’t dream of that? (:

My interest in this course mainly comes from the fact that I am a Canadian (I was born in Toronto then moved back to Hong Kong when I was 3 months old) and that I attended a Canadian International School growing up. Though I have some Canadian knowledge, it’s not all too in depth and there are still some large gaps left to fill, and I hope by participating in this course and by reading the literature of Canadians, my understanding of what being “Canadian” means will deepen and broaden.

I look forward to getting to know you all!!

Cherie.