3.3: Names

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I was assigned pages 69-81 in Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water. I chose specifically to focus on three characters from those pages: Ahdamn, First Woman, and Cereno. They share a similar story that goes beyond time and space and seem to parallel and push at each other.

 

Ahdamn
Ahdamn is one of those names that must be said orally in order to understand its reference. It is here that Thomas King merges orality and literacy together. I had initially, before understanding the reference, pronounced Ahdamn’s name in my head as “Ah, dam”. Ahdamn is the biblical Adam and King’s choice to rename Adam helps in “signifying his literal damnation” (Davidson et al. 45).

However, in the excerpt I was assigned, Ahdamn takes up another name: Tonto. Tonto is an American-imagined Indian and sidekick to the Lone Ranger. He was introduced on the radio waves in 1933, a month after The Lone Ranger aired. He was portrayed as a wise and fiercely loyal Indian with broken English, but stereotypical of Indian portrayals of the time.

The rangers in King’s story do not share the same fondness of Tonto as audiences of The Lone Ranger did. “That’s a stupid name, says those rangers. Maybe we should call him Little Beaver or Chingachgook or Blue Duck” (King 71). Again, Ahdamn is given more names, each more and more stereotypically Indian, or at least what is perceived as Indian in the to the white rangers. 

In the end, Ahdamn questions First Woman. He asks, “But who is Tonto?” He never gets his answer as soldiers capture them. Perhaps by having Ahdamn ask who Tonto is, King is implying that Tonto’s existence is unknown to First Nations culture. It further proves the notion that Tonto is a white man’s creation.

 

First Woman
First Woman takes up many identities and can also be assumed to be many as well. From a Christian point of view, First Woman is Eve. She is the one to offer food to GOD and she and Ahdamn eat “those apples and that pizza and that fry bread” (King 69). They live in the garden and ultimately; it is First Woman’s decision to leave it.

Almost in every possible, First Woman is Eve – but only if you view it in the Christian lens. She disobeys GOD and eats the food. She leads Ahdamn out of the garden, in the same way that some Christians view Eve as the reason and the fall of mankind. However, First Woman rejects this identity.

First Woman is able to fluidly assume other identities. In my excerpt, First Woman becomes the Lone Ranger while donning the mask. In this way, she is able to hide her “racial and sexual otherness” (David et al. 106). She becomes both man and white, going from the lowest power of position (Indian and woman) to the highest (white and man).

 

Sergeant Cereno (and the Rangers)
I will not divulge too much into Cereno and the allusions made from King’s choice of name, but rather, I will focus on the connection between the rangers and Cereno. I believe they parallel each other in this excerpt: Cereno and the rangers are both people of the law and have a tendency of projecting their own assumptions, beliefs, and ideas upon the subjects in which they are interacting with.

In Dr. Hovaugh’s office, Sergeant Cereno’s first series of actions is to introduce himself and present his police badge to the doctor. By doing this, he has asserted his position over Dr. Hovaugh even as Cereno is the one entering a place in which he does not belong. In the same way, it is possible to extrapolate this point towards the colonization of Indigenous land. The rangers in the story of First Woman and Ahdamn are the colonizers, killing Indians and taking the land. Cereno’s power is further exemplified when Dr. Hovaugh and Cereno talk about his thirty-eight caliber gun.

Throughout Cereno’s interactions with Babo and Dr. Hovaugh, he is insistent on being called “Sergeant”. He refuses to take up any other name given to him. This is interesting to connect to Ahdamn and First Woman, who easily take up names given to them by the rangers and others alike.

The interaction between Cereno and Dr. Hovaugh can hardly be called an interaction – if you call two people talking and neither listening to the other an interaction. Cereno continues to fire questions at the doctor, while Dr. Hovaugh is lost in his world. Cereno does not care to listen, but rather tries his hardest to get the answers to the questions he is asking. He makes no effort to listen to anything else.

“So, what exactly were they being treated for?”

“Depression,” said Dr. Hovaugh.

“Are they sociopaths?”

“Good heavens, no.”

“But you said they might be dangerous.” (King 76)

The rangers are similar in the way they immediately assume First Woman to be the Lone Ranger and Ahdamn as a dangerous (and stupid) Indian. They do not ask who First Woman or Ahdamn is, but rather forces their assumptions onto them.

 

Names and Assumptions
As someone whom enjoys writing fiction, names are really important to me. Before I can even begin writing any type of original fiction, I spend (way too much of) my time scouring the web for the perfect name with the perfect meaning.

So it is very interesting to me the names King uses and the allusions that come along with it, either directly or indirectly. King doesn’t spend a lot of his time describing his characters to us. He will give us names and from there, we must build the character he wants us to know. Cereno and the rangers do the very same thing; they take the knowledge they have of Indians, of what is dangerous to them, of what needs to be known and not known, and paints what they will of what they think is true.

First Woman and Ahdamn, on the other hand, take on these assumptions and builds from them as well. They do not fight them like Cereno does. It’s an interesting sort of irony that develops between the rangers, and First Woman and Ahdamn. They are being fooled by the very people they call ‘stupid’.

In my opinion, I’m not sure whether it is a good or bad thing that First Woman and Ahdamn must disguise themselves in order to survive. On one hand, it’s clever and funny at the expense of the rangers. On the other hand, the idea of Indian-ness is so skewed for the rangers that First Woman and Ahdamn must adhere to them in order to avoid being killed. And all while First Woman and Ahdamn are Indian themselves.

Again, the theme of ‘what is what’ has surfaced yet again on my blog. There are so many ideas on what things should look like, be, or act. And sometimes these ideas move so far beyond reality that they become fictive realities.

First Woman and Ahdamn are Indian, but at times, they cannot afford to be Indian.

 

References

Davidson, Arnold E., Priscilla L. Walton, and Jennifer Courtney Elizabeth Andrews. Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural Inversions. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2003.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 1993. Print.

3.1: Multicultural in White

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In my ninth grade social studies class, we spent the majority of the year learning about medieval Europe, the Crusades, and then the renaissance. The last two weeks of school, we did express group circles where one group would do a fast-paced read on the part of the chapter that was dedicated to a small piece of a non-European country’s history. For example, for 75 minutes, I learned all about the Qing Dynasty, from the 1600s and all the way to the 1800s.

In tenth grade, we spent a month or two re-enacting the Canadian Confederation. We dressed up, acted as representatives of a Canadian province or territory and voted. We wrote mock ups and memorized the names of important Confederates. We did this until all provinces and territories agreed to become Canada.

In eleventh grade, we played World War. We acted as countries, passed notes around, made allies and attacked others. I also learned Canada has the cleanest water in the world.

In my final year of high school, I took a history course. Everyday, we learned about World War II again. We made notes from textbooks and answered the questions that were basically reiterations of our notes. Our teacher finally gave us an assignment that we could do on our own and I chose to write about the Japanese Internment camps. I got a check for “good job”. After Christmas, I dropped out of the course because I couldn’t be bothered with learning about things I had already learned about the year before. I was also irrationally angry with Archduke Franz Ferdinand (how could one guy create a whole war?!?!)

I do remember learning about the Iroquois in grade four. We studied their culture and made a mural in our classroom of a loghouse. I thought First Nations culture was so amazing. So I was even more excited to write and design a “textbook” about a First Nations culture in grade ten. I got lucky and received the Haida as my topic. The assignment was that we would have to do all the research on our own, develop chapters and categories, write out discussion questions, and design layouts. I vaguely remember talking about potlatches, not exactly understanding what it was and just knowing they were banned for some reason or another.

The point of my long rehash of my historical studies in high school and elementary is to point out that I learned a hell a lot about Europe and hardly anything about Canada (aside from the Confederation). So, imagine my surprise, when in my fourth year of university, and I finally get to learn about Canada – like really learn. As in, not just only pinpointing where Hope is on a map of British Columbia or which Great Lakes are Canadian or American – but learning about Canada during WWII when I thought I had learned it all (all I learned about Canada during the World Wars was that they fought in Passchendaele and everybody forgot they did), or about the Indian Residential Schools that pretty much happened yesterday if we put everything in context with the time frame of the history of the world.

I learned all of this – in detail – in the past few months since first semester. Of course, we dabbled on the Immigration Acts here and there, read literature about Chinese railway workers, but it was never explicit. It was always about the War of 1812, or about the HBC in canoes looking for beavers, or how the First Nations of Canada got small pox and all died.

So in my experiences, why is it that it took me so long to learn about Canada when I live in Canada? Why is it that history seems to only revolve about Europe and the World Wars, and 75 minutes is enough to cover centuries within China? Japan may have invaded Manchuria but why did they do that? What were the effects? Where have all the First Nations gone now that they had supposedly either died from disease and poverty or had “sold” all their land?

In 1988, the Progressive Conservative government passed the Multiculturalism Act that promoted the equality of all cultures and deemed English and French as the official languages of Canada. So Canada became officially multicultural and bilingual.

Vic Satzewich and Nikolaos Liodakis do a good job in summarizing the four principles that guided federal multiculturalism:

  1. The federal government would support all of Canada’s cultures and seek to assist the development of those cultural groups that had demonstrated a desire and effort to continue developing a capacity to grow and contribute to Canada as well as a clear need for assistance.
  2. The government would assist all cultural groups to overcome the cultural barriers to full participation in Canadian society.
  3. The government would promote creative encounters and interchange among all Canadian cultural groups in the interest of national unity.
  4. The government would continue to assist immigrants in acquiring at least one of Canada’s two official languages in order that they would become full participants in Canadian society.

At first glance, the Multiculturalism Act seems to encourage a variety of ethnicities to grow and exist. Although, Satzewich and Liodakis argue that these sentiments of multiculturalism came into policies because of economic reasons: to increase globalization by “embracing” cultures. Taking a closer look at the wording of these principles, the growth of these groups is essential only in the idea that they will eventually contribute to “Canadian society”.

This begs the question: what is Canadian society?

Daniel Coleman talks about the “fictive ethnicity” of a country and how, for Canada, British whiteness “occupies the position of normalcy and privilege” (7). So, although Canada may be multicultural, its history is mainly seen through the lens of the European. It doesn’t even see itself at all. My education of Canadian history in high school shows it.

One of the criticisms of multiculturalism is that it works in a way that ghettoizes cultures. This means cultures, other than the dominant culture, become commodified or as a piece that is only showcased when needed in certain places and certain times. Take the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics for example: in the opening ceremony, “Canadian culture” and Aboriginal culture was mainly advertised. But looking at Vancouver, you can see there is a vast variety of cultures other than the two “main” ones.

How I viewed Aboriginal culture in elementary school was similar to how I thought of Greek mythology. I was only taught its culture in terms of pre-colonialism and given the idea that it was wonderful and special, but that it was something that had ended and which is no longer relevant in modern society. I looked at Aboriginal culture with an air of nostalgia.

Aboriginal culture, to me then, seemed to exist separately, outside of the time frame and space of Canada. Coleman writes, “[…] at the same time that civility involves the creation of justice and equality, it simultaneously creates borders to the sphere in which justice and equality are maintained” (9). In other words, by encouraging multiculturalism, it also draws light to the separation or deviation from the “dominant culture”.

There is also the assumption that these cultures exist but are only allowed to exist so long as the dominant “Canadian society” exists above all else. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French sociologist, wrote about dominant ideals and how these ideals were not always the best ideals. They are only seen as the best and as the majority because the most powerful advertise them in this way. So, to many, Canada’s “fictive ethnicity” seems to be the best ethnicity and all others secular.

A good example of this, comes from a Facebook post a friend of mine sent to me:

click to enlarge

There are several different points of view in this post. The first being the idea that advertisements should all be written in the official languages of Canada. Another is the idea that, if English is not the main language, then French is the only other acceptable one to use. There is also, my favourite, the idea that if this advertisement was written in French, then nobody would be able to read it at all.

The third point of view understands the importance of context. This sign was displayed in Richmond, a city with a large Chinese demographic. So, in an advertiser’s point of view, it would make sense to cater to the major demographic than, say, the Francophone demographic.

So why did Telus not place the ad in English? I’m not sure. Does it have to? Not exactly.

It’s interesting that Canada prides itself in multiculturalism, but language seems to differ from this ideation in this situation. Perhaps it’s because English and French are called the official languages and this distinction is viewed as separate from multiculturalism. Is then multiculturalism and by extension, the freedom to use language, a privilege or a right?

This is yet another criticism of multiculturalism – that ethnic differences are contained within certain places and times. Celebrating ethnic holidays is encouraged, but once the celebration is over and things like the bus ad appear in public outside of the “appropriate” space and/or time, it is no longer welcomed. All because, Canada’s “fictive ethnicity” is essentially British whiteness and this still occupies positions of normalcy and privilege (Coleman 7).

I am not arguing that multiculturalism is “bad” or not good enough. In my opinion, it is less problematic than complete assimilation. However, multiculturalism is not perfect. There are problems such as the underlying assumption that these multiple cultures will eventually assimilate into what is supposed to be the “Canadian society”. What exactly is “Canadian society” then? I believe this definition varies from place to place and time to time. It may very well mean something different to different people.

 

References:

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2006. 14-56.

De Tocqueville, Alexis. “Tyranny of the Majority.” Classical Sociological Theory. Ed. Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, and Indermohan Virk. 3rd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 122-32. Print.

Satzewich, Vic, and Nikolaos Liodakis. “Diversity, Multiculturalism, and Quebec Interculturalism.” “Race” and Ethnicity in Canada. 3rd ed. Ontario: Oxford UP Canada, 2013. 159-87. Print.

2.3: The Truth

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“Tell me the truth,” everyone demands. Not many will demand the written truth.

Keith Thor Carlson, in Orality about Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History, argues that the oral stories of the Salish are just as authentic as the written stories of the Europeans. It is simply another way of knowing.

This type of knowing is just as concerned with authenticity and truth as the European or Western ways of knowing. Carlson explains that in both societies, “it is understood that poorly conveyed or inaccurate historical narratives pose dangers, not only to the reputation of the speaker but to the listening (or reading) audience” (58).

So why is it that orality is often situated outside of authenticity in Western culture? The Salish people are well aware of the dangers of misrepresenting a story. Salish stories bring into the world the spirits of historical actors spoken of and “if a story was imperfectly recalled it was wrong for [Salish historians] to ‘guess’ meaning, to pad, improvise, paraphrase or omit. It was better not to tell” (qtd. in Carlson 59).

This feeling of inauthenticity comes back to what J. Edward Chamberlin describes as a “kind of thinking” (19) – not a kind of a fact or a kind of truth.

It is important to realize that every day, we tell the truth. When confronted, we must tell before we write and even when we write, I believe it is a type of post-orality. When writing, we make drafts and we make changes. We move words around and add in sentences. We come back to it days later and realize something was wrong and we change it.

It is not concrete or as the saying goes, “written in stone” when something is written. Changes can be made before “publishing” and even then, after things are published, interpretations continue beyond that. The reader comes away from it and can add on to this written content with the experiences they have gathered and lived through.

One of the assumptions I take from levelling literacy over orality is the idea that literacy lasts. But as Carlson retells the stories of Mrs Peter and Henry Robinson, paper can be burned and lost. Writing on stone can be broken or misplaced. It can erode and become illegible.

I believe orality, like Carlson says, is yet another way of knowing. As I sit in lectures, I don’t often question my professor’s spoken information. I’ve learned from them and oral Salish stories operate in a similar fashion. The act of speaking is the very same act of writing something down. Once spoken, Salish stories become truths and go out into the world in this way through time and space.

It is interesting to apply this notion of writing the truth to technologies today. Texting is an integral part of our society today, especially among peers, friends, and family. It straddles the border between oral and written language. Although it is written, it is written as if spoken at times. And most of the time, fingers go so fast, nobody takes a second look to what is being typed and interesting things happen.

So yet again, texting is just another way of knowing. Just like writing down stories or telling out loud stories. They are just as authentic. And can equally be untruthful. Not everything written is truth, nor is everything said. But I believe, one should not be considered more advanced or more authentic than the other.

 

References

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.”Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. 43-72. Print.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 04 april 2013.

 

2.2: Context Needed

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My favourite movie is Avatar. It can be summarized as what John Lutz writes, “enter[ing] a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the [Earth]” (32).

And if you have watched the movie, it is quite literally as Lutz described; a white man, Jake Sully, seeing through the eyes of a genetically engineered body called the Avatar that is fused with the DNA of the Earth host and the DNA of the “natives”. Confusing? I know.

Although Jake sees through the eyes of his Avatar, his mind is still far and distant and attached to his body that travelled from Earth. He attempts to see and live like the Na’vi and is eventually accepted as an Omaticaya. But he is always attached to that human body. The Avatar is but a vessel for his human-made mind.

This is how I view Lutz’s assumptions. He is speaking from his own European-made experiences. From his experiences, those who would normally read his writings would be from a European background – not an Indigenous one. To him, the world has advanced towards European beliefs, values, technologies, and culture. To Lutz, Indigenous culture is “distant in time and alien in culture”.

He then calls for readers to engage in this challenge and “step outside and see one’s own culture as alien” and that both European and Indigenous stories must be put under “the same ethnohistorical lens” (Lutz 32).

Lutz’s assumptions are clear. The world looks through the lens of the European. The European must then look at themselves through the lens of another culture’s in order to understand. It is clear in his writing that it was influenced by the Europeanized English-speaking and writing world.

And exactly what is European? Often times, European becomes lumped with American and then extrapolated as white. Normally, when someone in North America says “white”, I assume they mean all people who had an ancestry from Europe – particularly British or French. Similarly, in his writings, Michael Ignatieff imagines Canada through myth. He compares the American myth, or the American Dream to that of Canada’s, which is not a single myth, he says, but “three competing ones, English Canadian, French Canadian and Aboriginal” (13). This is interesting in that Ignatieff, white himself in race, is able to differentiate between two different European cultural groups – but not Aboriginal.

It seems the world has been dichotomized as either European/white or not. Hari Kondabolu talks about a “white minority” in 2042. He says race is is just a way to divide, to generalize, and to socially construct the world we live in. It seems white people are homogenized into one, as well as all minority groups.

This goes back to J. Edward Chamerlin’s notion of “Us and Them”. At least in North America and parts of Europe, “Us” is often equated with white. So in that when Lutz writes for “us” to challenge ourselves to think outside of European constructs, he is talking to the white version of “Us”. (Note that version is not pluralized.)

So the way I view Lutz’s assumptions is with understanding – the understanding that he writes from a background that is dominated by European/North American/white mentality. It’s the understanding that unless the character in a fictional novel is described otherwise, the character is most likely white. And even if the character is described with features that may indicate non-whiteness, the character can be still mistaken to be white unless explicitly informed.

In the same way, the first contact stories told by Indigenous people (described by Lutz) is oralized within the background of a variety of Indigenous cultures. Some scholars may decide to analyze stories and texts only linguistically – not taking into the account the contexts of which when the story was formed, where it came into being, or even by who imagined it into existence. However, I believe contextual background is important along with linguistic analysis. Without this acknowledgement, erasure of differences tends to happen. And so then groups becomes homogenized and with it, individuals become lost.

 

 

References

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

Ignatieff, Michael. “True Patriot Love.” True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada. Toronto: Penguin, 2009. 1-30. Print.

Kondabolu, Hari. “Hari Kondabolu- 2042 & the White Minority.” YouTube, 05 Feb. 2014. Web. 06 Feb. 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85fr6nbiMT4>.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45.

2.1.2: Definitions of Home

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Home:

noun

  1. the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household:
  2. the family or social unit occupying a permanent residence
  3. a place where something flourishes, is most typically found, or from which it originates

These are just some definitions of home in the Oxford Dictionary. Yet the definitions I found in my peer’s blog were vast – literally.

Home is not always a permanent residence. It can be a place with culture, food, and good conversation. These things can move along with you and you can bring them and make anywhere a home – even at a place you feel out of place, you can make it homely.

Home is not always in your blood. Or even human. It is where the dog sleeps, drinks, and plays with you. Or it can be where you play until dusk with smiles and voices that live out of your four walls of your permanent residence. These smiles and voices and feelings stay with us, even when our walls change.

Home is where one flourishes. It is why I believe home is so closely related to our childhoods – to our origins. It is when we grow the quickest and the most, with little delay. We’ve dug our holes and have rooted ourselves in place. But we continue to grow and reach and wrap around places, people, things, and feelings as we go on with our lives, anchoring ourselves into these things along the way.

 

References:

Cheung, Chris. “2.1 Eastern Dreams on Western Shores.” UBC Blogs. 2014. Web. 3 Feb. 2014. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/chrischeung/2014/01/29/2-1-eastern-dreams-on-western-shores/>

“home.” Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, 2014. Web. 3 Feb 2014.

Mohr, Deanna. “Home is Where the Dog is (L2.1 Assignment 2).” UBC Blogs. 2014. Web. 3 Feb. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/deannamohr/2014/02/02/home-is-where-the-dog-is-l2-1-assignment-2/>

2.1: Home

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What is home?

I must have asked myself this question a dozen times in preparation of this post. I’ve written about five different versions of what I think home means to me. And I’ve hit the delete button more than ever.

Home. What is it?

Some people get to choose their homes. Just turn on the television, find the channel for HGTV and watch a bunch of people choose their homes.

I want a house that is within x budget.

It’s got to have tiles throughout.

Three bedrooms would be best.

It’s too windy and right under a flight route.

I have to have elongated toilet seats. Not the round ones.

(If you’ll believe it, this was for one episode.)

My goldfish did not choose his. He has four walls: see through on three sides and with the last one covered by a picturesque view of what a perfect tank should look like. He can see a lot, if he chooses to, or he can turn around and stare at the unmoving green that is forever grown on that one wall. Or, he can turn and see me, staring back at him. Or maybe I’m sitting at my desk with my back to him. Or I’ve left the room and it’s dark. I wonder what he sees in the dark.

I’ve asked my grandparents why they emigrated from Hong Kong and whether they would ever want to live there again. My grandma said she would not be able to survive in Hong Kong if she went back. It has changed too much. She would not be able to recognize the country she grew up in – a place she used to call home.

It makes me wonder about my goldfish, swimming in his home of four walls – three all seeing and another static. He stares at me the most.

My first memory of home was my potty. It was green. It was in the kitchen. I used it… a lot.

(I am now seriously questioning the decision by my parents for putting my potty in the middle of the kitchen.)

My mom is always in my first memories of home. She was the one that fed me macaroni and made sure I ate them all before I could watch Sailor Moon. She was there as I put on my shoes on the steps of our doorway. She was there when I spoke jibberish, thinking it was English, while I ran out into the patio. She was there while she pushed me around in my stroller at the market. She was there when we napped before her work.

She wasn’t there when she left me at my cousin’s house. I broke my arm there. I lost my Sailor Moon doll there. Found it again, only to see it in the hands of my cousin as a “gift” from “someone else”. I rode my bike there; down the steepest hill an eight year old could possibly ride. Past vicious, growling dogs that were scared of closed fists. I did a wheelie there by accident and I thought I was the coolest ever. My cousin would tap the window with her umbrella as a greeting when she came home from school. We made chocolate chip cookies from scratch and ate fudge popsicles and jell-o. There were computers and movies there, and there was Internet and food.

We moved. My sister was born. My grandparents lived with us. I used stools as my table for dinner because real tables were too big for me. My sister and I played drive-thru on the balcony. I slept in my sister’s cot because her bed couldn’t fit my grandmother and her when she was scared and wanted company. She threw up on her own sheets and I was forced to use them afterwards (Washed, of course. She can tell which sheets were the puke-stained ones). I waved good-bye to my mom and screamed out the window every morning before her work. The neighbours complained about me, but I only got to see my mom for thirty minutes each day. Dairy Queen was right next door. My grandma had a dragon fish that grew bigger than my whole arm but my grandfather scared him to death. She threw the fish away into the trash at Dairy Queen. My sister and I had secret passageways around the complex that weren’t actually that secret in hindsight.

We moved again, without my grandparents. It was lonely. It was cold. But we had the biggest backyard. I accidently dropped the metal rod for the toilet paper into the toilet and we had to install a completely new toilet. My dad held a BBQ with his employees while I watched TV and heard the same toilet flush at least a hundred times, non-stop. People sure peed a lot. Our laundry machines were outside and my mom complained all the time. The kitchen was unusable but the wok kitchen was okay, although small. The walls were yellow – pee colour.

It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten what I named him. My whole family thinks I’m crazy for loving a goldfish this much and my friend calls my fish the devil because of his size (longer than my whole hand and wrist!). He’s just too awesome for them to handle.

We moved again. I lived on the other side of the city and my friends all complained about how far I was. But I was the one living far, not them. I don’t see why they got to complain when I should be. Our neighbour is called The Birdman because the first day, he poked his head over the fence and he sure looked like a peach parrot with his long nose. I got into a fight with my sister, scared the neighbours who then called the cops. I bought a fish tank and my mom and sister decided to buy eight tropical fish for a freshwater tank. They all died in a week. I went to the Night Market, won (saved) three fish. Two died and the last one is still living with me.

He’s been in the same tank for four years and more. He might get a new one. I might move it downstairs, or upstairs, or into another room. I wonder what he would think if I moved him. Would he know his home is still his home, just in a different area of my house? Or would his sense of surroundings change with his sense of home?

But, as I remember my sense of home, it is not fixed to one place, or one time. It is a rambling stream of consciousness. Memories that might mean nothing to some people, but mean everything to me. They are scenes in my life that don’t need context to have meaning and which are all connected to my idea of home.

Although, it’s hard to call a place home if it has been changed beyond recognition and memory recall. It’s hard to call a place home if you did not choose it. What if your home was four glass walls and you were able to see as far as your eye would let you but you could touch nothing? Would it still be a home? Surrounded by things untouchable? Things that do not belong to you?

I didn’t like some aspects of my home at first, but I learned to love other parts of it. The bad things still stay with me, as well as the good. I believe home is memory and feeling. I believe it is also the good and the bad. If you can call something home, I think it’s better than not being able to call anything home.

1.3: Evil’s Story

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I have a great story to tell you. And it’s about me, Evil.

Yes, me, Evil. My name is Evil. You might have heard of me. Faint whispers in the dark, that cold breeze that tangles your hair into knots and draws marks on your skin, and that eerie feeling you get looking too long into someone’s eyes.

I came to this world all on my own. Not with Good. Everybody always pairs me up with Good. And Good always gets all the credit. It’s always “Good conquers Evil” or “Good wins in the end”. I never seem to be able to get rid of Good. It’s like an itch way down in a place you can’t reach – annoying and frustrating. I was here first, not Good. Or God. Whatever you want to call Good.

But anyway, I’m Evil. Not Good. Don’t get us confused.

Don’t get me confused with my friends either. Lust is great and beautiful – all kinds of positive – but she is a little excessive at times. She’ll have you on your knees, begging for more and then, she’ll flake on you. Just like that. She’ll disappear and you’re left with empty hands and empty pockets.

Gluttony will probably fill that emptiness. He’ll shower you with the richest, warmest foods. Food that drips with hot, sweating oil, and smells that fill the whole room until you’re suffocating for fresh air.

Greed is good friends with Gluttony. They’re very similar, except Greed hates to share. She has so much money that it would make Smaug salivate until the fire inside of him goes out.

And if you want to learn how to get absolutely nothing done, find Sloth. He’s always in his room. I don’t think he’s even seen the light of day. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him.

But, of course, I can’t forget about Wrath. Don’t ever forget about Wrath or you’ll have to face him. And he is not a pretty sight.

Envy and Pride are two peas in a pod. They work well as a unit, always trying to rise to the top and always looking down their noses at everyone else. They are very good at what they do and will do almost anything to obtain what they want. Be wary of them, but aim to be them. That’s my advice.

So be careful. Don’t get me confused with Good and my seven deadly friends. They will tell you things – crazy stories – and you won’t know what to believe. And you will be left with dreams and half-awake fantasies of the unimaginable, teetering on the edges of sense and nonsense. Don’t listen to them, trust me, because once you do, you won’t be able to forget them.

So let me tell you my story. It’s better than any story you will ever hear from lousy Good or any of my lousy friends. It’s a story that’s won me many contests, especially with the Witches of Silko who are always looking for the best, the scariest, and the most kingly of things. It was so great they told me to take it back; they wanted to forget it. I’m guessing so I could tell them all over again.

So sit down, get comfortable, and listen. I have a great story to tell you.

*

I wrote this version of the story intending to replicate the same reaction I had with the original retelling of Leslie Silko’s story by Thomas King. Of course, I wrote it in a much more overt way than the way King told it. After telling the story to my two younger sisters, I got the reaction I wanted. And felt –well – an evil glee upon witnessing their expected pain of not knowing what the “great story” is. I found an irony in not knowing exactly what the story full of “murderous mischief” was and designed my story in the same way. Truly, this is one form of evil: hooking someone in with words and promises and never fulfilling them.

 

References

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2003. Print.

1.2: Meaning is in the Mind of the Beholder

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What if blue is not blue? Who decided blue would be called blue? What if the person who decided blue was blue looked up at the sky during the night and decided the night sky was blue?

There is a 55-hectare spaced land in the centre of Richmond which has been under much ownership debate for many years.

These are some questions I wondered about after watching a clip from BBC Horizon about the Himba tribe. The people of the Himba tribe see colours differently from English speakers. It’s amazing to realize how impactful words can be on us as humans and how it can change the way we perceive the world. For the Himba, it is easy to distinguish which green is which compared to the English speaker. There was no hesitation and no questioning. That particular “green” was different from the other “greens”.

J. Edward Chamberlin says in his book, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground, “living in the real word depends on our living in our imaginations” (125). I believe when he says this that he is suggesting there is no real solid divide between reality and imagination. He calls the choice of choosing between these two “false choices”. Each reality is different for each one’s imagination.

There are many words for things in reality that don’t exist in the English language. One of the most common struggles I have growing up using Cantonese as my other language is trying to explain to non-Cantonese speakers in English about something that seems to only exist in the Cantonese language. Take example the word “nonsense”. In English, it means something that either has no meaning or sense, or behaviour that is foolish or unacceptable. However, in Cantonese, mo liu means that and more. It’s a feeling too. You can feel mo liu or you can feel something is mo liu. You can’t really feel nonsense in English. Something can seem nonsensical, but can you really feel it?

Non-Cantonese speakers probably don’t know what I’m babbling about. I don’t expect them to. Maybe there is a way to explain mo liu in one perfect English word or phrase, but I just don’t know it yet. For now, the reality of that feeling only exists to me and other speakers of the Cantonese language.

Chamberlin touches upon briefly the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, or what is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. It is the idea that language can shape our thought processes and thus the way we see the world. I would argue that language can help to shape the way we see the world, or at least how we name or describe it. Even without a word, things exist but with a word to name it, these things seem clearer and closer to understanding. Chamberlin writes, “Naming things is one of the oldest forms of storytelling” (127).

Ultimately, Chamberlin’s goal is to find common ground. This is difficult when we feel the need or are forced to choose these “false choices” – between what is common ground and what is not. I don’t believe there can ever be a true common ground where everyone agrees what something should be (or, say, what English word best represents mo liu). It is why when Canadians are asked, “What is a Canadian?” you can get about a hundred and four different answers. Some are agreed upon and some are not. But they are all valid representations of what a Canadian is – according to the answerer.

I am privileged to have two languages and to be able to see the world through several lenses. I do not see the world exactly the same way as my mother or my father, but they gave me my language and my Chinese culture. The fact that I can think something is nonsense as well as feel it as mo liu, brings me closer to the reality that I imagine for myself everyday.

I don’t believe common ground is the attempt to find similarities while discounting the differences, or choosing what is considered important to keep as shared values. But rather common ground is being able to understand and acknowledge the many words a language can create for someone. And also understanding how each language, or culture, exists at the same time and is all relevant to everything in its own unique way.

Just because you think it is nonsense, does not mean it is nonsense to another.

 

 

References
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.
Lilienfeld, Scott O. “Linguistic Relativity: Language Gives Thought A Gentle Nudge.” Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon, 2011. 347. Print.

1.1: Oh Hello

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There are many voices in every story, even if you can only hear one. Coming from a rather loud family with two other sisters, I know what it’s like to almost hear half a dozen voices at once and attempt to pick which one to listen to or not.

My name is Cristabel Koo, but you can call me Crista. I’m a fourth year student majoring in English literature and minoring in sociology. I have recently taken a seminar course on Canadian autobiographies and most (pretty much all) of my knowledge on Canadian literature is from that awesome class. However, before that, I came into my studies initially interested in gender and sexuality discourses in literature, or what is called Queer Theory. Yet as I progressed in my studies, I was reminded how, as gender and sexuality is fluid, other matters of intersectionality flow into these realms as well. I was not only realizing the flexibility of gender and sexual identity, but how identity is also impacted by cultural landscapes.

Wah’s book is written like an autobiography and talks about his life growing up in his father’s diner. It’s a bit of a tough read but I have the idea that Wah is a tough guy and that’s pretty cool.

As a Canadian born Chinese, my experiences in Canada would differ from common historical narratives found in Western colonialist culture. Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill is one of those stories I can relate to. He writes about living in the hyphen, or in a place that straddles the doorways of whiteness and Chineseness and how that all comes together to create what he sees as Canadian. Attempting to understand where you are and who you are in certain places is something I feel that is common in forming Canadian identity.

On the same vein, English 470A Canadian Studies will explore the experiences of European and Indigenous Canadians and how these experiences are passed on through literature and oral tradition. These stories can be used to cement canons of Canadian literature or even at times, break them down in order to create new narratives. These narratives help to create a sense of identity, or in relation to the course, a Canadian identity. However, it is important to understand Canadian identity is not one solid idea. It is many and goes beyond just Western colonizing narratives. As Northrop Frye writes, the “Canadian identity has been profoundly disturbed, not so much our famous problem of identity […] but by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity.” These paradoxes being the many differing and conflicting histories and experiences of Canadians. The course will focus on how each voice and story has a legitimate part in creating a Canadian literary canon – more specifically, whose voice and story is heard, or unheard, and whose histories makes it into the canon.

Really Professional Photo taken from my very professional iPhone at the Museum of Anthropology

This brings in the debated idea of authenticity and legitimacy of Canadianism. We are often surrounded by First Nations art – from the Canucks logo to the walkway entering Canada when you arrive from international flights at the YVR Airport – but the stories of these artworks are not always heard. And I am guilty of looking at them with an air of distance and I know it can seem non-Canadian to some. Last term, I attended a mini-class field trip in one of my sociology courses. We visited the Museum of Anthropology on campus. There, the guide walked us through the artwork and artefacts displayed and spoke  of how often people have complained about the legitimacy of contemporary Aboriginal artwork being mixed in with the “traditional”. Upon starting this course, I am reminded of the tour guide’s story and how it raised the question of what can be considered “real” or authentic Aboriginal artwork and what is not. What is Canada then? Who is a Canadian and who is not? Whose work is allowed to pass the mark and whose isn’t? I’m hoping this course will add on to these questions that are very difficult to answer (and probably have no single all-defining answer) and to help me gain knowledge and understanding of the perspectives of European and Indigenous Canadians.

 

References
Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi, 1971. 213-51.
Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest, 2006. Print.