Hi everyone!

For this blog assignment I will be hyperlinking my research on the stories and characters from pages 91-96 and 145-148 (locations 1011-1085 and 1647-1690 on Kindle) of Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water (I am using the Kindle version, so the page numbers may or may not be off by 1 or 2). Note that in-text citations of GGRW will be in the form (King, location/page number) or simply (King, location). The first passage contains the conversation between Babo Jones and Patrolman Jimmy Delano, as well as part of that between Dr. Joseph Hovaugh and Sergeant Cereno. The references that King made throughout Babo’s conversation with Officer Delano were some I missed while reading for the first time, but aided by Jane Flick’s reading notes, my understanding of the references and the novel as a whole were raised to a higher level. As well, I find that Dr. Hovaugh’s search for the four missing Indians interesting, as it somehow parallels colonizers using Christianity and “spreading the word of God” as a justification to conquer Natives’ lands and destroy their cultures. The second passage tells of the interactions between Noah and Changing Woman soon after she falls out of the sky, of which the biblical (and one other literary) references and subtle jabs at Christianity were enjoyable to read and research further.

Babo Jones and Jimmy Delano

The section beginning on page 91 (at location 1011) starts with Babo Jones recalling the story of the four Indians to Patrolman Jimmy Delano. According to Jane Flick, the character of Babo Jones draws from the character of Babo in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, who is a leader of the slave revolt aboard the San Dominick slave ship (145). Babo in Benito Cereno is said to be deceptive; he tricks Captain Benito Cereno into letting his guard down and trusting Babo as a loyal servant, only to ultimately lead the revolution of the slaves aboard the ship against Captain Cereno and his people (LitCharts). Babo Jones from GGRW surely mirrors this deceptiveness when she goes off-topic and asks Officer Delano if he swims, which leads to her mentioning that her “great-great-grandfather was a barber on a ship” (King, loc 1026/92), which is an ode to the aforementioned Babo, the barber aboard the San Dominick from Melville’s Benito Cereno (Flick, 145, 149), only to restart the story after she claims she “keep[s] getting it wrong” (King, loc 1026/92). I noticed that the conversations between Dr. Hovaugh and Babo Jones earlier on in GGRW (before loc 1026/page 92) were sort of disconnected, with Babo usually being slippery or going off-course, so I initially thought nothing of her chaotic storytelling to Officer Delano. Flick’s notes and further research on the novel Benito Cereno, however, suggest that Babo has something to hide about the four old Indians’ escape.

Jimmy Delano, Jane Flick notes, could be connected to Captain Delano from Melville’s Benito Cereno but is more likely an allusion to the politician Columbus Delano (146). According to Flick, Columbus Delano had “defended the [Bureau of Indian Affairs] against charges of mistreatment of the Indians… in South Dakota — despite evidence of rotten foodstuffs and tobacco given to the Indians..” (146). Upon reading more on Columbus Delano, I learned that as Secretary of the Interior, Delano was the first overseer of Yellowstone National Park, instituting a ban on wildlife poaching to protect the biodiversity at the world’s first national park (PeoplePill). I did find more bad than good, however, and also learned that it was Delano’s idea to move Native American populations onto reservations. The way he went about this was to order the slaughter of bison, which was the main source of food and other basic needs for Natives at the time (CBC Learning); 1.215 million bison were slaughtered by Indians to satisfy these needs from 1872-1874 (PeoplePill). 4.37 million bison were estimated to be killed under Delano’s orders, resulting in the destruction of the lifestyle of the Plains Indians and forcing their move to reservations (Peoplepill).

Dr. Joseph Hovaugh

The conversation between Babo Jones and Jimmy Delano is followed by one between Dr. Joseph Hovaugh and Sergeant Cereno. Dr. Hovaugh credits his great-grandfather’s “vision” for the hospital’s existence and also mentions that he was an evangelist (King, loc 1071/95). This is where I think his name, a play on the word “Jehovah” (Joe Hovaugh), which is said to be God’s personal name, becomes of importance. Dr. Hovaugh’s character is the most God-like among all the human characters of GGRW. As God does in Genesis (Flick, 144), Dr. Hovaugh spends much time examining his garden, noticing the dry grass, the yellow leaves, and the old oak during his conversation with the Sergeant (King, loc 1085/96). I think the most striking metaphor that Dr. Hovaugh participates in has to do with his search for the missing Indians. I think this aligns well with Christian missionaries sailing the world to “spread the word of God.” Christianity is closely associated with colonialism; the former was often used as a justification of the atrocities tied to the latter, and this history has the Pope apologizing for these “colonial sins.” Dr. Hovaugh’s relentless search for the four Indians can be likened to Christian missionaries themselves searching for Indigenous peoples to convert into their religion, and it certainly is of note that Dr. Hovaugh himself is the descendant of an evangelist. Another easter egg I thought was noteworthy was how Dr. Hovaugh drives a white convertible Karmann-Ghia. Firstly, it is white, “just the thing for a theological figure,” as Flick points out (146). Secondly, it is a “slightly more upscale car” (Flick, 146) compared to Babo’s Pinto or Alberta’s Nissan, suggesting that Dr. Hovaugh is on a level above the two ladies; indeed, a representation of God.

Noah and Changing Woman

Flick points out that Changing Woman is a Navajo deity (Flick, 152), and King alludes to her being gay during her encounter with Moby Jane, the Great Black Whale (loc 2314), which immediately strikes me as an element of the Native narrative that is in stark contrast to the Bible. In fact, Noah, a Biblical character whom Changing Woman interacts with in pages 145-148 (locations 1647-1690) of GGRW, is portrayed as a misogynist —“Thou shalt have big breasts” is Noah’s “first rule” (loc 1690/148)— and surely not gay, chasing Changing Woman around for months on an island so that they can “procreate,” much against Changing Woman’s will. Note that this “rule” is a reference to the Ten Commandments, most of which start with “thou shalt.”

Flick notes that the line “not wanted on the voyage” is a reference to Timothy Findley’s novel of the same title, which portrays Noah as an abusive tyrant (152). King’s Noah in GGRW shows flashes of this with his rules of anti-bestiality and big breasts as well as this line: “if you can’t follow our Christian rules, then you’re not wanted on the voyage” (King, loc 1690/148). King brings our attention to the rigidity of Christian rules and the ever-prevalent misogyny and hypocrisy in the Church (which I touched on in my previous blog post), by having Noah interact with Changing Woman. She is a creator in the story of The Woman Who Fell From The Sky, which is told in different ways by the four old Indians, but is indeed “all the same story” (King, loc 1690/148). By juxtaposing the tyrannical, misogynistic Biblical figure with a non-binary, female Creator from a fluid Native creation story and bringing them together, King is once again able to highlight the differences between Native and Christian narratives and do so entertainingly.

Works Cited

BibleGateway. “Exodus 20 New International Version (NIV). BibleGateway, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&version=NIV. Accessed March 22, 2020.

CBC Learning. “Plains Indians and the Buffalo.” CBC Learning, https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP1CH1PA6LE.html. Accessed March 21, 2020.

Doyle, Sady. “Misogyny is the Catholic Church’s Original Sin.” 12 Feb 2019, Medium, https://gen.medium.com/misogyny-is-the-catholic-churchs-original-sin-9d616571fd1e. Accessed March 22, 2020.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water” Canadian Literature, 1999.

Jehovah’s Witnesses. “The Divine Name — Its Use and Its Meaning.” Jehovah’s Witnesses, https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/bible-teach/jehovah-meaning-of-gods-name/. Accessed March 22, 2020.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Kindle ed., House of Anansi Press, 2003.

LitCharts. “The Character ‘Babo’ in ‘Benito Cereno.” LitCharts, https://www.litcharts.com/lit/benito-cereno/characters/babo. Accessed March 21, 2020.

PeoplePill. “Columbus Delano: American politician (1809-1896) — Biography and life.” PeoplePill, https://peoplepill.com/people/columbus-delano/. Accessed March 21, 2020.

SiteSeen Limited. “Great Plains Indians.” 16 Jan 2018, WarPaths2PeacePipes, https://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-indians/great-plains-indians.htm. Accessed March 22, 2020.

Soloway, Benjamin. “Pope Francis Apologizes for Church’s Colonial Sins.” 10 July 2015, ForeignPolicy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/10/pope-francis-apologizes-for-churchs-colonial-sins/. Accessed March 22, 2020.

Hi everyone, for this blog post I will be answering question 3, as below:

“What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in ‘The Truth About Stories’?”

The creation stories that I have been most exposed to are the Christian narrative of Genesis and the Big Bang theory. I went to a Catholic school and so for a long time, Genesis was the only creation story I was familiar with. Junior high was when I first encountered the idea of the Big Bang. I remember we were learning about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and because I was confronted with a narrative that conflicted with the only creation story I knew of at the time (Genesis), I did some research and eventually came across the Big Bang theory.

The Big Bang theory differs from Genesis in that according to the latter, we human beings were created by some almighty being, God, soon after (within 7 days) He created light, darkness, and the rest of the world. In contrast, the Big Bang theory is rooted in scientific knowledge and research, particularly in the idea of entropy, which states that the universe is always moving toward a greater degree of disorder. The Big Bang theory argues that all of this universe is constantly expanding, i.e,. space itself expands, and that it originated from a singular atom, which exploded and resulted in this ever-expanding universe.

Because of this nature of being supported by empirical evidence and the fact that learning about Darwinism is what initially led me to the Big Bang theory, I tend to also consider and believe the concept of evolution (not necessarily Darwinism) in conjunction with the Big Bang. Darwinian evolutionary theory states that we homo sapiens evolved from some lesser species after it gained favorable traits for survival that nature has “selected for.” It follows that this “lesser species” also had some predecessor, and so on until we go back to very first living being that was a product of (probably carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen) atoms smashing into one another, resulting in life.

This idea of the accidental creation of life works well with the idea of entropy and the Big Bang theory itself, and contrasts almost entirely with the story of Genesis. I say “almost” because in my personal opinion, the Big Bang does not necessarily discount the idea of a creator. I still do think that there must have been some “God,” some source of energy from which the very first atom originated. Ultimately, we can see that the Big Bang theory models an increasingly chaotic universe, which again points to the concept of entropy.

The story of the Woman Who Fell From the Sky in Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories is more similar, I think, to Genesis than it is to the Big Bang, mainly because of the idea of a Creator that created landscapes, rivers, and humans and/or animals. Genesis says that all of the universe and all life on it was created by God, and while in King’s story, not all of life was created solely by some omnipotent being, Charm and her Twins created the land masses, rivers, mountains, forests, and human beings on Earth (18-20).

There is another common thread between these two creation stories, and that is balance, which contrasts with the chaotic universe painted by the Big Bang. In Genesis, there is good and evil; reverence to God and sin; the Garden of Eden and the wilderness to which God banished Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit. In King’s story, there are Charm’s Twins and everything they created, which do not represent good and bad as much as they symbolize order and chaos. The Twins were a left-handed girl and a right-handed boy. The boy created great plains, rivers that flowed in both directions, roses, and the summertime. The girl, on the other hand, constructed mountains and valleys from the plains, made the rivers rocky and unidirectional, put thorns on the stems of roses, and created the season of winter (King, 18-20).

Lastly, I never realized how Genesis is slightly misogynistic in that it mostly places the blame on Eve for Original Sin, even if in the story, both Adam and Eve partook in the apple that the serpent had handed to Eve. This is unlike the story of Charm, who is depicted as a curious and hungry woman who made the Earth what it is, rather than as the reason for Original Sin. I had only taken this point of view after reading The Truth About Stories where King says that a “less misogynistic reading would blame both” (21), and my colleague Arianne’s blog post where she mentions this point in her response to the question that this very blog seeks to answer. I am always glad to come across new perspectives and am thankful to have encountered this one.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Kindle ed., House of Anansi Press, 2003.

Parker, Julie Faith. “Blaming Eve Alone: Translation, Omission, and Implications of עמה in Genesis 3:6b.” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 132, no. 4, 2013, pp. 729–747. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42912464. Accessed March 09 2020.

Robbins, Arianne. “Assignment 3:2 Ethos of Creation.” 02 March 2020,  https://blogs.ubc.ca/ariannerobbins/2020/03/02/assignment-32-ethos-of-creation/. Accessed March 09, 2020.

Zaikowski, Lori, Wilkens, Richard T. & Fisher, Kurt. “Science and the Concept of Evolution: From the Big Bang to the Origin and Evolution of Life.” Evo Edu Outreach, vol 1, no. 8, 2008, pp. 65–73. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-007-0008-5. Accessed March 09 2020.

The Indian Act of 1876 (hereafter referred to as the “Indian Act”) was created to force First Nations members to assimilate into European settler society and in so doing, destroy their culture, languages, and traditions. The Indian Act included policies that gave the government control over First Nations’ “identity, political structures, governance, cultural practices and education” (Henderson). Note that the Inuit and Métis peoples are not governed by it.

Before the Indian Act came to be, there was the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857, which encouraged Indigenous peoples to renounce their First Nations status — and their Aboriginal treaty rights — in exchange for land from the government and the right to vote. When only one person voluntary enfranchised, the government created the Gradual Enfranchisement Act in 1869, which allowed them to enfranchise First Nations people at will (Henderson). These were then consolidated into the Indian Act in 1876. The paternalistic nature of the Indian Act, its two precedents, and the regulations enforces represents the notion of British whiteness being the norm for civility in Canada and is further evidence of the Europeans’ disrespect for Indigenous’ peoples sovereignty and traditions.

As Henderson outlines, the Indian Act’s main purpose was to generalize a diverse group of First Nations communities, halt the evolution of and essentially destroy each of their cultures, and force their members to assimilate into European settler society. This was achieved in part by a series of policies concerning First Nations “status.” For example, attaining a university degree or a professional license to practice law or medicine stripped one of this status.

By the Indian Act, religious practices such as the potlatch were disallowed in 1884, which prevented the passing down of First Nations’ oral histories and values (Scow, in UBC First Nations & Indigenous Studies). Additionally, as dancing was an important component of cultural expression, dancing off-reservation was disallowed in 1914 and any dancing was outlawed entirely in 1925 (Henderson).

The residential school system was first introduced in the 1894 amendment of the Indian Act. At these schools, Métis, Inuit, and First Nations children were taught to adopt Christianity and to speak English and French, and discouraged from speaking their native tongues (CBC News). Some children even suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, not unlike what has occurred at Catholic (and other Christian) schools across the world.

Positive-impact amendments were made in 1951, as women were allowed to vote in their band council elections, the potlatch was decriminalized, and so was making land claims against the government. In 1969, however, the White Paper that then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau released with goals to abolish First Nations status entirely was met with backlash from the Aboriginals, as eliminating this status would strip these peoples of their rights to reserve lands and accordingly, the right to fish, hunt, and strive for economic development on those lands (Henderson).

Trudeau’s means of abolishing the distinction between First Nations peoples and European settler society status in order to assimilate these peoples into the latter, ultimately resulting in a single nation of “Canadians,” is an example of how Coleman describes fictive ethnicity; the White Paper indeed generalizes First Nations peoples and attempts to represent them, together with European settler society, as a “natural community” (7) — “Canadians”. It is also evidence that the Indian Act is rooted in racism and a European, imperialistic, expansionist perspective that is devoid of consideration for the Aboriginal peoples, their beliefs and traditions, and their systems of government that were in place long before European contact. Thus, it is quite obvious that the Indian Act allowed the Canadian government to further the project of white civility and express, knowingly or not, that in order to be considered a member of the nation that is Canada, its inhabitants must embrace British whiteness as the norm of civility.

Works Cited

“The Indian Act.” UBC First Nations & Indigenous Studies, https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_indian_act/. Accessed March 1, 2020.

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

CBC News. “A history of residential schools in Canada.” CBC News, 21 March 2016, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-in-canada-1.702280. Accessed March 1, 2020.

Elbagir, Nima.”Pedophile priests operated at this California school for decades.” CNN, December 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/12/us/salesians-of-don-bosco-intl/. Accessed March 2, 2020..

Henderson, William B. “Indian Act.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 23 October 2018, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act. Accessed March 2, 2020.

Montpetit, Isabelle. “Background: The Indian Act.” CBC News, 14 July 2011, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988. Accessed February 29, 2020.

Keith Carlson writes about the difference in the ways that Western scholars and Salish peoples assess the accuracy of historical information. Western academics use already known and verifiable historical evidence in order to assess the accuracy of newly discovered historical information. On the other hand, the Salish people traditionally determine the accuracy of a story with respect to others’ memories of the particular narrative to which this new information is to be appended, as well as the authority and status of the storyteller as a source of historical information (Carlson, 57). It thus follows that questioning the authenticity of a story is also different by these contrasting standards.

Determination of accuracy of information may be similar between Westerners and the Salish in that they rely on a collective knowledge, may it be text inscribed in history books, discussions among Western scholars, or personal perspectives on the same narrative from Native elders.

The difference is that modern Western history has been inscribed on paper while most Salish histories were passed down by tongue. Thus the difference lies in whose authority one is challenging when they question the authenticity of a story in either of these contexts. By Western standards, one would most probably be consulting a written work from the government library or such. In contrast, by questioning the authenticity and reliability of a Salish story, because the Salish assess accuracy of historical accounts based on the authority and reputation of the teller, one is inherently questioning the very authority of the storyteller. Moreover, as it is most likely the case that Salish histories were passed down by tongue, one would also be inherently challenging the method by which the Salish preserve their knowledge, which is to pass down their stories orally.

This hearkens back to a previous lesson which discusses how writing a story down halts its evolution and preserves it in the exact form it was written, forever. In contrast, a story that is passed on orally has the chance to evolve as each version of the story is connected to the time, place, and mood of and people present at its telling, all of which influence how the current listeners may tell the same story to pass it on in the future. By questioning authenticity of a story, one also disputes the storyteller’s authority and the reliability and truth of the very method that Salish people have chosen to preserve their knowledge is also challenged.

Not only does questioning authenticity challenge Salish ways of knowing because of the (oral) nature of how their knowledge is preserved, and thus the reliance on the authority of a storyteller to verify accuracy, but also because authenticity has never been used by the Salish as a criterion in assessing accuracy of historical narratives (Carlson, 56-57). Thus we must be cautious before we dismiss a certain narrative simply because it might have been influenced by post-contact events. As Carlson points out, by refusing to listen to narratives that do not meet our criteria of Indigenous culture being authentic only if unblemished by post-contact experiences, we hold ourselves back from a new path of potential learning. More importantly, we run the risk of insulting the dignity of the source of the story, especially given the how the Salish value storyteller authority and credibility, and make this source less likely to share their experiences and knowledge with us in the future (Carlson, 56).

Works Cited

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy.” Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

Hi everyone! Here are the three blogs I am most proud of and would like to present for my midterm evaluation.

The first is my introductory blog. I think that this is a must-read for anyone following my blog throughout the term. It provides some background on who I am and how my home country also has some colonial history, even including a link to an article by a media outlet in the Philippines discussing a manifestation of colonial mentality.

Introduction

The second is my story of how evil came into the world. This is surely my favorite among all my blog posts as I think I had the most creative freedom when writing it, allowing my own writing style to take over. I surprised myself with how this story turned out and am excited to have a chance to write more stories as the term progresses. More seriously, my hope is that it raises awareness about the commodification and abuse of animals that is unfortunately commonplace in our world today.

Where Evil Came From: The Legend of Tao

Lastly, I would like to share my story of home. The writing process made me reflect on my childhood experiences and the unique ones that stand out and form this notion of home: the people I love, the times I had with them, and doing the things I love doing. The fact that Kobe Bryant’s death coincided with the time of writing made it even more reflective and made me realize how much he is a part of my sense of home. Kobe alone brought back so many memories of watching and playing basketball with my family and friends and writing this post was definitely a contemplative and almost cathartic process.

Home

Hello everyone! For this blog post I will be answering the last question from Lesson 2:2: “If Europeans were not from the land of the dead, or the sky, alternative explanations which were consistent with indigenous cosmologies quickly developed” (“First Contact” 43). Robinson gives us one of those alternative explanations in his stories about how Coyote’s twin brother stole the “written document” and when he denied stealing the paper, he was “banished to a distant land across a large body of water” (9). We are going to return to this story, but for now – what is your first response to this story? In context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet, what do you make of this stolen piece of paper? This is an open-ended question and you should feel free to explore your first thoughts.

In the story that tells about how once upon a time there were a set of twins, one white and one black, who became the forefathers of Europeans and Native Americans, the reason for the white twin’s banishment (stealing of paper), I think, is symbolic for the the effect that colonization by Europeans had on Indigenous peoples. My interpretation is that the piece of paper that was stolen represents stories. Literature is inherently connected to story, in that the latter is the precursor for the former. In fact, written works come from the desire to preserve accounts of events in time, of moments in history. To write something down in ink is to preserve that story or the evidence for something’s occurrence in time, so long as that piece of paper is intact.

As I was reading the story, what came to mind was how the white twin who stole that written document comes back to his native land to effectively do the same. He is banished for stealing a piece of literature, a part of his land’s history, laws, or whatever it may be. For him to come back and colonize his what used to be his own people’s land and destroy their nations and culture can be viewed as stealing their stories. I think that this representation of European colonizers coming to North America and settling in Natives’ land really allows the connection to be drawn between the aforementioned colonization and theft of land and the loss of the Natives’ stories, the destruction of their nations, severance of bloodlines, and the death of their languages.

Another interesting bit for me was how the white twin denied stealing the piece of paper. I interpreted this as a metaphor for the settlers’ disregard for the Natives’ pre-settlement histories. I saw the denial as representing the lack of consideration the settlers had for the Indigenous peoples’ claims to their land and resources, and of course, as I described in the paragraph above, the theft itself representing the stealing of Indigenous land. The denial by the white twin just added a layer of depth, in my opinion, representing the lack of remorse by settlers for the cruelties committed such as separation of kids from their families and the residential school system.

Classical accounts of settlers’ (such as Columbus) experiences were taken to be fact by Europeans at the time. This is a form of preserving an account of events in time by word of mouth, and is thus a form of oral history. It is ironic that the these accounts of Columbus were simply accepted as fact by the Europeans, especially because of how each tribe of Indigenous peoples have first stories (adaawk) — oral histories that are unique claims to each of their territories and that are equivalent in weight with written legal documents. These stories have been passed on orally through generations, about how their ancestors and the very names they use to identify themselves are tied to the land that they reside on and care for (Paterson, “Lesson 1:2”). The irony is in how the Europeans simply accepted Columbus’ oral accounts as fact, when their fellow Europeans (settlers) completely disregarded the Indigenous peoples’ oral claims to their ancestral residential land and displaced the Natives from this land. Perhaps it was because the stories Columbus brought back to Europe — of cannibalism, savagery, and a general “lack of sophistication” — already coincided with European preconceptions about “others,” such as those propagated in works by Pliny, Homer, and Herodotus (Lutz, 2). I think it could also have been a combination of the disrespect for stories of “the other,” especially oral histories, and “God-given” entitlement the Europeans had “to possess both the natives and the land” (Paterson, “Lesson 2:2”).

Works Cited

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print. Accessed online at http://www.law.uvic.ca/demcon/documents/Lutzpaper.pdf February 04 2020.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1:2.” English 372 99C, January 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-1/lesson-1-2/. Accessed February 04 2020.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.” English 372 99C, January 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/. Accessed February 04 2020.

Prodanovic, Konstantin. “The Silent Genocide: Aboriginal Language Loss FAQ.” terry.ubc.ca, 16 October 2013, https://www.terry.ubc.ca/2013/10/16/the-silent-genocide-aboriginal-language-loss-faq/. Accessed February 07 2020.

Roach, Hadley. “Entitlement and Ethnocentricity: Religion’s Effect on European Expansionism.” Fubini (Swarthmore College), 07 March 2008, http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2008/hroach1/hadleyreligion.html. Accessed February 07 2020.

Hi everyone! For Assignment 2.3 I will be discussing ideas of home from blogs by Grace, Jade, Coco, Emilia, Nargiza, and Nicole. I have read through all their blogs and below is a summary of my takeaways and insights on our collective sense of home.

Nicole, Grace, Emilia, and Jade all described their childhood homes, defining home as a physical space which shelters them and where they lived with their families. Emilia, Jade, Nicole, and Coco all described Vancouver as their second home after moving from a different city. Emilia and Jade both grappled with having many different places to call home. I myself call Vancouver my second home and identify with their stories as I myself have gone through this struggle, as well as homesickness similar to what Coco described.

Jade going to ballet class and picking up bagels with her childhood best friend, Nargiza’s weekly Saturday family dinners at 5:30pm to beat the rush, Coco cooking with new friends in Vancouver, and Nicole’s “Saturday morning cartoons and Sunday brunches” are all intimate examples of traditions that define home in our minds. Routinely doing these things creates memories that we will cherish forever, an important part of which are the people we spend our time with. Grace and Nargiza mentioned their siblings and parents and Jade tells about listening to her grandma’s stories. Coco talks of making new friends in Vancouver and spending time with them after moving here from Taiwan.

Coco’s story of home resonated with me because I also moved to Vancouver from where I was born and raised when I was 17. I also at first found it difficult to make friends but am glad that I found people whom I enjoy spending time and going on adventures with. Moreover, I like that Coco mentioned food and how they would make noodles from back in Taiwan whenever the homesickness hit. I feel this very deeply as I have found myself craving and eventually whipping up some Filipino food many a time.

I thought Emilia’s example of home as a feeling of belonging was unique because she explains she felt it most when visiting where her ancestors were from and hearing them speak their native languages, Italian and French. Jade, together with Emilia, also talked about her ancestors’ journey from Europe in the mid-20th century, describing home as where on this Earth your bloodline is originally from.

Nicole, Coco, and Emilia all described home as a feeling: home is a feeling of love, more than a tangible thing. Nicole, Coco, Emilia all described home as where you are most comfortable and feel a sense of belonging. If I were to choose one definition to assign to the word “home,” it would be this. I believe that home is where we feel like we are loved and we belong, and where our soul is happy. The beauty is that what evokes this feeling can be anything already mentioned: people, mini traditions, food, and whatever else!

Works Cited

Alimova, Nargiza. “Assignment 2.2.” 28 Jan 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/nargizaalimova/2020/01/28/assignment-2-2/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

Brandoli, Emilia. “Assignment 2:2: Home.” 29 Jan 2020,  https://blogs.ubc.ca/emiliabrandoli/2020/01/29/assignment-22-home/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

Dean, Mary Elizabeth. “Relocation Depression: When Moving Makes You Sad.” BetterHelp, 30 Aug 2019,  https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/depression/relocation-depression-when-moving-makes-you-sad/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

Diaz, Nicole. “Sense of Home.” 28 Jan 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/nicolediaz/2020/01/28/sense-of-home/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

Greer, Jade. “Assignment 2.2- Stories, People, and Nature: What Home Means to Me.” 29 Jan 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/jadegreer/2020/01/29/assignment-2-2/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

Han, Coco. “Assignment 2:2- My Sense of Home.” 28 Jan 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/cocohanengl372/2020/01/28/assignment-22-my-sense-of-home/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

McAndrew, Frank. “Home is Where the Heart is, but Where is ‘home’?” Psychology Today, 03 Aug 2015,  https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/out-the-ooze/201508/home-is-where-the-heart-is-where-is-home. Accessed February 03, 2020.

Owens, Grace. “Lesson 2.2 — Sense of Home.” 27 Jan 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/graceowensengl372/2020/01/27/lesson-22-a-sense-of-home/. Accessed February 03, 2020.

For most of my life, Manila was my home. I had lived there for the first 17 years of my life. Now I live in Vancouver, and I’ve been here for almost four years now. Home is wherever my house is, whether it’s the condo where I used to live with my parents or this apartment in Richmond, BC.

Home is waking up at 6 in the morning to rice, eggs, and corned beef for breakfast with my little brother and sister, and the ride to school with them, withstanding the Manila morning traffic together. It’s laughing with my friends at lunch, before, after, and even in class, about jokes that will last a lifetime. It is coach screaming when we messed up the same drill for the third straight time. Home is barely getting home for dinner from basketball practice, every day after class, exhausted from the day and in need of a hot shower. It was readings and math problems and essays, even after dinner and a shower.

The last time I was actually based in Manila, I was just coming out of high school, so my last memories of “living at home” is that high school grind. But Manila is so much more than that. It is waking up on Saturday mornings to watch Kobe, LeBron, and other greats duel against each other on the basketball court. And then going down to the court with my little brother to practice the exact moves we just watched, tens of times over. It’s those Saturday family dinners and then video games or a movie with the siblings and sometimes the parents too!

Home is golf with grandpa on any day of the week in the summer. It’s playing basketball with my brother and my friends all together. Home is the smell of salt in the air, the vibrant glow of the sunset on the water, and the sand under my feet. It’s the delicious Chinese food, often in excessive portions, every time it’s somebody’s birthday. Home is quality time and comfortable silences with family, endless laughs and beer pong with friends. It’s watching Kobe Bryant highlights late into the night with my brother.

As (not really) an aside, I want to pay my respects to Kobe Bryant. Watching Kobe play, and initially rooting against him, together with my dad, brother, and friends was such a big part of my childhood. For me personally, there was triumph in 2008, when my Celtics beat his Lakers, and heartbreak the following two seasons as he led the Lakers to 2 straight NBA championships. Over time, though, I learned to just appreciate greatness. And so there were tears cried by me and my friends as we watched Kobe punctuate his near-perfect career with a 60-point performance in his final NBA game. It was truly a blessing to witness such greatness on and off the floor, from Kobe the basketball player and Kobe the human being. I learned so much from Kobe, not just about basketball, but how to approach life with that mamba mentality, to put in the necessary work every single day in order to excel at your craft, and then some more. His death saddens me greatly and this is truly a loss for all of humanity. May Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and the 7 others killed in the tragic helicopter crash this past Sunday forever rest in peace.

Of course, over the last four years, Vancouver has become my second home. While my immediate family and most of my old friends are not here with me, I am thankful for the people I have here who have grown to become my family. My cousins who I have known since I was young and visiting Vancouver for the first time. We went from playing in the snow as kids on Grouse Mountain to driving around Richmond late at night with the windows down and the speakers loud while sipping on bubble tea and munching on McDonald’s. My closest friends here now are those with whom I went to high school, never really hung out or were in the same friend group as, but connected via our common roots when we all came to Vancouver for university. Home is also going snowboarding with the boys and my partner in the winter. It is that and staying at home all day with her on a snow day.

Home can be but does not have to be restricted to one physical location, building, or apartment unit. There is a common saying: “home is where the heart is.” Home is doing the things we enjoy in the places we frequent with the people we love the most. It is that and it is also each of those three parts on their own. It is all of the things, people, places, and memories of combinations of these things that make us who we are. Home is everything and everyone we hold in our hearts.

RIP Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Alyssa Altobelli, Christina Mauser, Sarah Chester, Payton Chester, Ara Zobayan

Works Cited

Davis, Scott. “11 of Kobe Bryant’s Most Inspirational Quotes.” Business Insider, 26 Jan. 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/kobe-bryants-most-inspirational-quotes-2020-1. Accessed 28 January 2020.

Simon, Darran. “NTSB Details the Final Moments of the Helicopter Before it Crashed, Killing Kobe Bryant and 8 Others.” CNN, 28 Jan. 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/27/us/calabasas-helicopter-crash-kobe-bryant-monday/index.html. Accessed 28 January 2020.

Ting, Jasmine. “Everything You Need to Know About Filipino Breakfasts.” Saveur, 16 Apr. 2018, https://www.saveur.com/filipino-breakfast-foods-silog-tsokolate-philippines/. Accessed 28 January 2020.

Tao was once a happy tiger, back when she could roam the jungle, surrounded by trees with sloths hanging off their branches and vines on which this family of monkeys would always swing.

Now, all she roams is this tiny, square cell, with thick steel bars and walls each less than 8 meters long. Surrounded by toys and chains and frozen steaks she could no longer stomach, Tao sleepily puts her head down and turns in for the night, almost immediately drifting off into dreamland.

She hears birds chirping and is suddenly in the jungle. It is morning and Tao paces her corner of the jungle while looking for something to stalk and kill for breakfast. Her mind drifts and she feels free. Time flies and it is now sunset. She sees the vermilion sky, blinding red just above the horizon that gradiates up into the light pink clouds directly above her. The upper three-eights of the sun that remains above the horizon slowly sinks below it, it is now dusk, the darkness slowly settling into the night.

Clank! Tao awakens to the metal bars sliding and sees the rough, pale beige walls around her. She sees June, her handler, coming in to take her to her morning workout in preparation for the big show. As she hopped between platforms and jumped through hoops for hours, she was almost thankful for how she was able to move around. It was the closest thing she had to the feeling of freedom. But this wasn’t freedom. She grew more and more tired with every command she had to obey. Then it was eventually, finally, all over… until she had to do it all again tomorrow.

Weeks of excruciating training pass and the night before the show, exhausted from her workout, Tao returns to her cell, devours her four steaks, and quickly falls into a dream. It is dusk and her jungle friends are out to hunt. There is a trio of frogs by the riverbank, getting their fill of the hundreds of insects flying above the water surface. The snakes are out looking for tiny mammals, their hissing giving Tao goosebumps all over. Suddenly she is hunting a deer: silently stalking, gradually approaching… crunch! a leaf that was just a little too crispy.

A failed hunt does not feel new. It’s been a while since she’s had control of her diet. She’s been fed mostly commercial pork and beef. She especially misses the wild boar and venison that she herself earned. Right on cue, June comes with a piece of steak, which, as she watches the stage hoops being set up, Tao reluctantly gnaws on.

A spotlight shines on Tao. She looks into the crowd and sees thousands of people. Through their screams of excitement she feels the pressure to put on a show. The show begins and she goes through the course, hurdling hurdles and jumping through hoops flawlessly. Nothing she hasn’t done before. Until this one hoop that was on fire. It was a totally new trick she has never prepared for. Suddenly she was nauseous, the crowd screaming her name and her handler and many other humans yelling at her to jump through. And then, just like that, it was all too much. Tao pounces for June, who is mauled in a matter of seconds. Two other humans fall victim to Tao’s savagery in the fight to save June.

The crowd is stunned as Tao examines her crime scene. She feels like there is a pit in the bottom of her stomach and wishes she could undo her actions. She prays and prays but nothing can be undone. Evil has been committed and is now free to run the world. Ironic that this is all Tao ever wanted, to be free and wild in the jungle once again. Now she is bound to this evil that she has committed, forever.

Take this story to heart and tell it to whomever you want. Or keep it to yourself, it’s your choice. But know that a story, once told, cannot be untold. So be careful about the stories you tell, and most importantly, the stories you listen to.

Reflection:

This assignment was the one I enjoyed writing the most so far. I appreciated the creative freedom we were given in reproducing the story about the origin of evil. I based my story on the one circus tiger that went into convulsions after having to jump through rings of fire for a show.

I wrote the story with Tao the tiger as a protagonist because I wanted to tell the story of animals and humans from the opposite perspective than we are used to, which is from the animal’s point of view. As I was trying to think up what kind of evil there was to end my story, an idea came to me that added complexity to the evil part of it. While the main, explicit evil was Tao’s mauling of three humans, including her handler, what of the humans who captured this wild animal and forced it into the circus life? We humans do so many things to hurt animals, not just by keeping them in captivity, but also by destroying their habitats for our commercial gain. I hope that this story, while slightly morbid at some points, can provoke reflection on the collective impact of our lifestyle as a species on the environment.

Hi, apologies for the late post, I had a really busy Friday and weekend. For assignment 1:3, I chose to answer question 7: “At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.  I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature: 1) social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers, and 2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?”

Today, information travels faster than ever because of the internet. With this advantage has come many social media platforms which make the publication of material easier than ever — material which can then reach millions of people instantaneously.

Nowadays, quite literally anyone with internet access and a smartphone or computer can create a profile online. The lack of mediation in people’s publication of content online gives the users creative freedom. The users are thus free to tell whatever story they want with this online presence by simply curating their feed to fit that vision.

The combination of this creative freedom and how widespread social media use is around the world has offered different perspectives of this world we all live in. Social media users from different nations and cultures create content that is unique in its own way and this collection of online content becomes representative of their culture — an example would be the Facebook groups called “subtle (insert culture here) traits.” I also find interesting how there exist memes such as baby Yoda nowadays that seem like they have propagated to every Facebook user in the world. The content, usually the caption, of the meme is what makes it relatable, making it, by definition, according to Richard Dawkins, a meme: a piece of culture that can be copied from one person to another (1976).

Another advantage of the internet and these tools is that they are multidimensional. YouTube, WordPress, and podcasts are examples of platforms that communicate to the audience differently. Videos themselves can be edited so that a single video is indeed aural, visual, and textual in nature. This combination allows the way stories are told to be tailored to fit the tellers’ exact specifications. Videos are also more engaging than text; if I had to choose, I myself would prefer to watch a video to learn a concept or skill than only read about it. They are dynamic in such a way that plain text just isn’t — they are visually and aurally stimulating. This makes videos a a powerful storytelling tool and also blurs the lines between what is oral and a written story. Even plain text can be enhanced with hyperlinks — they appear simply as blue and/or bold text, but are links to a whole new piece of digital content that can supplement the original text and lead to a new path of discovery on the web.

Stories about the culture of peoples, over time, will perhaps evolve to be captured in digital rather than written form. It is fitting that major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have a “Story” feature. The chronology of a user’s stories actually itself becomes the story of their life, or at least the version of their life they want to portray to their followers. On a larger scale, cultures can be represented by the collection of content created by people who belong to that culture, like the Facebook groups I mentioned earlier, as well as the memes that have a global reach.

With the rise of digital media and globalization, story is more likely, I believe, to prevail as the common ground between all nations and peoples. We all have our own beliefs and traditions, each rooted in the stories that are our own very lives. When we realize that what we have in common is that we all have beliefs (Chamberlin, 2013) that gives us our identities, maybe that is when we will understand each other better be able to live in harmony with those who are “different” than we are.

Works Cited

Blackmore, Susan. “The Power of Memes.” Scientific American, vol. 283, no. 4, October 2000, https://www.susanblackmore.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/The-Power-of-Memes-Sci-Am-Oct-2000.pdf. Accessed 19 January 2020.

Chamberlin, Edward. “Interview with J. Edward Chamberlin.” Writer’s Café, http://writerscafe.ca/book_blogs/writers/j-edward-chamberlin_if-this-is-your-land-where-are-your-stories.html. Accessed 19 January 2020.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Kwai, Isabella. “How ‘Subtle Asian Traits’ became a global hit.” The New York Times, 11 Dec. 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/world/australia/subtle-asian-traits-facebook-group.html. Accessed 20 January 2020.