Your blog assignment is to hyper-link your research on the characters and symbols in GGRW  — according to the pages assigned to you on our Student Blog page.

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PAGES 340 – 348, 1993 Edition

For my section, I’m going to examine what I consider one of the most significant cultural reclamations in the novel: the obliteration of the dam.

Eli vs. the Dam

My section starts off with a conversation about the dam which plays a significant role in the novel. It’s a reference to the Great Whale Project, in Quebec in the 1980s. There was a plan to build hydro-electric power stations on the Great Whale River – which would be an encroachment on the Cree’s traditional lands.Ultimately, after a lot of legal struggle, this plan was delayed.

In King’s novel, the Canadian government is developing a similar project. Once their dam is operational, it will flood the reserve lands – including the ancestral house in which Eli Stands Alone lives. As Jane Flick points out, Eli is likely a reference to Elijah Harper, who is best known for his solitary opposition to the Meech Lake Accord, on the grounds that First Nations had not been consulted or recognized in the discussions around the accord.

Similarly, in the novel, the government has signed off on a project without consulting or recognizing the Blackfoot community’s claims to the land. Nor have they considered the negative consequences the dam has on the habitat – which impacts the First Nations’ cultural life (as the cottonwood trees which are essential in their Sun Dance won’t grow). In this way, the dam can be seen as an enforcement of colonial authority that still persists today.

Coyote’s Earthquake

Coyote, the Creator/Trickster figure, who is present in the conversation tries to fix this. He does a little dancing and creates an earthquake. The next page has only a few lines – with people screaming ‘Earthquake’. I feel like this is a very powerful scene when you consider who they are.

One is Clifford Sifton – a reference to the Minister of Immigration under Sir Wilfred Laurier, who increased immigration from Britain, US and other European countries and offered “free” land to the settlers. He also tried to appropriate First Nations Treaty land to give it to the European settlers. In the novel, the character is the engineer of the dam.

The other is Bill Bursam – a reference to the US Senator in 1921 who devised the Bursam Bill, which ultimately deprived Pueblo Indians of their land to European and American settlers. In the novel, the character anticipates a financial gain from the project as he bought up lake-front property on the man-made lake by the dam.

Both characters are strongly entrenched in the settler’s myth – they see the Blackfoot community’s land as being available and refuse to acknowledge their presence. So in this context, the earthquake is very significant. As these colonizers appropriate First Nations land and re-draw the map of this land (another exertion of colonial power), it’s very fitting that reclamation comes in the form of an earthquake. As Stratton says in her article, Coyote’s earthquake “rearranges the geography” and obliterates the colonial landscape – with the destruction of the dam (97).

Destruction of the Dam

On page 346, Sifton is with his colleauge Lewis Pick, and they both are repeatedly knocked down by the earthquake. Lewis is probably a reference to Colonel Lewis A. Pick of the Pick-Sloan projects of the 1940s-50s that took acres of Native land for the Missouri River dams – a project that is said to have done more damage to Native land than any public work in America.

I think it’s important to note the way in which the dam is actually destroyed here. The three missing cars – the Nissan, Pinto and Karmaan-Ghia are thrown into the dam repeatedly until it breaks.

The three cars are an allusion to the Nina, Pinta and Santa-Maria, the names of the European explorer, Christopher Columbus’s ships in which he ‘discovered’ America. His conquest of the ‘new world’ devastated the Native Americans. I think by making this reference, King challenges the Eurocentric view of Columbus as cultural hero. (After all, Columbus Day is still recognized in many US states…) King appropriates this historical narrative and inverts it. Unlike their namesakes, which brought over the explorers, these cars are used to resist colonization and ultimately reclaim the First Nation’s land.

There’s also a line in this section that jumped out at me – “There was an ominous sound of things giving away, things falling apart.”

James Cox notes that this might be an allusion to that famous line from Yeats’s Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” What makes this interesting is that while Coyote’s attempt to fix the world does result in chaos (the bursting of a dam, flooding of a river), the end result is ultimately beneficial. Now the cottonwood trees will get their nutrients. This is good news for the Blackfoot tribe, as these trees are necessary for their Sun Dance. It’s not an apocalyptic end then, as is the case in Yeats’s poem, for Coyote’s chaos brings something positive, something new into the other characters lives.

WORKS CITED

Cox, James H. “There Are No Truths…Only Stories.” Muting White Noise: Native American and European American Novel Traditions. Norman: U of Oklahoma, 2006. 90-99. Print.

“Cree Legal Struggle Against the Great Whale Project.” The Grand Council of the Crees. Cree Nation Government, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Joinson, Carla. “The Bursum Bill.” Canton Asylum for Insane Indians. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

“Meech Lake Accord.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Canadian Encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

“Native American Netroots.” Dam Indians: The Missouri River. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

“Pioneers and Immigrants : The Last Best West (1896 – 1914).” Canada in the Making. Ed. Jean-Claude Robert. Early Canada Online, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Stratton, Florence. “Cartographic Lessons Susanna Moodie’s RoughingIt in the Bushand Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature (1999): 82-102. Canadian Literature. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Strong, Byran. “Slavery and Colonialism Make Up the True Legacy of Columbus.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Nov. 1989. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Yeats, William. “The Second Coming.” The Second Coming – Yeats. Poem of the Week, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.” Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer. The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization.

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King’s very first act of narrative decolonization in Green Grass Running Water is the re-telling of the Judeo-Christian creation story.

The biblical version cites God as the sole creator, who created the world out of nothing and said “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (Genesis).

This notion of being made in God’s image contributed to the idea of white supremacy and European American settlers justified colonial acts of aggression and exploitation of Native people by claiming it was necessary to enlighten the non-white ‘primitives’. They saw it as their duty to teach them to be educated Christians.

King’s subverts this narrative that enables colonial domination in a number of ways in his re-telling. He infuses it with elements of the First Nations creation stories about the Earth Diver. In his re-telling, he acknowledges that there was something before the creators. There was water. In this story, creation is not a solitary act; it’s an ongoing process. There is also no one dominating thread of narrative about how things came about. There are mysteries and lots of unexplained occurrences. For instance, Ahdamn (King’s take on Adam) comes into the story, unexplained.

King also undermines the male-dominant monopoly of power found in the biblical version. One example of this can be found in the naming scene. In Genesis, Adam is given the authority by God to name all the creatures in the world – “Whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” Naming should be seen as an exertion of influence or power and in King’s re-telling, this is turned into a farce:

 “You are a garage sale, Ahdamn tells the Bear.

We got to get you some glasses, says the Bear” (GGRW, 41)

It becomes comical as Ahdamn is trying to come up with names for animals/plants that already have their own. It’s also interesting that the animals and plants reply back and contradict him. Both the humour and the backtalk serve to undermine his authority, making it clear that Ahdamn doesn’t actually rule over all living creatures as his counterpart does in Genesis. In fact, in King’s story the names of the animals and trees are all capitalized – they are on equal footing with the humans. By doing this, King challenges that sense of entitlement man has in the biblical creation story.

King also revises a number of canonical texts and popular shows which are informed by colonialism and which present it as a natural order of things. One example is his appropriation of Robinson Crusoe.

If you have read the novel by Daniel Defoe, you’ll know that the civilizing mission is a thread that runs throughout. In the novel, the castaway Crusoe rescues a Native of the island, whom he re-names ‘Friday’. (This is reminiscent of Adam naming the creatures in Genesis.) Crusoe keeps him on as a servant and teaches him how to dress, eat and speak like a ‘civilized’ man – and instructs him to call him Master. What struck me is that in the text, Crusoe immediately sees Friday as an inferior and Friday is depicted as being instantly submissive to him.

King’s dialogue between Thought Woman and Robinson Crusoe challenges the notion of cultural superiority present in the work.

“So pretty soon Robinson Crusoe comes…and that one looks at Thought Woman. And he looks at her again.

Thank God! Says Robinson Crusoe. It’s Friday!

No, says Thought Woman. It’s Wednesday.”(GGRW, 294).

This funny exchange points out how ridiculous it is that Crusoe tries to claim her as his possession the minute he spots her. But Thought Woman refuses to be re-named ‘Friday’ and be cast in the role of the colonized. In fact, by the end of this exchange, she inverts the roles of dominance. “I’ll be Robinson Crusoe. You be Friday,” she tells him (GGRW, 295). Finally, she simply leaves him behind and floats away. She later uses his name as a guise, to help fix the world.

By taking these dominating narratives and appropriating them, King creates a text that is liberating in some sense. These re-worked narratives challenge the colonial construct that is prevalent in European creation stories or popular western texts and they free themselves from it.

WORKS CITED

Bottez, Monica. “Cyclical Time and Linear Time in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” University of Bucharest Review XI.1 (2009): 74-80. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.

“Genesis 1.” Bible Gateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

“The Civilizing Mission.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age: Topic 4: Texts and Contexts. W.W. Norton and Company, n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.

For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robinson’s writing style in “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” and King’s style in Green Grass, Running Water. What similarities can you find between the two story-telling voices? Coyote and God are present in both texts, how do they compare in character and voice across the stories?

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I

The most striking similarity I found in Harry Robinson and Thomas King’s texts (in particular the dialogues between the narrator and Coyote) was how both reflect the oral tradition through their writing styles. They do this by using colloquialisms and informal, short sentences as they would if they were speaking out loud. The result is very conversational.

I also noticed that they both break down the ‘fourth wall’. Robinson does this in his story by addressing the reader directly, often asking them questions. (The most obvious example is when he asks us, “Do you know what the angel was? Do you know?” (LBS, 66). King is more subtle. There’s a moment when King’s narrator brings up the story about the Old Woman and Coyote says that he remembers it all. “I wasn’t talking to you,” the narrator replies. “Who else is here?” Coyote asks (GGRW, 391). By drawing our attention to the fact that the narrators are aware of us – their audience – I feel like this transforms the solitary act of reading into something more communal. We aren’t simply reading dead words on a page. There is a sense of involvement here – by acknowledging our presence, we are drawn into the story. Our presence becomes vital to the story, at least in that part. This definitely adds to the oral storytelling tradition they are trying to re-create.

Both King and Robinson also write their stories in the present tense, which creates a sense of continuation. It’s as if it’s happening now, and has always been happening. There’s no division between the past and present. This is best seen in the way King begins his story: “So. In the beginning, there was nothing (1).”

Both these writing styles result in written texts that reflect the fluidity of oral stories. They don’t present themselves as a sole voice of authority. In fact, they sometimes go out of their way to highlight this. For instance, in his story Robinson reveals his lack of knowledge about the date when the Black and White law was created. He says, “Could be around 1850…I couldn’t be sure, I’d like to find that out some of these days” (LBS, 79). King also does a similar thing often. For instance, when his narrator tells the story about First Woman and Ahdamn, he says, “I don’t know where he (Ahdamn) comes from. Things like that happen, you know” (GGRW, 40). This allows their stories to be ‘open’, in a sense. There is room here for the readers to add things in these spaces, fill it up with their own ideas or interpretation.

   II

It’s also interesting to compare King and Robinson’s representations of Coyote in their stories.

In Robinson’s story, Coyote is portrayed as an agent of god, who is subject to his authority. This is seen when the Angel says, “God says at one time you work for him/ You walked all over the place / But he put you here on the water….” (66) Coyote is “hired” by god to fix the world. He’s on a heroic mission to better his people’s lives and he’s comes across as being responsible and focused.

Coyote in King’s story seems more like the trickster figure I’d imagined. He’s a wild card. He’s unpredictable, mischievous and often does things just for the heck of it. Yet it’s through his disruptions and destruction that people learn valuable lessons. His relationship with god is different as well. The ironic god/dog King introduces in the first few pages is actually an (unintended) creation of Coyote.

Ultimately however, I think one of the things both these representations of Coyote do is show us that creators have limited powers. Robinson’s Coyote is able to inspire the Black and White law but is unable to actually create it on his own. He has immense powers (this is evident with the illusions of an army he creates for the King) but we are told this power is bequeathed to him for this particular mission. In King’s story, this is much more obvious, as Coyote is presented a fallible character, one who often makes mistakes. He may have powers (dancing and singing to create earthquakes for instance) but he often can’t seem to control the extent of it. Nor does he have any control over his unintended creation, the god/dog, the ‘dream’ that got loose. Perhaps this could also seen as a commentary on the power of stories?

WORKS CITED

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

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

“The Trickster.” Crystalinks. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Following Carlson’s discussions on literacy as “part of a broader genre of transformation” (61), try to explain what he means when he says that transformation is an “act of literacy.” Extract an explanation for conceptualizing transformations as writing and as readable.

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“Transformation is an act of literacy,” says Carlson, in his article that examines the role of literacy in Salish oral stories. He gives us an example.

He tells of certain Stó:lō histories, which talk about Transformer characters called Xexá:ls who travelled around the land, performing transformative feats. They would transform people and things, and by doing so, create the world we recognize today. One of their transformations was punitive – three chiefs who refused to teach their people how to write were turned into stone (Carlson, 46 – 47).

Transforming them into stone was an act of literacy, according to Carlson and he stresses that the transformer who did it was “engaged in the act of writing himself” (62).

This was a very eye-opening statement for me. When I think about literacy, the first thing that comes to mind is its dictionary definition. Reading printed words. Writing them down on a page. But this article by Carlson offered me another, less rigid way to think about literacy: simply as an act of creating a sense of permanence and also as the act of making meaning.

We can see this in the story about the Xexá:ls, where the chiefs are turned to stone.

Carlson says, “the Transformers leave their mark on the world through transformations…” (61)

By turning the chiefs into stone, they create something of permanence. They change the landscape. (One really can equate this to writing – when you’re filling a blank page or an empty screen with words, you are physically transforming it, appearance-wise. It’s also a transformation because you’re creating something that wasn’t there before.) Perhaps it also offers a sense of permanence because the act of transformation is memorable. Chiefs turning to stone. People who hear this story are more likely to remember it and re-tell it, ensuring its preservation.

These transformations the Xexá:ls have made, Carlson adds are “then understood and known through the stories describing that act (61).” In other words, the act of making meaning. (One really can equate this to reading as well – if you’re reading this, in a way you are transforming these letters into meaning. It goes back to what Chamberlin was saying about C-A-T. It’s not a cat. But to most of us, it means a cat.)

By conceptualizing transformations into reading and writing this way, I think it challenges a number of biases and assumptions that still persist about Aboriginal culture and literacy.

First off, it reveals that literacy is not as black and white a concept as it is assumed to be. Western civilizations have claimed literacy as their defining characteristic, Carlson points out (63). But literacy can be interpreted in a different way and this challenges the binary way of thinking about literacy and orality. There can be literacy in an ‘oral culture’.

It also challenges the idea that literacy is a result of newcomer influences or European encounters. The Salish transformer stories are ‘beginning of time’ narratives that show that literacy was not a concept handed to them but rather something of their own. As Carlson puts it, literacy can no longer be seen “as something imposed on or introduced to Aboriginal people as part of colonization” (45). He emphasizes this through etymology – suggesting that the Stó:lō did not borrow English or French words for literacy (as they did for things the newcomers introduced to them). They had a word for it of their own.

WORKS CITED

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

“S’ólh Téméxw – The Story of the Stó:lō People.”Poco Heritage. The Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

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In The Truth About Stories Thomas King juxtaposes an Aboriginal creation story with the archetypal Judeo-Christian creation story and he labels them using simple oppositions – one story is about co-operation, the other is about competition. If we believe one story to be sacred, the other must be secular.

“You’ll recognize this pairing as a dichotomy, the elemental structure of Western society,” King says. “We trust easy oppositions” (25.)

I think by placing so much emphasis on the dichotomy between the two creation stories, King invites us to examine and even challenge this binary way of thinking. And he does this in a very interesting way.

When addressing his audience, King makes an assumption that the majority subscribes to the Judeo-Christian worldview (21-22).He assumes that most of us are familiar with Adam and Eve and he makes it alien and unappealing to them.

Note how he re-tells the biblical creation story. Not only does he keep it short and terse, but he fills it with negative connotations. He emphasizes rules and restrictions. He implies that the God is cold, unforgiving and distant with his tone of voice. He uses phrases like “God tosses Adam and Eve” out and ends the story on a tragic note, simply stating that Adam and Eve were left to fend for themselves in a “howling wilderness” (King, 22). In comparison, the Earth Diver story is enchanting. It’s warm and comforting. Everybody helps each other and it ends on a positive note.

After listing all the differences between the stories, King offers us an easy opposition. He says that the stories ask us to choose between a world “that begins in harmony and slides towards chaos or a world that begins in chaos and moves towards harmony.” The answer seems obvious. Of course, the majority of people would want to choose the latter. But if the majority subscribes to the biblical creation story, what does this say about their story?

So I think by presenting these two stories to us this way, one ‘fun and nice’, the other ‘grim and dark’, King tries to show that dichotomies aren’t that clear-cut or obvious as many of us might make them out to be. In the Western society, we use them all the time, he says and offers us a variety of familiar ones like rich/poor, success/failure, civilized/barbaric (25). But through these two creation stories, King tries to show that dichotomies can be easily manipulated. They are not set in stone. Believability – which as Chamberlin says is the currency of stories and what gives them power – can be changed. How you tell the story matters. Words matter. (Very much so if we are to believe this interesting post.) Who listens to the story matters as well, as we all come with our preconceived notions and expectations. So if this is the case, who’s to say which story is sacred/secular, true/false? Ultimately, I think King is inviting us to reject rigid dichotomies. Instead, we should perceive and accept complexities and enigmas.

WORKS CITED

Borchard, Therese J. “Words Can Change Your Brain.” Psych Central.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2015.

“Genesis 1.” BibleGateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.

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

“Native American Earthdiver Characters.” Native American Indian Earthdivers. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.

I really enjoyed reading everyone’s stories about their home and what it meant to them. It’s interesting; the concept of home is so vast. There’ve been so many songs, poems, and so much said on the subject. It’s very individual and it differs person to person. Yet despite this fluidity, there were many common values in our stories about home.

Here’s a list of the common values and assumptions I noticed in a couple of my classmate’s blogs:

Home is

• where our loved ones are. Almost every blog I read talked about how their family, close friends or pets play such a major role in defining what home means to them.

• a nurturing, safe space. Or as Jeff aptly put it: “a place of warmth, openness, trust, and growth”

• familiar. For many, this familiarity stemmed from living in the same house since they were born. For others, its through old things, a beloved stuffed animal, for example. For some, its by upholding old, cherished traditions.

• not static. For many, the idea of where and what home is evolves over time. For instance, some may find that their dorm room begins to feels like home after a while. Or it begins to feel like a ‘home away from home’ which suggests that home can also be a state of mind. Home can also multiply – one may find that they consider more than one place their home.

• a place where one belongs. A sense of belonging and acceptance is prevalent in the blogs I read. Home is a safe haven, a refuge. Home is shelter from the ordeals and trials of the world.

• “a story.” Lauren links the concept of home to storytelling in her blog and I think this is a brilliant way to look at it. Home is definitely built up by memories and stories. In trying to describe their sense of home, almost everybody recounted childhood memories and stories. It’s what makes our home precious and meaningful to us. Its what makes (excuse the cliché) a house a home.

WORKS CITED

Hjalmarson, Lauren. “Home To Me.” Stories Tellers. WordPress, 29 Jan. 2015. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.

“Home Quotes, Sayings about Homesickness.” The Quote Garden. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Larkin, Philip. “Home Is So Sad.” Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Liu, Jeffery. “”Cause I’m Gonna Make This Place Your Home”” Canadian Eh. WordPress, 29 Jan. 2015. Web. 01 Feb. 2015.

Pellegrino, Jessica. “Is your “home” an Illusion?” Made In Canada. WordPress, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 01 Feb. 2015.

Eight, if you want to get technical.

There’s the one in a small town where my grandparents lived. It had an abundance of nooks and crannies to hide in, shelves lined with board games I’d force my dad to play and an ever-present smell of freshly baked cakes.

One came with a large indoor patio. It had a koi pond and a hammock. One day I launched myself into that pond, using the hammock like a catapult. I was seven. No fish were hurt. My parents were not amused.

Another was actually an apartment. We lived on the 27^th floor. It had a great view of the Jakarta skyline…and graveyards. Sometimes on dark nights around the witching hour, you could catch glimpses of figures in white. (Or so my friend who lived a floor above swore. I’d scoff but my mum had to buy me a nightlight.) My fondness for gothic fiction and ghost stories can probably be traced back to here.

Then there’s the one I’ve been living in for these past few years. It’s by the Coquitlam River, in quiet, cozy neighbourhood. Inside there’s a stubborn little shih tzu, a tabby cat who thinks she’s a dog, a sister who can be a best friend and an annoying pain by turns.

They all felt like home to me.

Growing up, my family moved quite a bit, I suppose. Not as much as some, but enough. Two different continents, three different cities, but you know the strangest part? It’s only when I sat down to write this blog that it hit me – I’ve lived in eight different houses.

This is telling.

I suppose I never thought of them as being separate spaces. They sort of just bled into each other. They were all just simply home. They were all filled with people (and animals) I loved, memories and comfort. They were safe spaces, where I could be myself. They weren’t necessarily the happiest of places – there were always a few arguments, tears, periods of feeling misunderstood as a teenager but despite that all, they were places I felt like I belonged. And that belonged to me.

Of course, this is not to say that the minute after we moved to a new city, a new house, it felt instantly like home. But it happened eventually, until we forgot it had ever been strange and new. We made the unfamiliar familiar. In hindsight, I guess we did use rituals and sentimental things to get there faster – I would set up my old study table I’ve had since I was ten. My mum would hang that wooden carving we bought on an amazing family vacation to Bali. When we’d finally find those boxes marked ‘Kitchen’, we’d reinstate our Sunday brunches. I suppose this is all a very long-winded way of saying that for me, home is not just one physical, concrete space. It’s where the memories are. It’s with the people you love.

“As long as we’re together, does it matter where we go? Home” 

WORKS CITED

Aplin, Gabrielle. Home. 2011. YouTube. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Do you want to know how evil came into our world? Well, I have a great story to tell you.

A long long time ago, before the world we knew existed, when our planet was mostly covered in water, there was a small little island right at its center.

It was a funny little island, shaped like a perfect circle, and on it lived three funny people. I don’t mean funny ha-ha, but strange. Even mysterious. No one knows where they came from. They didn’t know themselves. But what they did know was that they were tired of living on their small circular island.

Atum was the oldest, and he had the loudest voice. This was important, because these strange, mysterious people knew a magic language. When they told stories in this magic language, the things they described came to be. So Atum, in his deep, booming voice, told a story about land. He described enormous chunks of land, covering the planet. They would all be of different shapes and sizes. Some would be rocky, some would have caves and some would have pointy mountains. And so, he created the continents.

Shu, was the youngest, but she had the most beautiful voice. This was important, because when she spoke, Atum had to stop and listen. She decided that Atum had created enough land. Boring old brown land. So she used their magical language and told a story to spruce this world up a bit. She talked about green grass, tall trees, blue lakes and rivers. She described colorful flowers and fruits. She told of wonderful, beautiful animals. And so, she created our flora and fauna.

There was still a lot more to create but Atum and Shu decided to call it a day. They decided they would come back to this small, circular island once a month to create anything else they might need. Thrilled with the world they had created, they ran off to explore it, leaving Min behind.

Min did not have the loudest or the most beautiful voice. He was shy, so he spoke softly. He liked to think, so he spoke slowly. He got nervous, so he sometimes had a lisp. But no matter, he would use their magical language next month and create something of his own. Maybe something that could fly. Maybe something with stripes.

But month after month passed, and Min never got a chance. Atum and Shu would talk over him. Sometimes shush him. Finally, they told him he didn’t have what it takes. The magical language wouldn’t work for him. He wasn’t creative enough. Wasn’t loud enough. His words were weak.

Angry and hurt, Min decided to tell them a story they couldn’t ignore. It was an awful thing, filled with chaos and rage. He described all the bad things that would happen in their world, disease, war, slaughter and mayhem. When the telling was done, Atum and Shu were scared. They apologized.

“Your words are not weak. You can help us create if you want,” they said. “But what you told just now – that was dreadful. It didn’t sound good at all. We don’t want that in our new world. Take it back. Call that story back.”

But sadly, it was too late. Already regretting his outburst, Min tried and tried to call back his words. But it didn’t work. He couldn’t take it back. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is set loose in the world.

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Sharing my version of Leslie Silko’s story about how evil came into our world was a very dynamic experience for me. It was impossible to be verbatim and I noticed that I would automatically modulate my inflection and tone according to the listener at the time.

I came up with this version with children in mind and my first listeners were an eight and nine year old. It was interesting because they made a lot of interruptions – asking for back-stories (How did they come to the island? Why was the island a circle?) and character motivation (What did Min want to create? Why didn’t they like him?) Their questions actually led me to add to my story. One or two details I added were actually their invention. Sharing the story with adults was different – my parents listened in silence till the end, I didn’t have to work as hard to keep their attention.

When I shared the story with a friend of mine, (who had taken the same ‘Religion in Ancient Egypt’ class at UBC as I had), she immediately recognized the names in my story were borrowed – from one version of the ancient Egyptian creation myths (See pages 81-83.) But the gods Atum, Shu, Min are quite different in my story. This got me wondering about how authorship worked in oral storytelling. At the end of all his stories, Thomas King says “Take it, it’s yours. Do with it what you will,” (29). So who do oral stories belong to? The storyteller? Or the listener?

WORKS CITED

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

Leeming, David Adams, and Margaret Adams Leeming. “Egyptian Creation.” A Dictionary of Creation Myths. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Oxford Reference. Web. 24 Jan. 2015.

“Stories… bring us closer to the world we live in by taking us into the world of words.” (1)

One thing all communities have in common is their stories. However, stories are also what often divide us. According to Chamberlin, it’s one of the ways people use to separate the world into ‘Them and Us’ (8). When we don’t understand people’s stories, customs, or language, they become the ‘Other’. It becomes easy to dismiss them as “incorrigible babblers and doodlers” and we use rigid categories like useful/useless and civilized/barbaric, to differentiate us – which is the root of all antagonism (8).

One way we can re-imagine this dualism, Chamberlin believes, is through understanding the way stories and language work. According to him, the heart of language is paradox and stories take us to a place where reality and imagination intersect, where things are both true and false. When children are learning to read and write, they understand that the letters C-A-T is a cat, but it also is not (131). They are comfortable with contradictory realities, and this is what Chamberlin wants us to aspire to.

After all, stories are at their most powerful at a moment of paradox – where “mystery and clarity converge”. Chamberlin says it is when we are the most aware of their “arbitrariness and artifice of form” that we surrender to them (124). I’m reminded of this article I read a while back called The Distracted Globe by Anthony Dawson which examined the interplay between distraction and attention in Elizabethan theater. (Unfortunately, there’s no e-version of it, but here’s a preview.) It talked about how playwrights had to work to engage the audiences in a time when the distractions of the rowdy playhouse were a spectacle themselves. They did this by purposely creating meta-theatrical awareness and this is especially true of some of Shakespeare’s death scenes – where the audience’s attention is directed to the ‘dead’ characters on stage (who are obviously very much alive). Drawing attention to the artifice, Dawson argues, actually creates engagement of the audience.

These moments of paradoxes seem to serve as a signal for the reader, listener (or theater-goer) to use their imagination and believe, so that at that moment, it can be both an artifice and reality. This pushes us to be less rigid and to widen our perspectives.

I think riddles and charms work in a similar fashion. Riddles – which include nursery rhymes, metaphor, trickster tales – present themselves as being true and untrue and to ‘get them’, we need to re-adjust our understanding of language (161). Whereas charms – such as national anthems, creation stories and elegies – are often comprised of contradictions. However, in the moment we sing or read them, we believe in them, even if we wouldn’t otherwise (180). Both of these devices again, expand our perspective and make us more flexible.

Our world is full of contradictory ideas and viewpoints. Understanding the way language and story work and being comfortable with believing and not believing makes us feel closer to the world we live in. This is the common ground Chamberlin envisions – a new state of mind where we can accept stories without delegitimizing the others (239).

WORKS CITED

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004. Print.

Dawson, Anthony B. “The Distracted Globe.” The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England: A Collaborative Debate. Ed. Anthony Dawson & Paul Edward Yachnin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 88 – 111. Print.

Stuart, David. “Metatheatre.” Metatheatre. Web. 16 Jan. 2015.

 Hi there!

This blog is part of the coursework for English 470A, a  Canadian Literature class taught by Dr. Erika Paterson. We  will be examining a number of interesting topics here, such as  the power of stories, what it means to be Canadian, and the    relationship between nation building and literature.

I’m Tarana, a fifth year English Lit Major at UBC and I’m really looking forward to taking this class. As a first generation Canadian, who is still figuring out her national identity, I’m sure this class will give me lots of new ideas to think about. I find the relationship between stories and national identity especially fascinating and I’m interested in examining it further. I came across this great quote a while ago that kind of touches upon these ideas:

“Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.” – Ben Okri

It got me wondering – do we choose and select the stories we live by? Or are they always handed to us? Can we really change these stories and if so, how? I expect that by the end of this course, I’ll have a few answers.

Canada is known for being a ‘cultural mosaic’ – it’s been a part of our national policy since 1971 and I think it’ll be interesting to see to how this informs our literature and to what extent. We will probably also take a look at some of the more dominant narratives in Canadian Literature and I want to learn more about the ‘alternative’ narratives, the ones that have been pushed aside, forgotten or silenced.

Most of the literature classes I’ve taken so far have usually been about Victorian England, British Romanticism and poetry, so this course will be new – and exciting – territory for me. I look forward to learning with you all!

WORKS CITED

“Census: Ethnocultural Portrait: Canada.” Census: Ethnocultural Portrait: Canada. Statistics Canada, n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2015.

“ENGL 470A (3 Cr): Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres.” UBC Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology. University of British Columbia, n.d. Web. 09 Jan. 2015