” Home is such a complex subject, as the stories this class have produced this week reflect, but one certainty emerges for me, and that is the act of reflecting on “home’ inspires remarkable creativity, and that is something to think about. Perhaps home is a story.” Instructor’s Blog
“As I alluded to in my first post for this class, I feel that we all share many cross-cultural similarities that often get swallowed up by investigations of our differences. There are many examples of common values and beliefs between people which may not be immediately evident, as I’m sure as we have come to realize now after reading the stories of home written by our fellow classmates. Our sense of home is undoubtedly something shared across nations and cultures, …” Student Blog
This has been a most interesting week of reading for me. Today I want to talk a little about some of the common threads I found in your stories. But, before I synthesize, first, I must say it was fascinating to discover such a diversity of creative and reflective ideas about both “evil” and “home.” Thank you all.
My, my. The most common thread running between all your stories of home, is inspiration. What an inspired collection of stories about home. Asked to write about home, and we become inspired, this is my experience. Accordingly, I suggest the notion that home is a most valuable and powerful metaphor that is common; the meaning of what constitutes home may change, but not the value or power of the idea, or should I say, of the story of home.
An interesting theme in your stories about how evil came into the world is the relationship between evil and deception, and indeed, some of you told stories in which evil first appears as deception. What I read and heard between the lines of many of your stories was a concern for “truth” and this made me wonder about how we think of stories in context with ideas about truth or fiction: real or lies.
Along with imagining evil as deception, come stories about a world free of deception, places where “everyone speaks the truth.” I heard echoes of the Garden of Eden story where everything is idyllic, and then comes evil in the form of knowledge, a story. Indeed, many of your stories combined with a retelling of other stories, stories I assume are more familiar than that one about the witches that Silko and King like to tell. I also encountered stories inside stories, or as an English Lit. major might put it: meta-stories.
Yes, it appears that we need and use stories, in order to tell stories. And, isn’t this what Lutz and Chamberlin are saying when they tell us that Story is how we make sense of the unknown, the new and unexpected: we fit the unknown into the stories we already know. I think we are approaching an understanding how we use stories, and here my “we” is inclusive and historical; the First Nations and the Settlers and Ourselves, that brings us to an important intersection, a momentary piece of common ground; a place where different stories meet and mingle and leave changed.
How stories change is important to our investigations.
Your comments on the experience of taking King’s story and telling it your own way are as interesting as your stories. One of the things I find most interesting in some of your comments on the experience of telling your story, is the idea that creative writing and critical thinking are two different and distinct skills, and in particular for those of you educated in the social sciences. Hmmm. Much like orality and writing, creative and critical thinking work beautifully together. If you have difficulty synthesizing your creative thinking with your critical thinking, this is the perfect opportunity to practice.
Thank you.
Coming soon; Comments on Upcoming midterm evaluation process