For this lesson I decided to answer question 5 which is asking me to compare Harry Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” with King’s Green Grass, Running Water. In this blog post I will first discuss the differences in writing style between the two authors and then move on to talk about the power dynamics of Coyote and God in each story.

In the question the professor gives a quote by Blanca Chester that explains how Robinson’s literature has had a huge impact on the way King writes. Blanca Chester’s (46) quote explains that Robinson’s literature has caused King to make changes in the way he writes dialogue, addresses readers and characters, chooses characters (for example adopting characters from Indigenous cultures) and connects his story lines (as cited by Paterson Lesson 3.1). After I read part one of King’s book Green Grass, Running Water I agreed with most of what Chester says, as I can see many similarities in both Robinson’s and King’s literature. I see similarities when it comes to the unique role of narrator being able to communicate with the characters and/or with the readers and the using characters form Indigenous cultures and Christianity. One thing that stood out to be a little bit more complicated to me was the amount and the extent that oral syntax was used by both writers. It is explained on a Wikipedia page for Green Grass, Running Water that King “has been hailed as a merger between oral and written tradition” (Green Grass, Running Water Wikipedia) and although I do agree with this statement I do feel that King has not preserved the oral tradition of the story to the same extent that it is preserved in Robinson’s book. In Robinson’s stories the reader is almost forced to have to read the stories out loud because Wickwire writes in a way that uses oral syntax and imitates human speech. In King’s Green Grass, Running Water there is some of this oral syntax present however it is only used in some of the story lines and is not used to the same extent that Wickwire used it.

Now I will move on to talk about how Coyote and God are represented in Robinson’s and King’s story and the interesting power dynamic between them. In Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” God sends down an Angel to Coyote and it is explained that the Angel says to Coyote that “God says at one time you work for him… But now God sent me here to hire you again, just for a short time.” (Robinson). In this situation it feels like Coyote is working for God, and God is represented as more powerful as Coyote. What I find really interesting is that in King’s story God and Coyote have a completely different power dynamic. For example in the beginning of the story Coyote in a way creates GOD as GOD comes from one of Coyote’s dreams (King). Coyote at first says to the dream that the dream should be a dog as “Dogs are good. They are almost as good as Coyote” (King) I feel this somewhat represents that Coyote is more powerful than GOD. However, there is more to this relationship as throughout the story GOD and Coyote talk to each other like they are on the same level. What is also really interesting is how GOD is portrayed in King’s novel. CanLit GUIDES talks about the key themes of Green Grass, Running Water and cites Goldman explaining that in the story God is casted as “one of Coyote’s dreams that’s become egocentric and egotistical” (as cited in CanLit GUIDES). I totally agreed with this interpretation as I felt that in the story GOD was often acting selfish and bossy, for example he would not let others share his food in the garden and his excuse for this was it was against “Christian rules” (King). I have been thinking about why these two stories would portray the power relationship between Coyote and God so differently, and I have a few theories but nothing developed enough yet that I would be able to share. If people reading this blog have any theories to why the power relationship is so different I would love to here it!

citations

Cooper, Guy H. “Coyote in Navajo Religion and Cosmology.” Canadian Journal of Native Studies , 1987, pp. 181–193.

“Green Grass, Running Water.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Grass,_Running_Water#Merging_oral_and_written_tradition.

“Key Themes.” CanLit Guides, 22 Nov. 2013, canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/green-grass-running-water-by-thomas-king/key-themes/.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins e-Books, 2016.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.” English 372 99C Canadian Studies, blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. e-book.

Rose, Marion. “Moon Talk – Coyote by Marion Rose.” Fine Art America, fineartamerica.com/featured/moon-talk–coyote-marion-rose.html.

Hello! These are the three blogs that I want you to evaluate. The first one is the introduction blog and this blog is one of my favourites because I talk about how I plan to apply the knowledge that I gain in this course to my future career. And I also talk about a really amazing film called Edge of Knife which I really wanted to tell you about. 

https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372blog/2020/01/11/welcome-to-my-blog/

The second blog is from lesson 1.2 and in this blog I was discussing the last chapter in Chamberlin’s book If This is Your land where are your Stories. And the reason why I chose this blog is because the chapter taught me more about Indigenous stories and how these stories are not entirely fiction and how they often have a lot of facts and real history in them. I feel that the chapter inspired me to speak about how Indigenous stories have been treated unfairly as society often views these stories as purely fiction.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372blog/2020/01/17/assignment-1-3/

The third blog is the most recent one that I wrote and this one is from lesson 2.3. regarding how Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England ” uses oral syntax. I liked this blog because I am fascinated by the concept of oral syntax. I thought that it was impossible to write down an oral story and still preserve some of the storyteller elements until I saw how oral syntax can be used. * On a side note just wanted to inform you that I made a mistake in this blog that one of my peers pointed out to me I kept referring to Robinson as the writer because his name is on the cover of the book as the author and I should have been referring to Wickwire as the writer because she was the one who was actually writing in the oral syntax. https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372blog/2020/02/19/assignment-2-6-is-it-possible-to-properly-transcribe-an-oral-story/

For assignment 2.6 I decided to answer the first question regarding oral stories and how Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” uses oral syntax in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud (King, 186). This question was initially interesting to me personally because as an Asian studies major I had experiences looking at Chinese vernacular written oral stories from the Ming dynasty called huaben. These huaben stories use storytellers rhetoric and tell the story in a way that feels like the narrator is speaking to a simulated audience by using transitional terms like “behold!” and “there, for all to see …”. Because I had all of this knowledge on huaben stories I wanted to see if there were any similarities between vernacular huaben stories and Robinson’s stories that use oral syntax (long story short, I found out that they were totally different from each other!).

Because Huaben stories and Robinson’s stories that use oral syntax are so different from each other I am going to move past trying to compare and contrast these two type of stories and focus on trying to uncover how the oral syntax works in Robinson’s stories. Most of us already know that “First Nations storytelling involves expert use of the voice, vocal and body expression, intonation, the use of verbal imagery, facial animation, context, plot and character development, natural pacing of the telling, and careful authentic recall of the story” and when trying to transcribe oral stories we often loose all of these features that make oral stories special. However, King explains that “Robinson, within the confines of written language is successful in creating an oral voice” (King, 186). And in order to figure out how Robinson successfully writes in a way that captures an oral voice I have read one of his stories called  “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” as this story uses oral syntax in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud. 

By reading this story once in my head and once out loud I learned how Robinson plays with syntax and structure in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud. When reading Robinson’s story silently in my head I initially felt that the rhythm of the story felt choppy and awkward. And some of the reasons why I felt awkward while reading this in my head is because there were sometimes missing words in the sentence, some of the sentences were fragments, sentences repeated themselves, abbreviated words and some of the sentences used grammar that I deemed to be “incorrect”. However, when reading Robinson’s story out loud it felt much more natural, I realized that Robinson was writing not in sentences but in utterances as when you said the story out loud it sounded close to how people speak in everyday life. Like for example when we are speaking in everyday life we do not have really long grammatically perfect sentences we speak in shorter choppier utterances and we are often dropping off words, using abbreviated words, and repeating our words and phrases to emphasize important points of our speech. Furthermore, I realized that the choppy lines were actually an indication for where to take breaths and how long you should pause. For example in the story when the story goes:

“And the fog come.

The fog on the lake … and they disappeared.

And they don’t see ’em. 

So they go back. 

Another time.” (Robinson)

readers know that there are short pauses between the first three lines and then long pauses for the fourth and fifth line as the spaces between the utterances are much longer.

I feel that because Robinson is writing in a way that is mimicking natural speech this encourages the readers to want to read this story out loud rather than read this story in their head. When reading this story in your head it just feels wrong and in my opinion is harder to understand and make meaning out of the story. When reading it out loud it sounds more natural and it feel like someone is actually telling you a story as is written in a way that mimics human speech patterns.

citations

“Story Telling.” First Nation Pedagogy Online, firstnationspedagogy.ca/storytelling.html.

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

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.

Theobald, Ulrich. “Huaben 話本, Story Scripts.” Huaben 話本 (Www.chinaknowledge.de), 3 May 2013, www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Terms/huaben.html.

“Why Human Speech Is Special.” The Scientist Magazine®, www.the-scientist.com/features/why-human-speech-is-special–64351.

The question in the lesson that interested me the most was the one that discussed the reasons why we have limited understandings about first nation stories.

The professor discusses that the first reason why we have problems understanding first nation stories is because “the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness” (Paterson). I totally agree with as I believe that when an oral story is written down on paper it often ends up being watered-down and is not as meaningful or impactful as it was intended to be originally. When researching about aboriginal stories I found a website that said “in some cultures, if a story is written down it is degraded” (Indigenous corporate training), and I feel like this is the case for some of the indigenous stories as when they get written down the whole oral performance of the story is lost. 

Next the professor explains that First Nation children being taken away from their families and put into residential schools have “disrupted the continuity and credibility of ascribing land ownership through stories” (Paterson). I also agree with this point as it is widely known that residential schools “[contributed] to a general loss of language and culture” (Indigenous foundations) , this is because the residential schools took the First Nation children away from their families and this caused the children to not learn the stories and to be unable to pass them down.  

Another reason why it is hard to understand the full meaning of First Nation stories is explained in the introduction of the book Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory by Harry Robinson. Wendy Wickwire explains that after hearing the story from Harry she went to look at “oral narrative collections for this region to see how Harry’s forebears had depicted Coyote” (Robsinson, introduction) and she found multiple versions of Harry’s Coyote story but the problem was that the “extensive variations among them made it impossible to find anything close to a single storyline” (Robsinson, introduction). Therefore, another limitation for having a deeper understanding of First Nation stories is that there is no single story line because of the many variations of a single story, and it is hard to understand the deeper meaning as these variations conflict with each other, lack detail, and are missing important parts (Robinson, Introduction).

Erika, Paterson. “Lesson 2:2.” English 372 99C Canadian Studies, blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/.

Joseph, Bob. “11 Things You Should Know about Aboriginal Oral Traditions.” 11 Things You Should Know about Aboriginal Oral Traditions, www.ictinc.ca/blog/11-things-you-should-know-about-aboriginal-oral-traditions.

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Talonbooks, 2005.

“The Residential School System.” Indigenousfoundations, indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/.

It was so interesting to read about the meaning of home from a variety of different perspectives. Some of my peers had ideas that related really closely to mine and others had really unique ideas that I have never even considered. The blogs I read were from Sarah Afful, Gaby Rienhart, Maya Sumel, Claire Taylor, Navid Yazdani, and Brenda Druhall.

Similarities among all of the blogs:

• Lots of us talked about wanting to move out of a small home town because of various reasons. Sarah Afful talked about how in the beginning Nina thought of her small home town as “repressive” (Afful, 2020). Personally in my blog I exclaimed that I was getting “bored of going to the same restaurants, and shopping at the one mall” (Scharf, 2020).
• Maya Sumel and Gaby Rienhart both talk about how home is not always with your family it can sometimes be with friends or others that you have “soul-level connections with” (Rienhart, 2020).  Maya Sumel similarly says in her blog post “But home does not have to mean you are with your family. Home can be with your loved ones too, or even on your own” (Sumel, 2020).
• Brenda Druhall discusses homesickness and how she has to overcome homesickness in Vancouver and eventually she starts feeling that Vancouver is her home (Druhall, 2020).  Homesickness is something I touched on but did not go into depth in my blog, but I feel that we both had similar feelings when it came to moving to another place and slowly becoming less homesick and the new place becoming your home.

Differences among all of the blogs:

• Sarah Afful and my blog post differ as we both had different feelings about how a loss of a family member effects our perceptions of home. Sarah Afful says in her blog post how “there is something about losing a parent that makes you feel like you’ve lost a piece of home” (Afful, 2020) and how when Nina losses her father she feels that “If dad was gone than it definitely couldn’t be in that town that dressed her” (Afful, 2020) . I whole heartily agree with her statement but when I went back and looked over my blog post I saw that I interpreted my loss of my Father and the connection with my home a bit differently. In my blog I explain how when I lost my Father I feel like my connection with my home became stronger as my relationship with my mother and sister grew and now this home I lived in was a vessel of memories of my father and I grew closer to the home (Scharf, 2020). 
• Navid Yazdani’s blog was very unique and different from the rest of the blog’s I read. Navid wrote about home being a physical place, Navid explains home is “a place where shutting the doors behind me gives me a feeling of shelter. Home is the feeling of locking out the chaos behind me, separated by just inches of building material” (Yazdani, 2020). I feel like Navid took the question in a very literal way but was still able to make connections and discuss home values and what they feel home is and what they look for in a home. I really enjoyed reading Navid’s as it was refreshing to read something that was unique.

Summary:

Here I will summarize all that I have learned from reading different peoples blog posts. Lots of us feel that we have to get out of our small town in order to  search for home. And lots of others feel like where your family is is not always where home is as sometimes home can be with close friends or others. When breaking out of our shells and moving around to find a place like home and people that make us feel like home we all often feel homesick but this does go away as we get more used to the new place and the new people we are living with. A loss of a love one can affirm our connection with home or send us to search farther for a new home. And lastly we should not forget that home is something that is literal as it is what protects us from the elements and we should be thankful that we are able to live in a home.

works cited

Afful, Sarah. “Dressed by my Mother” SarahAfful Just another UBC Blog site, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/afful/2020/01/.

Druhall, Brenda. “2:2 A short story about home” English 372, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/brendadruhall/

Rienhart, Gaby “The story of home” Explore Gaby’s Blog, 2 Feb. 2020,  https://blogs.ubc.ca/gabyliteratureexplorer/2020/01/28/the-story-of-home/.

Scharf, Sidney. “Assignment 2.2 Sense of home” Canadian literature, 2, Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372blog/.

Sumel, Maya. “Assignment 2.2” OOH CANADA!, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mayasumel/.

Taylor, Claire. “Assignment 2.2” ENGL 372 Claire Taylor, 2 Feb. 2020 https://blogs.ubc.ca/clairetaylor/

Yazdani, Navid. “2.2-A WARM HOME” CANADIAN STUDIES, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/nyazdani/