Hyperlinking.

Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW according to the pages assigned to you. Be sure to make use of Jane Flick’s reference guide on you reading list.

 

I have decided to analyze pages 130-135, 330-337 from Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water. I particularly put my focus over George Morningstar and Latisha, his Native wife. I believe this Western-Native couple relationship is very much demonstrate the actual Western-Native relation, and their attitudes towards the land of Canada.

George Morningstar

Since I have very little knowledge on the history of the United States, I could not original figure of this character, until that day when my colleagues saw me reading Green Grass, Running River. Then he began to told me the famous Big Littlehorn Battle, which then inspired me to relate this character to George Armstrong Custer.

George Armstrong Custer, the Lieutenant General of the United States, is the original figure for the character of George Morningstar. I believe the reason that King named him with the last name “Morningstar” is due to his famous nickname– “Son of the Morning Star”, though he too revealed his true identity later in the story: “I’m General Custer…” (GGRW 384). An additional note would be that there is a film decorated to General Custer also named as “Son of the Morning Star“.

King also included his signature outfit, his fringed leather jacket, which ensure me that George Custer would be the figure I am looking for. However, other than these minor details that unveils his true identity, I found that the story of George Morningstar very much alludes to the life of General Custer.

Both characters married a Native woman, and had an important woman in their lives which is named Elizabeth. She was the wife of the former, and the daughter of the latter. The two Georges also have written letter to their wives while they were away for army, and for his interests respectively. General Custer’s letter to his wives was later compiled into the book named as The Custer Story: The Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth.

Sun Dance is a very important event as the Sitting Bull, one of the Native leaders has attended before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which directly led to the death of General Custer as he underestimated the Native force. Similarly, George Morningstar has too underestimated the impact he would bring by disobeying the rule of no photography during the Sun Dance.

Works Cited

Geroge Custer. Historynet.com, 2006.  www.historynet.com/george-custer. Accessed on 31 Jul 2016.

Son of the Morning Star. IMDb.com, 1991. imdb.com/title/tt0102962/. Accessed on 31 Jul 2016.

The Custer Story: The Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth. University of Nesbraska Press. nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Custer-Story,672680.aspx. Accessed on 31 Jul 2016.

The Allusions.

Find three examples of names that need to be spoken aloud in order to catch the allusion. Discuss the examples as well as the reading technique that requires you to read aloud in order to make connections. Why does King want us to read aloud?

– Question 6



Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer (LIBI Archives/Library)

George Morningstar

This character only catches my attention when I read aloud his description, the part that Latisha met him at the reserve: he was “wearing—tan cotton slacks, a billowy white cotton shirt that was loose in the body and tight at cuffs. He had on oxblood loafers and patterned socks” (132), and his signature “fringed leather jacket” (Page Number). These details of outfit much resemble the famous lieutenant General, George Armstrong Custer. Furthermore, a non-fiction book named Son of the Morning Star also made him as the subject, which coincided with his last name in GGRW— Morningstar.

Other than the above, his underestimation over the reaction towards his attendance in the Sun Dance, which ended up being dismissed by the Indians, too resembles his situation at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he too underestimated the native force, believing that he could overrun them at ease. He ended up being killed by the Indians.

 

Alberta Franklin

The first character that I paid attention after reading aloud would be Alberta Franklin. The name itself is obviously an allusion of the province of Alberta, but then I started wondering the reason behind King’s intention in mentioning Alberta. Bearing in mind that King constructs his story undergirding Canadian history, the deadliest landslide that took place in Frank, Alberta would mostly likely resembles the name of Alberta Franklin. The landslide took place on April 29th, 1903, where tonnes of rocks fell from the Peak of Turtle Mountain into the Crownset Valley River.

One reason that I believe King including this incident into his story would be because of the Native oral traditions that related to this landslide. It has been reported that the groups of native people living nearby, the Blackfoot and K’tunaxa, have oral traditions in referring the summit of Turtle Mountain as “the mountain that moves” (“The Frank”). Taking this into consideration, I think the intention for King to incorporate the incident into his story would probably be integrating oral culture into written culture, which is identical to the theme of the story: portraying oral culture in written form.

 

Dr. Joseph Hovaugh

I had a hard time in struggling how to pronounce “Hovaugh” and, could not even relate him to any other figure. Luckily, the clue was obvious when I started to read the dialogue of Dr. Hovaugh and Dr. Eliot in page 46. With Dr. Eliot calling Dr. Hovaugh “Joe,” I quickly correlate “Joe” and “Hovaugh” together and finally noticed that Dr. Joseph Hovaugh is created based on the biblical character, Jehovah.

After grasping the connection between Dr. Hovaugh and the Bible, King’s details started to make sense to me. To further illustrate their similarities, I would like to cite a narration of Dr. Hovaugh on page 16, and compare it with a passage drawn from the Book of Genesis.

“Dr. Hovaugh sat in his chair behind his desk and looked out at the wall and the trees and the flowers and the swans on the blue-green pond in the garden, and [he was pleased]. [emphasis added] (King 16)”

“I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food” – and it was done. God looked at everything he had made, and [he was very pleased]. Evening passed and morning came – that was the sixth day. [emphasis added] (Genesis 1:27-31)”

God obviously plays a dominated role in the Bible, while Dr. Hovaugh too plays a dominated role over the four Native elders, which symbolizes control over the Native people in the story. From the above quotations, they both are conveyed through a tone of control and revealed their leading status over their people, which is the Native people in the case of Dr. Hovaugh.

By connecting God with Dr. Joseph Hovaugh (aka. Jehovah), I suspect that King intentionally build up this character to illustrate the desire of the predominating Christian European settlers in taking control over the land of the Natives through controlling their lives and land.

 

Works Cited

Frank Slide Interpretive Centre. The Frank Slide Story. 18 Mar. 2016, http://history.alberta.ca/frankslide/frankslidestory/frankslidestory.aspx. Accessed by 18 Jul 2016.

The Multiculturalism Act, 1988

For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

– Question Two


The Multiculturalism Act, 1988

Taking the two major groups of European settlers into account, former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson established the Royal Commission on Bilingual and Bi-culturalism in 1963, aimed to develop an equal basis for British-Canadians and French Canadians. Shortly after its establishment, Pearson’s successor Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced that Canada would be the world’s instigator to adopt multiculturalism as its official policy in 1971, which finally and officially includes the First Nations into the Canadian culture.

With the enactment of the Multiculturalism Act by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988, the Canadian government, “affirmed the value and dignity of all Canadian citizens regardless of their racial or ethnic origins, their language, or their religious affiliation”, through holding the two fundamental principles that “all citizens are equal and have the freedom to preserve, enhance and share their cultural heritage”, and that “Multiculturalism promotes the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in all aspects of Canadian society” (“Canadian Multiculturalism”).

With the inclusion of First Nations in the Multiculturalism Act, it is clearly acknowledged that they share equal rights like the other European settlers, while their culture and heritage must also be protected. However, criticisms suggested that forcing the official bilingualism on First Nations would do harm on their cultural inheritance, suppressing them into the mainstream Western, English/French-speaking culture (Voyageur 109). Furthermore, though it is officially reckoned that the Indian Act is unconstitutional in British Columbia under the circumstance an “Indian” women’s “Indian” status would no longer be valid when she married a non-Indian man, and that her children would also be invalid for their “Indian” status (Hanson), amendments on the Indian Act and the Multiculturalism Act are yet to be made, and other provinces in Canada may still have yet acknowledged this controversy.

Applying what we have gone through this lesson: Introduction to Nationalism and Daniel Coleman’s summary on White Civility: the Literary Project of English Canada, I have come to realize that not only the First Nations, but also us, who are living under the illusion of multiculturalism. According to Eric Hobsbawn and Benedict Anderson, culture is inherited through ethnic enclaves. Though I could not deny that multicultural media is firmly established within Canada, we are bounded in the Western European environment, encountering media that are dominated by Western Europeans, trying to emerge into the Canadian society through learning English and French, which I found these conditions resembling to what Daniel Coleman has highlighted in his book: “the fictive element of nation building”, and “the necessary forgetfulness required to hold that fiction together”.

 

Works Cited

“Canadian Multiculturalism: An Inclusive Citizenship” Government of Canada. Government of Canada, n.d. Web. 18 Jul 2016

“Ethnic print media in the multicultural nation of Canada: A case study of the black newspaper in Montreal”. Journalism 7 (3): 343–361.

Hanson, Erin. Bill C-31 and gender discrimination, The Indian Act. First Nations and Indigenous Studies. UBC, 2009. Web. 18 Jul 2016.

“Introduction to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature Guide. University of British Columbia, n.d. Web. 4 July 2016.

Voyageur, Cora J.. “Various Shades of Red: Diversity within Canada’s Indigenous Community” London Journal of Canadian Studies 16: 20000/2001: 109-124. Web. 18 Jul 2016.

Reading and Storytelling.

After finishing my first silent reading of the story “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England”, I have noted a few remarks on my notebook. When I further proceed to the different styles of storytelling, which are reading out loud and listening this story from a friend of mine, I realized that the remarks that I had previously made could now be explained in shaping the meaning of the story.

The first remark that I noted was the redundant explanation through out the story. I found that the storyteller tried to describe every part of the story as detailed as possible, which somehow caused confusion during my first reading of the story. However, as I proceed, I find that these little explanations make the story verbally more interesting and attracting. It creates a sense of repetition, which we usually tend to do when performing a story as a storyteller. Furthermore, with the change of intonation associated with these repetitions, meanings illustrated by words could be conveyed to the listeners more explicitly in different varieties. In this way, it makes the story itself into a performance for its listeners, for I felt that verbally interpreting this story would be draw the listeners deep into the story, more attentions would also be drawn to the important details of the story, rather than reading it as a reader. I would consider this as a mindful trick of the storyteller to “[defeat] reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves (King)”.

My next remark is that the story does not seem to be written in a very grammatical way. Though it was highlighted on the question itself that the story was conveyed through an “oral syntax”, my observation would be that it rather looks alike to the form of poetry. Through the ungrammatical conversations between the King of England and the Coyote, as well as the irregular division on sentences within the story, these examples have proven what we have been taught: poetry does not necessarily have to be grammatical.

However, only until I read the story aloud, this oral syntax form of story enables the storyteller a wider flexibility in conveying the story, especially when it comes to the different pauses made by me and my friend. Therefore, I agreed to the view of Shamina Kallu, a former student of this course, that oral syntax has deconstructed the conventional style of academic writing on First Nation stories, and make this story sounded more alike to a personal story. With a personal story, listeners would tend to focus less on the grammatical mistakes of the story, but shift their attention to the meaning of the story. To bring it further, this greater flexibility would allow the storyteller recreating their own interpretations on the story and audiences’ understandings towards the meaning of the story would be altered according to different performers. I believe with different interpretations of the story, meaning of the stories could be conveyed via different perspectives, and would ultimately develop into a thorough understanding towards the story of “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England”.

 

Works Cited

Kallu, Shamina. 2.3: Oral Syntax: Maintaining the Meaning of Stories. Canada: Muffled Voices and National Narratives. 13 Feb 2015. Web. 1 Jul 2016.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 1 Jul 2016.

Shaw, Martin. On Repetition in Storytelling. The Stanford Storytelling Project. 2013. Web. 1 Jul 2016.

Understanding the Stories…

In this lesson, I say that our capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from the first stories is seriously limited for numerous reasons and I briefly offer two reasons why this is so: 1) the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness, and 2) the extended time of criminal prohibitions against Indigenous peoples telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities.

In Wickwire’s introduction to Living Storiesfind a third reason why, according to Robinson, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited. To be complete, your answer should begin with a brief discussion on the two reasons I present and then proceed to introduce and explain your third reason from Wickwire’s introduction.


We have just gone through two reasons that may explain for our limited understanding and comprehension towards the meaning from the First Stories in lesson 2,2: the disconnect from the social process of telling, and the generation barrier contributed by the criminal prohibitions imposed by the European conquerors.

We have been working on the impact from the disconnection of “the social process of telling”, which is featured in our previous assignments. We have come to know and emphasize how storytelling would be significant in our understanding and comprehension towards the meanings of the stories. Different mediums of storytelling, which are through computer and through verbal language in this case, would create differences on our experience of the stories. I think stories delivered through verbal means would convey a clearer meaning of the stories as the storyteller could take control of his/her process of storytelling through intonation and emotion in order to allow the listeners to perceive the message they are supposed to receive.

Another point would be the criminal prohibitions imposed by the settling Europeans. In Unit 2.2, examples being used are the outlaw of Potlatch, which is First Nation’s form of cultural and social ceremony, and the mandatory residential school for children aged five to fifteen. These prohibitions have created a barrier for generations in passing on the stories, which further contributed to our current limited understanding towards stories told by the First Nations.

The third reason that limits our understanding towards the First Stories would be the conservative practice of anthropologists. Traditional anthropologists, like Franz Boas, have “limit[ed] themselves to a single genre: the so-called ‘legends’, ‘folk-tales’ and ‘myths’ set in the pre-historical times, (Loc. 411)” which has contributed to the barrier of misunderstanding towards the First Stories. Wickwire found out that there are numerous editing and alterations on the previous publications of First Stories in order to wipe out the cultural “impurities”, which did not acknowledge the fluidity of First Nations culture (Loc. 535).

Therefore, in this book of Harry Robinson: Living by Stories, A Journey of Landscape and Memory, Wickwire tried to incorporate a wide range of First Stories that are previously being neglected, for examples the stories told by “horsepackers, miner, cannery workers, missionary assistant, and laborers, (Loc. 412)”. In order to minimize the impact of restraining cultural fluidity, Wickwire, through this book, is trying to highlight “the cultural importance of maintaining a full range of stories (Loc. 569)”.

 

Works Cited

Wickwire, Wendy. Harry Robinson: Living by Stories, A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon Books, 2009. Kindle.

 

 

What Contributes to a Home?…

I have read a lot of your stories during the past few days. Even knowing the fact that we all came from all walks of life, I still find these stories stunning and interesting for I have never had such experiences before. Furthermore, I also realized so many similarities among our unique stories. This is a list of my observations:

Not a Specific Location

‘Home’ does not necessarily have to be a specific place. As Stephanie mentioned in her story, she found different types of dance studios would still contribute to her sense of home. And Alanna also said in her story that “I don’t need personal pictures or specific people to feel at home”. Home could be anywhere we feel comfortable, even without an exact location.

Your Beloved Ones

I also observed that many of us believe ‘home’ can be people or things that you are emotionally attached. In my own blog, I have mentioned that my definition of home could never be completed without the presences of my family and plush toys. Mia found her home as a place “where my dogs feel most comfortable”. Our definitions of home are much connected to the people or things we care the most.

Language

After reading the stories of Claudia and Natasha, I also reflected on the aspect of language contributing the sense of home. I truly had the same feeling of being an ‘outsider’ when I first moved to Canada. Though I can speak fluent English, I never have a feeling of emerging into the Canadian society. However, only when I’m surrounded by Cantonese in Richmond, which is my mother tongue, I finally find the sense of home. Though there aren’t my family and plush toys, I found Richmond is the place nearest to home.

 

Works Cited

Calder, Mia. “Lesson 2:1; Assignment 2:2 — Home”. Summer studies: English 470. 6 Jun 2016. Web. 10 Jun 2016.

Gillard, Claudia. “2:2 IF THE LABEL FITS”. Whose Home & Native Land?. 7 Jun 2016. Web. 10 Jun 2016.

Heine, Natasha. “Assignment 2.2 : Home”. Natasha Heine’s ENGL 470 Blog. 6 Jun 2016. Web. 10 Jun 2016.

Joy, Alanna. “Assignment 2.2”. Alanna’s English 470 Blog. 7 Jun 2016. Web. 10 Jun 2016.

Michaud, Stefanie. “2:2 This was my 8th move in less than 3 years”. ENG 470 Summer 2016. 6 Jun 2016. Web. 10 Jun 2016.

My Home…

There was an argument between me and my parents last Christmas break. Though I couldn’t exactly recall what was it about, I remembered that it was somehow related to the concept of home. For them, home would be a place where they are rooted; for me, home would be a place where all my beloved ones would be. The location does not really matter, as long as there are people and things that I care and love.

“Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. (Dessen)”

It is only when I moved to Canada for university education, I realized how much I miss my parents. I would never say they are the best parents on earth, for they have forced their own wills on me. I never had any chance to play with other kids after school. What’s ahead of me were a bunch of different tutorial classes. But I could never forget the notes that my mother left after settling me in the university dorm. That’s my very first taste of ‘love’ from my parents.

As I alone stayed in Canada, I started realizing those motivations behind their every decision. They are love and protection that I had never understood. My parents have always been planning ahead of me, so as to swipe out any hindrance in my life. My parents have always been my toughest shelter when I need comfort and help. My parents have always tried to fulfill my every desire even at the time when my family was at the edge of bankrupt. I would say, they are not the best parents on earth, but they are the best parents of mine. With them, I feel so secure. My definition of home could never be completed without their presence.

My plush toys are something I would never ever give up on, for I am the only child in my family, and have spent most of my childhood with them. They are my friends and I name every each of them.

I was not used to express myself when I was small, so whenever I want to talk to somebody, I talked to my stuffed toys. It may sound creepy, but I think I can sense their feelings whenever I talked to them. Though they couldn’t talk physically, I receive comfort from them when I was sad; and I received joy from them when I shared something happy. Most importantly, I could not sleep without my plush toys around me at night. Therefore, when I moved to Canada, I had the idea of bringing all my plush toys, for they are part of my sense towards home. Undoubtedly, my mother banned this crazy idea, but I brought a few of them with me. To me, home would never be home without my plush toys!

image1

“Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?” […] “For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home. (Perkins)”

There is another person that I would say “with him, I’m home”. He is my husband, my best friend, my teacher and my lifelong supporter.

Without him, I may be living a miserable life now, for we met during the time that I was completely lost in the journey of life. He has guided me with patience and has showed me how wonderful life could be. I could not really express our experience in words clearly as there are always some stories that would leave you speechless. To sum up, he would be where I belong to.

image2

Home, in my opinion, is where my parents, husband and plush toys are. Missing any one of them, home would never be a home again.

Works Cited

Perkins, Stephanie. “Anna and the French Kiss.” U.S.: Dutton Juvenile, 2010. Print.

Dessen, Sarah. “What Happened to Goodbye.” U.S.: Viking Juvenile, 2011. Print.

 

How Evil Comes into the World…

This is a childhood story that I would like to share with everyone. For as long as I can remember, I have been told this story for countless times by my grandmother and parents in Cantonese. Seizing this opportunity of story-telling, I would like to try to reiterate this story in English.

That was probably one of the worst stormy night that I had experienced in my life. It was raining dogs and cats, with thunders and lightning rolling and stumbling across the sky. Little Christy looked into the shades of the red burning clouds, wondering when would this rainstorm going to stop.

It was late at night, probably around midnight, when I received a phone call from my mom. She was struggling her way to home as the whole public transit system was out of commission. She tried to sound jolly, but I knew that she was exhausted, and desperately wanted a cab to take her home. I can still remember the last remark of her call, “Baby Christy, it’s bedtime now. You should sleep now. Mama will be safe.” Then she suddenly hung up her phone.

Grandma just finished bathing when I finished my chat with my mother. She dried her hair while I was sitting on the windowsill, staring at nowhere in the sky. She hugged me in her arms and carried me into her bedroom. I hugged her back and left a good night kiss on her cheek. While tucking me in bed, she switched off the lights and began with my daily bedtime story.

“Christy, do you know why there would be curfews? Do you know why I told your mom to get home before midnight everyday?” Grandma murmured in a soothing tone, as if she was falling asleep. “Grandma, I have absolutely no idea.” Grandma then sat up and looked into my eyes as if they were diamonds in the dark, and said, “Christy, I am going to tell you a true story tonight…”

It was too a blustery midnight when a girl was alone on the walkway, heading back home. She was talking on her phone when she met a man coming out from a dark alley. She was too focused on her call, not realizing that the man was following her. It is her usual habit to walk through a park nearby her home as a shortcut during the night, though there is not even a lamp.

At the moment she stepped in the park, the man behind her patted her shoulder. Only realizing the presence of the man by then, she was terrified and rooted on the spot. She then heard his whisper, “Give me all your valuables!” The girl was so frightened that she did as he commanded, like a robot.

After a short while, when she finally retained her ability to talk, she put on a brave face, “Can I leave now…,” but before she finished her last phrase, the silent man silted her throat with a knife hidden in his sleeve. The wounded girl tried to scream for help, but ended up bleeding to death.

“The story stops here, Christy. You need to sleep now,” grandma commanded as she pulled up my little blanket. “But grandma, would this story happened to mommy?” Tears started to run down my face as I imagine her walking miserably under the umbrella, without any protection. “Grandma, I don’t like this story! Can you make me forgetting this story?”

Probably realizing this story might be too cruel for a 4-year-old kid like me, grandma paused for a while before she talked, “I’m sorry, Christy. Mommy will definitely be fine. However, for once a story, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.”

I could never forget this story in my life for this is the story that first presented the evil of the world to me, which could never be called back. This is how evil comes into the innocent world of mine.

Commentary:

  • The idea of retelling this childhood story sparks off when I knew that we would be working on the topic of “How evil comes into the world”. Though I have struggled on the definition of “world”, I believe that there would be a world within each person, which, therefore, contributed to different stories.
  • I found it extremely difficult to translate idioms and allegories from Cantonese to English, for the meaning might be same, but the frame of mind could differ a lot. I may regard this as a hindrance in bringing the minorities’ stories under the spotlight of mainstream culture for the stories of theirs might not be able to convey or portray thoroughly. (This may be a sign of Eurocentric dominance over other cultures, as English is now the dominating language on earth.)

Works Cited

Poon, Stanley. A Lightning Moment in Hong Kong. 4 May 2012. National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest2012. National Geographic, Washington, D.C.

 

When Technology Meets Literature and Stories…

According to Marshall McLuhan in 1964, he regarded “the written form” as “[appreciating] the nature of spoken word”, while orality is a “primitive and undeveloped medium” (MacNeil). This might be what happened in the past, but definitely not at present. I believe that one cannot deny that, through the invention of World Wide Web, we get to know more different people’s stories. There are some examples that I would like to share with you before getting into my reflection.

The first example that I have in my mind would definitely be the Facebook Page Humans of New York. Admin of the page has transformed spoken stories of the interviewees, which is a form of orality, into words on the Internet, which can be regarded as a form of literature. Another example I would like to show is a video that Benedict Cumberbatch reading a love letter written during the Second World War. With these examples, I would, therefore, say technology has utterly changed what we anticipated as literature and orality.

Then I begin to wonder why and how technology changed the style of literature, story and storytelling. The prime reason would possible be the happening of Globalization. According to internet source, English is currently the dominating language in the world, with 67 sovereign states entitled it as the official language. Therefore, with no doubt, English language is playing an extremely significant role in our lives, and stories can now be told and made an impact via a single language.

Furthermore, with the help of different social media, like Facebook and Pinterest, along with different tools, like video, soundtracks, both written and oral stories not only can be shared by a click, but also bypassed the publishers. This enables different stories to come into our sight, especially those that the mainstream media tends to ignore. I would especially want to highlight the ‘comment’ function of social media. This function enables readers to directly interact with the writer, sharing their own point of view, but I think this is another way of storytelling, particularly when people share their own experience. This also showed that technological advancement has blurred the division between storytellers and readers.

Another very interesting invention that technology brought us is the hypertexts. Taking this blog entry as an example, you can easily reach Humans of New York and Cumberbatch’s video by moving your mouse over the underlined words, and click them! Another example I would like to draw to support my view is our blogging guideline. Hypertexts in our blog entries are aimed to provide insights and new information to our current knowledge. With different stories written and different hypertexts included by fellow classmates, we can understand the contexts of stories thoroughly through the Internet. We no longer need to flip through pages and search background details in the old, dull library.

To conclude on how technology influenced on literature and story, I would say that the Internet allows people to hear and know stories behind the doors. Before ending this entry, I would need to acknowledge that I haven’t talked about the negative impacts on literature and stories brought by technological advancement, but I am more than happy to discuss them with my fellows!

 

Countries and Languages – Megalanguages around the World – Nations Online Project. One World Nations Online. Web. 19 Apr 2016

Courtney MacNeil, “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/

“Humans of New York.” Nov 2010. Facebook.

Letters Live. “’ My dearest one’ Benedict Cumberbatch reads Chris Barker’s letter to Bessie Moore.” Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 27 Mar 2015. Web. 19 Apr 2016.

Introduction

 

Hello fellow classmates and bloggers. Welcome to my blog for Canadian Literature.

I am a third year student majoring in English and minoring in Spanish at UBC Okanagan. Though being a Canadian, I had lived all my life in Hong Kong till I came to Canada to pursue my university education. Therefore, knowing almost nothing about Canadian and First Nation history, I am very interested in exploring and building my own Canadian identity through studying Canadian Literature.

I have had the eagerness to know about Chinese History since I was small. I have read books of different Chinese dynasties till I watched a documentary on Chinese workers facilitating the construction of Canadian Pacific Railway in the North America. Then I discovered that I have no knowledge about the history of Chinese immigrants in other countries, especially in Canada, where I am born.

While digging into the history of Chinese immigrants in Canada, I also started to look into Canadian and Indigenous History. However, I only first came into Canadian History through Bear, a Canadian novel written by Marian Engel. The novel has first exposed me to the European influence over first nation in Canada. Realizing the importance of European intersection with First Nation in shaping the present Canadian identity, I decide to enroll this course, hoping to find out some answers through Canadian stories and literature, and understanding how the advancement in technology is engaged with different styles of storytelling.

I hope you will enjoy and give me feedbacks on my blog entries. I am looking forward to a summer with lots of inspirations!

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Construction of a Chinese Camp on the Canadian Pacific Railway. 1885. Library and Archives Canada, Kamloops, British Columbia. Comp. Edouard Deville. Web.

Engel, Marian. Bear. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976. Print.

wei ming. “RTHK-華人移民史-金山客-第二集-2012-8-04/ Roots Old and New, Stories of Chinese Emigrants:North America: Chinese, Railroad, and Head Tax.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 04 Aug 2012. Web. 15 May 2016.

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