Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW according to the pages assigned to you.

I’m using the PerennialCanada 1999 version of Green Grass, Running Water, so I my assigned pages appear to be one page off at pages 99-114.

My section seems to be a mixed bag of everything.

It begins with First Woman and Ahdamn boarding the train to Fort Marion, where Ahdamn becomes famous for drawing pictures and the First Woman is forced to abandon him there to continue her journey with Ishmael and Hawkeye and Robinson Crusoe (we come back to this at the end of Hawkeye’s narrative, but it appears that abandoning Ahdamn was the real beginning of their journey) .

Ishmael takes over the story and here begins Changing Woman’s narrative. She watches her reflection in the water from Sky World every day, until one day she falls through the sky and lands on Old Coyote, who was sitting in a canoe.

Cut briefly to the four Indians. “Is that our ride?” Hawkeye asks. Later on in the novel, you may remember that this ride is Lionel’s car.

Then we get the first and only formal introduction to the Dead Dog Cafe. Latisha and her crew are getting ready for a group of American tourists, and they come up with a new name for the special. The narrator explains how Latisha turns her restaurant into a tourist trap.

Finally, we are introduced to Eli and Sifton and the whole dam situation (pun intended?).

Fort Marion

Courtyard of Fort Marion

In each of the four Indians’ narratives, they end up being captured and put into Fort Marion. It becomes a recurring theme buried other scores of other recurring themes. In history, the Fort Marion Prisoners were a large group of Plains Indians taken into captive for arbitrary reasons. Most of their offences were no more than simply being Indian, and the quarter or so women and children were simply there because they did not want their family to be separated. They were given western clothing (some of them cut off the lower part of the legs to make it a little more Indian). Later on, some of these men went on to become guards at Fort Marion.

Indian guards at Fort Marion ~1872

Now we come to Ahdamn’s famous drawings! These drawings were basically pencil, ink, and watercolor drawings on old accounting books, also known as ledger. As such, they became known as “ledger drawings.”

These drawings were a way to memorialize the Plains Indian victories, and other aspects of their primarily oral tradition.

Here’s a quick thought:

This was presumably what Ahdamn was working on, except, of course, he isn’t really a Plains Indian as far as we know. They’d come straight out of Eden He draws a horse, a buffalo, and a refrigerator and becomes famous. This could be King’s way of showing us how little we understand the significance of these ledgers, and perhaps how simply we’ve been looking at them. It takes a lot of context, I believe, to fully understand each picture, and it feels like something very sacred to the preservation of Plains Indian culture. Something perhaps only Plains Indians will understand.

The Dead Dog Cafe

First, a word on tourist traps. When I went to Japan last year, my mom decided to have the most inauthentic tourist experience by booking a coach tour. I loathe those things, but they feel safe (to my mom), so we went along with it. Every stop is pretty much a tourist trap. They don’t even try to hide it on these tours. The food is pretty crappy, and there’s a gift store selling 600 yen mochi and Mt. Fuji shaped chocolates. There were a few nights where we got to explore the the locality on our own, so it felt a lot more authentic just by virtue of us having to struggle with the menu and seeking it out. If I’d wandered into the Dead Dog on my own, I would think I’m a brilliant adventurer if I didn’t see those postcards and menus for sale. In the same situation, if I’d come on a bus, I’d be pretty skeptical.

In Vancouver, there are a few Chinese restaurants my family avoid like the plague because my parents consider them tourist traps. One would think that perhaps the restaurants with the most non-Asians are the traps, but that is not always the case. What makes a tourist trap a tourist trap? Location? Hype?

I tried to find a Dead Dog equivalent on TripAdvisor. There are a great many resorts and lodges, like the Miccosukee Indian Village in Florida, boasting its Gator Tail Bites, Catfish Filet, and Fried Frog Legs. In Vancouver, we have the first Native American restaurant, Salmon N’ Bannock, serving up things like buffalo, elk, and boar. It has wonderful ratings, and a gift shop to match!

Thoughts?

In my opinion, these tourist traps are not necessarily intrinsically bad things. For one thing, where else would you find an elk burger locally? These places give you a taste of a culture that you may not normally approach. The only thing that usually sucks is the sub-par quality of a quantity over quality place. I think maintaining a bit of skepticism is a good thing in these cases. If it’s good, keep searching for better, and if it’s bad, keep searching for the good.

The Dead Dog is entirely a caricature of the tourism business, and a caricature of tourists trying to participate in the culture. In fact, King’s Dead Dog Cafe radio show on CBC even had an “Authentic Indian Name Generator,” which is unfortunately now defunct. Many Natives had very negative responses, to which the creator responded,

If you think about it, you realize most people have what we could call descriptive names. George W. Bush, for instance, probably got his name because one of his remote ancestors had some significant connection to a bush. But do we call him “Shrubberyson” or anything similarly mocking?

No, of course not. We don’t mock anybody for their descriptive names except Indians. Why do people belittle Indian names alone? Because they think it’s an acceptable way to feel superior to others. Because they can, in short.

I encourage clicking the Indian Name Generator hyperlink to read the dialogue!

The Dam

It appears that Eli’s dam conflict is a reflection of the Oldman River Dam conflict. There are possibly tons like this, but the location of the Dam, in Brocket, Alberta, is extremely similar to Balene Dam, Sifton’s dam project.

The purpose of Oldman River Dam was to help the south Alberta farmers with irrigation. The plan was drawn out over decades and was finally built in 1990. Among many other problems this dam faced, the Peigan Blackfeet fought to reclaim their land and move the project elsewhere, as the dam would have flooded ancient Peigan burial grounds. A group called the Lonefighters, led by Milton Born With A Tooth, retaliated by digging around the dam with an excavator. Born With A Tooth was arrested. You can read a bit about his story here.

In the end, the dam stuck around in spite of all the environmental and aboriginal concerns.

Thoughts:

The dam controversies, both Eli’s and Milton’s, seem to represent a centuries old tradition of disrespect, as the white farmers and businessmen will always be more important than any contract made with the Natives. Eli’s efforts spanned nearly a decade, and he ultimately goes down with it, as if his sole purpose was to protect his people against the oppressive nature of the dam.

Coyote’s involvement thus becomes rather interesting. It is as if it takes a Native figure to protect Native rights. Milton attempts to go around the dam in a non-violent way, just like Coyote, but real life is not so idea. Eli’s death, therefore, seems to be a reminder that nothing can be gained without sacrificed, especially in a system that do not privilege the Natives.

Works Cited:

“1874 US Infantry Private.” 1874 US Infantry Private. Tree Frog Treasures, n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

Anonymous. Warrior with Shield and Lance While under Fire from Unseen Enemies. Digital image. National Anthropological Archives: Conservation of Anthropological Artwork. Smithsonian, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

Eiselein, E. B. Fort Marion Courtyard. Digital image. Photobucket. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2015

Horn, Kahentinetha. “Milton Born with a Tooth on Campaign Across Canada.” Intercontinental Cry. Center for World Indigenous Studies, 07 Aug. 2006. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

“Ledger Drawings.” National Museum of American History. Smithsonian, 13 Nov. 2009. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

“Miccosukee Indian Village, Tamiami.” Miccosukee Indian Village (Tamiami, FL). TripAdvisor, n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

Ojibwa. “Native American Netroots.” Native American Netroots. WordPress, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

Daschuk, James, and Gregory Marchildon. “Historical Chronology of the Oldman River Dam Conflict.” PARC (n.d.): n. pag. Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative. Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, 1993. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

Salmon N’ Bannock. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

Schmidt, Robert. “Stereotype of the Month Entry.” Blue Corn Comics. N.p., 10 Aug. 2000. Web. 13 Mar. 2015.

3.2 Dancing Coyote, Singing Coyote, Interrupting Coyote

Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

In Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, the word “pedagogy” almost seems laughable in applying it to Coyote. Professor Paterson makes an association between Coyote and Wile E. Coyote, and it’s easy to see how the silly little dog comes across that way. He’s reprimanded over and over by the four Indians and the narrator. He’s invisible, he’s silly, he’s childish, but without him the cycle would not continue.

I. Coyote as the Reader

In many occasions, Coyote’s presence seemed to take on the role of the reader: a third-party onlooker who is able to actively participate in the discussion presented by the orator. In fact, in the majority of the novel he is little more than a listener himself. When the narrator (the “I says”) tells the story, he interacts with questions. In fact, every time he speaks. he is speaking in present tense. Other characters will have the tag, “said” but he will have “say,” which perhaps allude to his role as an outsider to the story in spite of his involvement.

Like any good reader, he gets more and more involved as the story goes on. First it was just him and the narrator in what is possibly a space beyond the realm beyond the book’s settings. Later, he joins the four Indians, who seem to on an equally puzzling yet more earthly plane of existence, in order to try to participate in the story. At first it was just the storytelling aspect, then, though he remained invisible to the inhabitants of Blossom and the reservation, he becomes a key part of the events.

In this sense, Coyote is a bit like a very enthusiastic fan. Like a devoted reader who perhaps wanted to amp up their favourite romance or change the course of their favourite adventure trilogies, Coyote goes from reader to narrator, from a passive onlooker to an active shaper of events. His phases of involvement show his investment, and his eventual desire to change the world. Perhaps not unlike the Indians, Coyote’s definition of world points only to the world within King’s narrative.

II. Coyote as Instigator & Enforcer

The way in which Coyote tries to change the world is crucial to King’s cyclical discussion of the medicine wheel. Because he takes on changing roles as both an active and passive participant, he is a bit like a child who can’t sit still, who is not content with just listening, and acts on the impulse of his understanding of how the story should go.

He’s the kid who looks at you quizically and says, “Wait a minute,” when you try to tell him that Cinderella never marries the prince because she decides to start a business with her Fairy Godmother and live the life of an independent woman.

Coyote, as an invested, if not somewhat erratic, listener, seems to listen with certain ideas about how the story should go. In particular, he seems to believe that the story ought to correspond with the medicine wheel. He prompts the story to be told again and again, and in doing so invokes the different stages of the wheel through the narratives of First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman, and Old Woman. Ultimately, he brings the cycle to an end with death, the back to the beginning with birth.

All the while, he seems to play the role of a whimsical child, doing whatever he wants, regardless of what the narrator and the old Indians tell him.

III. Coyote as Educator

At the end of the day, Coyote is responsible for answering, or bringing up, a lot of important questions all throughout the narratives. It may come off as silly, or even sarcastic at times, but he plays an important role in bringing up a lot of these issues.

On page 392-393, Coyote is watching an exchange between Nasty Bumppo (Or Hawkeye, who was such a hero) and Old Woman.

this is my personal favourite Coyote moment:

Indians have a keen sense of smell, says Nasty Bumppo. That’s an Indian gift.

“I have a keen sense of smell,” says Coyote. “I must be an Indian.”

“You’re a Coyote,” I says.

“:No, no,” says Coyote. “I have an Indian gift.”

Whites are compassionate, says Nasty Bumppo. That’s a white gift.

“What a minute,” says Coyote. “I’m compassionate, too. I must be a White.”

“You’re still a Coyote,” I says.

“Boy,” says Coyote, “this is confusing.”

Indians can run fast. Indians can endure pain…These are all Indian gifts, says Nasty Bumppo…Whites are patient. Whites are spiritual. Whites are cognitive…These are all white gifts, says Nasty Bumppo.

So, says Old Woman. Whites are superior, and Indians are inferior…

“Oops,” says Coyote. “We have a problem.”

“Only if you’re an Indian,” I says.

“You’re right,” says Coyote. “I’m probably a Coyote.”

Because Coyote is neither white nor Indian, his education becomes ours. Still, he’s a trickster through and through, and is often reprimanded for it. Even so, I think it’s important to note that his role throughout the book is not to be a better Coyote, but to be a better listener. You can’t change the little scruffy dog that likes to sing and dance, but through him we can learn to be a better listener, a more active participant in the narratives around us, and perhaps even a little more whimsical, a little more critical. Maybe a little impulsive too!

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperPerennial Canada, 1999. Print.

Marandart. Have Lots of Fun. Digital image. Redbubble. Web.

Morgan Creek Productions. “Last of the Mohicans Trailer.” 1992. Online video clip. IMDB. Accessed on 09 March 2015. <http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi999228185/>

3.1 The Two-Faced Coyote and the Fleeting God

In her article, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel,” Blanca Chester observes that “the conversation that King sets up between oral creation story, biblical story, literary story, and historical story resembles the dialogues that Robinson sets up in his storytelling performances (47). She writes:

Robinson’s literary influence on King was, as King himself says, “inspirational.” When one reads King’s earlier novel, Medicine River, and compares it with Green Grass, Running Water,Robinson’s impact is obvious. Changes in the style of the dialogue, including the way King’s narrator seems to address readers and characters directly (using the first person), in the way traditional characters and stories from Native cultures (particularly Coyote) are adapted, and especially in the way that each of the distinct narrative strands in the novel contains and interconnects with every other, reflect Robinson’s storied impact. (46)

For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robson’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?

God and Coyote; Coyote and God

If we combine Robinson and King’s stories of Coyote and God, you get a lovely picture of their relationship. As I see it, they’re almost like siblings. If we take King’s story and treat it as the beginning, the spunky “oral” creation story, told in between the contrasting third person narratives, sets the tone for the relationship between God and Coyote.

While God is helpful, though too proud to see Coyote in person, in Robinson’s story, God is a young and silly thing who grows out of coyote and grows up to spite Coyote. So it seems with God’s Christian followers. God himself disappears from the story quickly (after he jumps into the garden to run after his stuff), but there is a constant reminder of his presence, and Changing Woman is harassed by God’s men over and over. God’s men, like the depicted God himself, are all seen to be powerful, yet idiotic. From Noah’s Thou Shalt Have Breasts attitude to Ahab’s Moby-Jane episode, the Christian world seem full of jerks who are convinced they are right, and will bully anyone who breaks their rules (except themselves of course). Robinson’s king is no different in the way he lies.

Coyote, on the other hand, is a listener in both stories. He comes off as a little silly sometimes, since he asks a lot of questions in King’s stories. However, he is an integral part of the narrative of the creation story. He steps in for the listener and keeps the story interesting, interactive, and oral. Coyote in Robinson’s story is a bit different. We see him in third person, and he is the unquestionable listener: the one who never asks questions and takes things at face value.

This difference is actually remarkable. Keep in mind that in King’s story, Coyote is in a safe space. That is, a space without non-Indians, a space left behind by God. This is a space where stories can really thrive. You may say, “Hey. We don’t know that the storyteller is non-Indian,” and to which I reply, “With King’s command of the English language, the storyteller’s odd manner of speaking is no coincidence.” Now, Robinson on the other hand, Coyote is not there for the purpose of weaving a story. He has a mission and it involves non-Indians. There is no openness and it’s all formality.

Other Observations

The rustic, old-timey settings contrasting sharply with random objects in anachronism: the camera in Robinson, and pizza and hot dogs in the Garden of Eden in King. I feel like these are things that storytellers are familiar with, and know that listeners are familiar with, so they put them in stories full of unfamiliar things. Make it more relatable? Humourous? Engaging?
Henry’s style of speaking shows an imperfect understanding of English, but as I mentioned before King mimics this style in order to give it that feel of orality. All the imperfections of speech, like repetition, misuse of tenses, etc, are common.
Lack of quotation marks perhaps point to a more casual and quick way of speech, mindless of specific who-said-its.

Bibliography

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

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.

2.3 A few miles shy of having a storyteller’s charms?

In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to the story.

Silent Reading

When I read this to myself, the unconventional poetic style of prose really threw me for a loop. I found myself having to flip back and fourth just to see where Coyote is. There were too many moments of: “Where did those Indians come from? Who’s talking now? Where are we now?” and other questions of that ilk. Fortunately the printed form made it easy to figure things out if I missed it. After two or three reads, everything became crystal clear.

Gathering a Friend for Story Time

Correction: the story became clear…until I had to read it out loud. I had a friend pop on Skype for me to listen to my reading. This is what happened:

1. The way I emphasized some words really surprised me. There were a few moments where I felt like the way I read it didn’t correspond with the way I felt about the sentences, and definitely did not read in my head the first time. Other times, I breezed through parts that probably have more importance than I made it seem.

Here are a few examples. The blue font signify parts where I speed up and italics show the parts that I emphasized. I have also added punctuation to express the way I read it as best as I can.

“Well[?], what did my children do for your children? What did they do? Try to kill’em or what did they do?

Well[!], the Coyote said, ‘They just don’t care for them[!]. They just go and claim the land and they just do as they like.” (Robinson 70)

I wonder if I was doing these things subconsciously because I want to please my friend and try to make it interesting and fun to her. The things we do to try and please others, even when you know they wouldn’t care.

2. I had to omit a few parts of the narrative because I could tell my friend was getting really lost. In particular, the boat scene went around and around for a few pages and neither of us knew where this was going. Well, I knew but all I could think was, “This is never going to end. She’s zoning out.” So I skipped it. After the special boat scene on page 65, I went right to the angel scene on page 66. I skipped the angel’s instructions because I saw boats again, summarized that bit, and went right to the part when Coyote lands on page 68. I did this a few times, because summarizing was just easier. When England was choosing a new monarch, I read the scene then summarized it. My friend’s reaction: “Oh!! Okay I totally missed that.”

3. Pretty much every other word had to be changed because his accent did not mesh with mine. I went back a few times to correct myself in order to read what is written exactly as it is on the page, but I gave up. It didn’t feel natural at all and was extremely distracting.

Little Sister Reads Me a Story

So, as with point number three, when I had my sister read this story to me, she had a very hard time. There were a lot of, “What?”, “Er…”, and generally confused moments. A few minutes in she decided to adopt a stereotypical “down south” accent and found it much easier. Cowboys and Indians?! I told her to stop after a while. The writing was so distracting for her that I’m not sure she knew how to emphasize the text at all.

Also, I had her circle everything she says that is not completely like the written form. There are 7 circles on the first two pages alone. After I told her to stop ruining my book, she continued in monotone. It was a pretty boring half an hour of my life.

General Comments

This exercise was definitely a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. Maybe half the reason is because this story was not my story. It was written right from the mouth of Henry Robinson, and it just doesn’t translate. Telling a story this way is probably how folk tales changed as well. I don’t think anyone can tell the same story twice. Just like in my last post, the “paper” we discussed makes a story seem immortal, but as soon as we tell the story verbally, it loses its permanence in performance because imagination immediately takes hold. Kinda becomes a public thing people can take and change for themselves.

Imagine how boring storytelling would be if storytellers were all manufactured clones of each other.

It makes me wonder, though there is no real way to find out, if it’s possible to really read a story the same way as someone else.

Works Cited

“Jay O’Callahan: The Power of Storytelling.” YouTube. YouTube, 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.

“What You Say Vs. What You Want To Say.” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

2.2 Coyote the Younger’s Innocent Stunt

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

First Impressions: The Paper

When I first read the story of the paper, I was immediately taken back to the UK. More specifically, going to university in the UK made me see just how inconvenient their fervent love of paperwork is. Nothing is real unless it goes through a group of third-party white collars with a rubber stamp. Work took 3 months to be handed back, and sometimes it would be marked by some person you’ve never even met. Sometimes, you couldn’t take the courses you need because it didn’t follow the Order of the Paper, and you certainly couldn’t drop courses because it’s already in ink.

I don’t know if this was just my school, but it was just a really weird experience. The fact that all my work were marked anonymously created a barrier between teacher and student. All the extraneous parties involved created a huge, impersonal gulf.

The Paper that Coyote the Younger stole signified a contract or even law. By coveting, prizing, and moving something so permanent as a legal document, Coyote the Younger has devalued anything that is mutable. Which is to say that everything can only be Black and White. Further, things can only have one side: the side most preferable to the party that possesses the white Paper.

“Although the Boasians had recorded hundreds of Aboriginal oral narratives, they had limited themselves to a single genre: the so-called “legends,” “folk-tales,” and myths set in prehistorical times” (Wickwire 22). In a way, this claim is a bit like the children of Coyote the Younger returning the Paper. There is a feeling of good intentions, but such an ignorance of Coyote the Elder’s culture that it seems to do more harm than good.

Paper is really one of the most powerful tools in our society. It allows a permanent record of events as told often by a single writer, reaching out to a readership of numbers. The ideas that the holder of the Paper gets to spread have huge impacts, but those without the Paper are left with ever-changing ideas that gets passed along, altering a little every time, to a small audience of willing listeners.

The Coyotes

The separation of the two Coyote brothers is a really interesting concept to consider. The fact that they were twins considers the notion that they are same on the surface, but different at heart. The general attitude between the Indian and the White Man seems to be that we are all human beings, yet They are so different, They cannot possibly be from the same stock as Us.

And yet, there is a familial bond too. In family, there is always forgiveness. Despite Coyote the Younger’s selfishness, Coyote the Elder seeks to make peace between the two. The story of the Black and White reveals a time when forgiveness and harmony is a real possibility if not for the English King’s insincerity.

However, the relationship between the descendents of the two brothers are not black and white. Like Robinson says in his stories, the Black and White was not a reflection of the law. Rather, it’s more of a reflection of the difference between the natives and the settlers. A quick crash course in US History will show how complicated the relationship really is.

The bottom line is: there can be no harmony between the two Coyotes. While the two different groups began as brothers, the deception and insincerity is passed on through generations. The queen’s promise to the Coyote’s children is locked up and set aside to make it as difficult as possible to achieve equality.

Strangely enough, I don’t read bitterness in Robinson’s story. Rather, there is sadness, helplessness, and resignation when he says, “That’s the way it was nowadays” (Wickwire 85). Perhaps if the Paper was available to all, and not held above our heads, we could form a mutually beneficial relationship with each other. Perhaps if we corrected Coyote the Younger’s mistake rather than trying to cover it up, we can all exist in harmony.

Works Cited

“Ass Coverage.” Mimi and Eunice. 24 June 2011. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

“The Natives and the English – Crash Course US History #3.” YouTube. YouTube, 14 Feb. 2013. Web. 8 Feb. 2015

Paperwork. 2011. Mimi and Eunice. By Nina Paley.

“This Land Is Mine.” Vimeo. 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.

2.1.2 Home is a Fruit Basket

Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog.

Home changes.

History is home.

Home can be found in the most mundane things.

Home doesn’t always mean citizenship.

Memories is home.

Home is not a physical boundary.

Home is a state of mind.

Homes can be built, but there is always somewhere more special than the rest.

Based on Heather, Rajin, and Shamina‘s blogs, I came up with a list of common assumptions about the idea of home. All three of us seems to share a “home away from home” story in which home comes up as more than one place. While, yes, there might be a place more special than the rest, each place with a home label is different.

It’s less like this:

And more like this:

Each home we find in places, people, objects hold different memories. Like fruits, each one have a different purpose or usage. Apple pie might be better than strawberry pie, but strawberry-banana milkshakes might be better than an apple pie when you’re feeling thirsty. They’re all equally important, despite a preference for orange juice over apple.

Just like all your different definitions of home.

2.1 Home is a pie chart and a couple of memories

Introduction:

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words max) that describes your sense of home and the values and stories that you use to connect yourself to your home.

Trying to write about home is like a fish trying to write about water. If you ask, “Fish, how do you feel about water,” Fish might look at you with those big glazed-over eyes.

“I feel….like it’s there?” Fish might say. If you ask Fish to write a book about water, Fish might write you an epic autobiography full of meaning, but the reality is that Fish really wouldn’t know how to feel.

Until, of course, Fish gets washed up on the beach. For most of us, that panicked floundering against the sand is going to be a battle. Unlike Fish, the dry heat isn’t going to kill most of us, but it’s not going to be pretty.

Chapter 1: Home is a Place on Earth

I grew up in a house in Vancouver. Well, I guess it’s a bit more complicated than that. For me, home looks like this:

For each of these three places, home looks a little different.

If I could pick only one place, it would be Vancouver. Vancouver is my most obvious definition of home. I went to school here, made friends, had a lot of laughs, and had a lot of cries. This is the place that I miss when I’m away and get bored in when I’m here. Ultimately, this is the place I will come back to visit the most when I move away.

Macau and I have a rather…indecisive relationship. Part of the reason is that Macau has changed a lot in the past 7-8 years or so. It’s gone from unknown Portuguese colony to the Las Vegas of the East. My memories of the place no longer feature in the physical geography of the town. Every time I go back, it gets a little less magical. I used to go to a restaurant every day after school and they’d know my order. I’d walk around in the market area with my grandma and people would recognize us and talk to us. My grandpa was a pediatrician, so he knew almost everybody in town. I felt kind of famous.

Last June, I went back to Macau. People flooded the streets. Since the influx of mainland Chinese people, there seems to be a heavy sense of racism dividing the town. No one trusts anyone anymore. Those old-timey sentiments just don’t exist anymore.

My grandpa’s old clinic is now one of many identical clothing boutiques. Next door, there is a stationary store I used to visit a lot. My grandma would buy me little stamp sets from there. I can’t even begin to express how excited I was to find the old place still standing! It’s been like 15 years, and I didn’t recognize it until I got inside but it was just a moment of “Wow…I’m 5 again.”

Sometimes, when you least expect it, home comes back to you. Even if you didn’t know it was gone.

As for Hong Kong, its significance exists outside of geography. The only thing that ties me to that place is my parents’ story.

Chapter 2: Home is whenever I’m with you

Family, friends, and lovers are often pooled together to form a sweet, but rather cliched, concept of home. Especially away from home. Physical homes change. We might move, renovate, hotel-hop, etc. When we associate home with people, there are two different definitions:

A) Home is with the people we are most comfortable with – They are loved ones we can be ourselves around, the people we miss the most when we’re away, etc. They may not necessarily be the people we like to be around 24/7, but they might be the people I run to in times of need. Personally, this is my family, as well as certain friend groups. Since we always associate home with a warm, cuddly feeling and all the ideals of perfect happiness, we often forget that home is not always our friend. Every home is full of problems, even when it gets attached to people other than family, but there is a special bond that makes it easy to be yourself around them.

B) Home is what makes you you – These are the stories built around us: memories and moments that make us who we are. Our history, whether we are directly involved, is a huge part of our identity. For me at least, home is directly involved in our history. Like the stationary store, these are comforting stories we go back to. Home is also a reminder to appreciate and find peace and comfort in where we are and what we have. For me, Hong Kong is a reminder of my family’s struggles to stay together, and of the possibility that I would have a life entirely different. Very likely worse.

Phillip Phillips - Home- Lyrics Wall Decor Sign STOCK 20X20

Phillip Phillips’ “Home” begins the song with this first line. The impermanence and movement of home is perfectly captured. That’s just exactly it: Home is not just the people you’re with, it’s also your history and state of mind. All these factors directly influence each other to form one grand image of home.

In my two definitions of home, I use the word comfort. In day to day life, it may not feel this way, but I see home as a place of refuge, whether in the people I love, the place I live, or the place I retreat to in my daydreams. Home is the place i feel safest in.

Conclusion:

For so many people, home is in direct correlation with a physical place. Usually, it’s the place where we grew up, filling our lives with loved ones and memories. These two chapters are by no means mutually exclusive.

For some people, home may not be related at all to the culture they grew up in, or the place they’re ‘from’. It’s such an individual experience. Sometimes I could even be really confusing. If you have an extra 10-15 minutes, I strongly urge to you to read Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” The truth is, sometimes home, history, and identity all conflict, and Walker’s story does really well in showing that, but I like to think that even if you’re a world traveler, there will always be a place to go back to, whether you take a plane or a trip down memory lane.

Works Cited:

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” 1973. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.

“Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home [2009].” YouTube. YouTube. Web. 31 Jan. 2015. .

“Phillip Phillips – Home- Lyrics Wall Decor Sign.” Etsy. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.

“Phillip Phillips – Home.” YouTube. YouTube. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.

1.3 This is a story about a misunderstood bear

Assignment

For our latest assignment, we were asked to retell Thomas King’s story about how evil came into the world. As a bit of a disclaimer, I told this story several times. As you guys know, a story changes each time it’s told, and I’m not a very eloquent person in real life so the first time was pretty rough.

First of all, I apologize for not being as creative about it as I could’ve been. I think I misunderstood the assignment a bit and I didn’t realize it until I was looking at other people’s awesome stories. In a way, I think this story is like an expanded version of King’s retelling. I hope the little details make up for it!

The Story

A long time ago, before the lands were divided up, there was a magical race. They had no name, but I guess their closest modern cousins are our fairytale witches. They wielded powerful magic and brewed amazing potions. They lived in total peace and harmony with the animals across the land. With their magic, they built their homes among the treetops, in the caves, where-ever they liked, and they flew across all corners of the globe to visit their friends and family, fast enough to be in time for dinner. There were no rules yet everyone knew their place. Everyone was happy because everyone was content. And that’s all they knew.

One day, an ancient bear floundered about the woods, clutching its mouth in pain. Perhaps it was too much honey, or perhaps it ate something sharp by accident. Whatever it was, the toothache was too much for the bear. Fortunately, it saw a witch strolling through the forest, and just as he kneeled down to pick some berries, the bear pounced on him and opened its mouth wide. The witch found himself, back to the ground, eyes wide at the site of the bear’s long fangs, mere centimeters from his face. With a puff of air magic, he threw the bear off him and ran, and sprint, and flew until he got home.

At home, his wife looked at his sweaty face and red cheeks. Before she could speak, he hugged his wife and said, “That was amazing!” And, with what little words they had to aid his explanation, he tried to explain the way his blood pulsed and his heart beat. This new feeling was so exhilarating that he wanted everyone to experience it too.

He called this new emotion “fear.”

The next day, he got his friends together and proposed a contest to see who was clever enough to reproduce this strange feeling. Naturally, his friends were very confused. They made potions and did little tricks with their magic. Some even conjured up a bear with a toothache, but nobody was moved.

Finally, an old witch was walking by and she saw this group of witches doing strange things, so she asked what was happening. They all tried to explain this newly discovered emotion and she nodded. “Let me tell you a story,” she said, “about the future of this young man’s curiosity.”

And her story spoke about witches who became obsessed with fear and emotions like it. They learned to use and manipulate it, until they discovered power. They began to use their magic to stand above all other beings on earth, until they no longer remembered the true purpose of magic, which was their heart and soul. They forgot who they were and the magic disappeared. Then, without magic, the witches grew desperate.

And the story teller went on to make up words like violence, war, starvation, suffering, and she called them evils.

When the story teller came to an end, all the other witches looked at her in horror. The witch who encountered the bear shook her hand, and congratulated her on winning his silly contest. But this story stuck with the witches for a very long time. They didn’t know how to feel about it. They flew around the earth and told their friends and families, and it passed on and on throughout the generations.

Commentary

I originally had this story written out on my phone. I thought it would be easier since I’m not a very good speaker. I tend to mumble a bit sometimes and when people ask me to repeat things, I often end up changing my thoughts entirely. In that sense, I guess the real first time was me telling my story to myself. I thought it was great!

Unfortunately, there is great difficulty in getting people to just sit down and listen to me for ten minutes or so. There is something very sad in our fast-paced society where people are reluctant to let go of their phones for ten minutes to just sit and listen. I tried this with my sister first. She was on Tumblr as I told it, so that frustrated me a lot and I ended up not saying everything I wanted to say.

Still, I asked for her commentary at the end of it and she said, “So what’s the big metaphor behind all this? I feel like there has to be some really deep shit here.” And I said there wasn’t. Just take it on the surface. Sometimes you can learn a lot when you don’t overthink it. She compared it to Genesis, but I didn’t really like that.

I attempted to try telling this story with one of my students, but I felt like there was no good time to segue a creation story into a lesson about sentences. I also attempted to share this with my parents, but I couldn’t translate it properly. They speak a rather minimal amount of English, and even though I’m relatively fluent in Cantonese, I struggled to capture their attention, especially when I found myself switching back to English more often than I wanted to. So I gave up.

Finally, I tried to tell this story to a group of friends over Facebook. I asked them to make real-time comments as much as possible to simulate a conversation as best we can. I suspect none of them stood by and waited for me to type. There were only a few comments so, despite my efforts, it really wasn’t the same. However, I must say that this telling of the story is where I included most of the fine details that made the story much more logical in its progression.

1.2 Literary and Oral Culture

Explain why the notion that cultures can be distinguished as either “oral culture” or “written culture” (19) is a mistaken understanding as to how culture works, according to Chamberlin and your reading of Courtney MacNeil’s article “Orality.

Yesterday morning, my Milton studies professor told us not to use audiobooks if we wanted to understand Paradise Lost. When someone reads Paradise Lost to you, they tend to put their own spin to it. My professor went further: every time he listened to a reading of the book, he would think, “That’s not how I would’ve read it.” A reading is simply that: a reading. An interpretation. The written epic is the truth. The important thing is: the written and oral forms do not exist on the same level as equals.

In a similar way, Chamberlain says, “It has become almost a truism that writing…marked an evolutionary advance…while oral cultures are imprisoned in the present” (19). The written form is often believed to be superior to the oral form, and MacNeil takes a critical tone when the ideas put forward by the Toronto School prevents “mutual independency between the two media” from being a “recognized possibility.”

MacNeil argues that we should be rethinking the literacy/orality model because these two worlds are blurring together with “the techonlogical advances of recent years.” Complicated social media conundrums aside, even my example of Paradise Lost presents difficulty in dividing literacy and orality. As many may know, Milton was blind, thus Paradise Lost was entirely dictated by speech. Paradise Lost had an oral form! In other words, there is a level of interdependency between the two media, which is what allows for different interpretations and no universal truth.

Let’s look at Shakespeare: how different is seeing and reading his plays? And how different is each production? Last year, I visited the Globe Theatre in London and I watched two plays: The Lightning Child, a really strange psychedelic version of The Bacchae, and MacBeth.

Left: Dionysus and his followers Right: Macbeth confronting the ghost of Banquo

From text to stage to text to stage, The Lightning Child was one of the weirdest experiences. I was caught between a cycle of amazement and disgust. Macbeth, though it was the second time I’ve seen this play, was exactly how I’d imagined it. It was probably exactly how they figured Shakespeare would’ve staged it. In a word, it was boring. I couldn’t take anything out of it that I haven’t seen or imagined already. Still, a play is the perfect example of harmony between literature and oraliture.

In Chamberlin’s more anthropological point of view, there is no such thing as “written cultures” and “oral cultures.” This categorization doesn’t take into account that “so-called oral cultures are rich in forms of writing, albeit non-syllabic and non-alphabetic ones” and “central institutions of our ‘written cultures’…are in fact arenas of strictly defined and highly formalized oral traditions” (19-20). The crucial part of this is that “our stories and our songs draw on both” (20).

People have always listened to the world around them to find answers (Chamberlin 125). Here’s an experiment:

Watch this video with words in mind:

Now try to imagine what this video would be like if you’ve lived your entire life without words. Would there be meaning? Do we need words to think that the girl is angry/annoyed that her hair dryer died?

Human communication alone is such a multi-sensory experience, yet how much of it is communicated through words? And how much of what we don’t communicate, verbally or in written form, permeates into our culture? The hard part is: each culture communicates a little differently, maybe even on a spectrum of worded language. There may be gestures, subtle things that onlookers can’t catch, that get a message across. There may be festivals to tell us our place in the world.

It’s easy to feel superior when it seems like our culture is sophisticated in its writing roots, but it’s also easy to dismiss a culture because we don’t understand it.

Just like the way we sometimes evaluate someone’s intelligence based on their knowledge of English.

When a complicated Iroquois oral tradition takes a lifetime to learn, and is so complicated that only less than 30 people understood, what right do we have to say that our culture is more sophisticated, more thoughtful, more anything (Chamberlain 22). The arrogance of the literacy/orality dichotomy diminishes cultures based on differences, rather than sameness. How is the chief of the Cayuga, who spent a lifetime learning the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee, different from the scholars of our institutions?

Cultures can shift and change, but can they be weighed and ranked?

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Reimagining Home and Sacred Space. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2004. Print.

Krulwich, Robert, and Jad Abumrad. “Http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/.” Audio blog post.Radiolab. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 9 Aug. 2010. Web. 16 Jan. 2015. <http://www.radiolab.org/story/91725-words/>.

Macbeth. Digital image. Shakespeare’s Globe. The Shakespeare Globe Trust, 2013. Web. 16 Jan. 2015. <http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/education/discovery-space/previous- productions/macbeth-4>.

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

The Lightning Child. Digital image. Shakespeare’s Globe. The Shakespeare Globe Trust, 2013. Web. 16 Jan. 2015. <http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/education/discovery-space/previous productions/the-lightning-child>.

Words. Dir. Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante. YouTube. N.p., 9 Aug. 2010. Web. 16 Jan. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0HfwkArpvU>.

Hello/Bonjour!

Welcome! This blog is part of a larger body of discussion in ENGL 470A, officially known as Canadian Literary Genres. Unofficially, the course has the rather skeptical name of Oh Canada! …Our Home and Native Land? In this course, we will be taking a look at a number of ideas and stories about being Canadian. Probably.

My name is Florence Ng, I’m an English Literature major and a first generation Canadian. In other words, I’m that skeptical question mark at the end of the title. I moved to Vancouver when I was 5 years old, and I am one of those kids who know where home is, yet don’t. Being first generation is a very interesting status where your “motherland” shifts according to your mood. In fact, your background is almost like a trophy that you show off to certain people when it makes you feel special, but hide when it doesn’t. Like a trophy for being #1 in grade 5, you might want to hide it when the #1 kid in grade 6 comes over to play. Here is a real world observation:

Last year, when I went on exchange in the UK, my friends and I traveled a lot. Whenever we met new people and they asked us where we’re from or who we are, we would say, “Canadian!” Of course, a number of jerks pushed on: “No, where are you REALLY from?”

“Um, Canada,” we’d reply.

“Where are you PARENTS from?”

“…Canada.”

And that’s when we’d leave, thinking, “Oh my God, that was so rude.” A lot of the times, it seemed like they wanted us to admit that we are not just Canadian, because saying you’re Canadian is a cop-out. Like they wanted us to stop pretending we prefer poutine over dim sum, pizza over sushi, forks over chopsticks, and just ADMIT that we belong in another culture.

To be fair, I don’t really understand why it’s so hard to say, “I’m Chinese.” Let’s face it: I only speak Cantonese to my parents, my family eats Chinese food 90% of the time and Japanese food the other 10%, and our Thanksgiving dinner consists of a Costco rotisserie chicken, despite how many times we’ve asked for a turkey.

Still, I probably should have said, “I’m Chinese-Canadian.”

My friends and I in Paris. We were hoping to be the first Chinese-Canadian girl band pop act.

My friends and I in Paris. We were hoping to be the first 83% Chinese-Canadian girl band pop act. I’m in the middle, third from the left. The one who breaks up the band and gets a solo career, obviously.

At the same time, I feel like much of this identity crisis is afforded by Vancouver’s cultural diversity. I’ve heard many times that Vancouver is not “real Canada,” whatever that means. Last semester, I learned a lot of rather exclusively Canadian words (a lot of which are found here). I always thought language is a big part of culture, but weirdly enough I’ve never thought of “Canadian” as a language, or even thought about it much as a dialect. In high school, a teacher told me that the spirit of Canada is encapsulated in one song by the Barenaked Ladies (you probably know the one!). That was kind of the extent of my understanding of Canadian language.

I’m a big fan of language; learning about it, using it, etc. That’s why I’m very excited for this course! I want to get to know Canada, and get to know the way language is used in the stories we don’t talk enough about.

Nice to meet you, everybody! Let’s share and learn a lot from one another 🙂