Prompt: What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories?

Koreans do not have a unified creation story, differing by the regions and the cultures that told them, and we also have a handful of founding stories as well. This is similar to the story that King tells in The Truth About Stories, where he says it’s one of many Indigenous creation stories, and that it’s just his favourite. Since I can’t talk about all the stories, I thought I’d pick my favourite to tell as well. This story is called Changsega.

At first, the sky and earth were joined together as one, with no room for a world in between. One day cracks formed in between the two, separating them, and the giant god, Mireuk, seized this opportunity and erected four pillars to hold the heavens high above. He noticed there were two suns and two moons in that sky, making the days too hot and nights too cold, so he decided to crush one of each and decorated the sky with the dust, creating stars.

But even with only one sun and moon, his skin stung during the day and shivered by night. What was he to do? He could destroy the remaining sun and moon… no, he couldn’t possibly do that. So he took a stroll through the forest to think it over when he stumbled into a thick patch of kudzu. While covered head to toe in vines, he was struck with a brilliant idea. He took back a hand full of the plant back home and weaved it into hemp and fashioned it into a robe to protect him from the elements.

But… he still wasn’t happy, the nights were chilly and dark, not to mention that he was starting to get thirsty after working so hard. A passing mouse, seeing Mireuk’s troubled expression, told him to climb mount Geumdeong, promising that he would find what he is looking for at the top. So he did, and at the peak, he found pig iron which made sparks when struck with pebbles! Using this new tool he created fire, and with the new found light, he could see something simmering in the distance at mount Soha. He made the track over to that mountain and found a spring, which he used to create rivers, lakes, and oceans.

The world is ready, he thought, but he was lonely. So he prayed to the sky and it answered him with five golden insects and five silver insects that flew down to earth which turned into five men and five women to keep Mireuk company.

Under his rule, humans thrived and populated the world, but it attracted the attention of an evil god named Seokga. He was envious of the world that Mireuk had made, but didn’t want to do any of the work, so he challenged Mireuk for it. The task was this: to bloom flowers in one’s lap to show care, love, and patience. Seokga’s flowers, to no surprise, died quickly, but he hung around as Mireuk sat patiently. And one night, as Mireuk fell asleep, the flowers began to bloom. Seokga snuck next to him and replaced them with his dead flowers. Next morning, Mireuk woke to find his flowers dead, and Seokga celebrating the blooming of his flowers. Mireuk, being honourable, upheld his agreement and left the world, believing that the world would be better under Seokga’s rule, as he has proven to be a better god. However, this treachery had terrible consequences upon the creatures of the world. Seokga’s twisted victory twisted the world, unleashing upon it evil such as hatred, greed, envy, and war.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Especially after reading King’s talk about creation stories, comparing Native stories to those of Judeo-Christians, this one feels like it has a bit of both within it. One of the consistent elements in Korean creation stories is that it takes place in a world that is already partially formed. We don’t have anything as dramatic as “let there be light”, but have a character making their way around an incomplete world, trying to make it more inhabitable. I found that to be the biggest similarity between Changsega and Earth Diver. Rest of the similarities are kind of between-the-lines. There is, of course, a talking animal that helps the protagonist, but animals don’t play as large of a role as they do in King’s story, the story is still mostly about Mireuk’s work. Additionally, he is flawed, not all-powerful, and requires help to form the world, but still, definitely above humans and other beings of the world.

The three large differences I wanted to discuss is the concept of creation of sin, the existence of a ruler, and man-made objects. When you read that ending, you might have thought about the ending to Genesis (I did), where through some evil action, sin was created. It seems like a weird concept thinking about it, but many cultures seem to be interested in it, as similarities exist in the Greco-Roman story of Pandora’s Box. My theory is that many of these people, who thought of great gods, wonder why they would create such thing as sin, and wanted to explain it away. I think Native stories manage to circumvent this by making their creators flawed in the first place, the concept of “sin” is just a part of the human/animal personality. Similar to the Bible and many other creation stories, Changsega places their god above human beings as a ruler. This can be explained pretty easily as Korea was a Monarchy, and having it displayed within creation stories as just the natural order of things helps people embrace the concept. The most interesting point for me is the focus on Mireuk’s creation of certain tools, like clothing and a fire striker. Most creations stories I’ve encountered only focus on the creation of nature, but Changsega decides to talk about the origin of certain tools as well.

The last point I’d like to discuss is also the reason I was drawn to this story. For me, this creation story ending in the way it did with an intruder ruling over the people, reflected the multiple invasions that Korea has suffered throughout its history, mainly from Japan, China, and Mongolia, but some from European nations as well. Perhaps stories like this have inspired people during those times to persevere and work to change the difficult situation they find themselves in.

Citations

Park, Jongsung. “Song of the Creation of the Universe.” Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture , National Folk Museum of Korea, 1 Feb. 2019, folkency.nfm.go.kr/en/topic/detail/5402#.

Geo Korea. “Cryptomeria: Korean Hemp, a Sacred Cloth.” Dailymotion, 2002, www.dailymotion.com/video/x16kyg.

“Pandora’s Box.” Myths and Legends, E2Bn, 2006, myths.e2bn.org/mythsandlegends/origins562-pandoras-box.html.

Prompt:
5.  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?

I thought this would be a good thing to discuss because of my main interests laying in writers and how they create the effects they desire in their work. I’ve also been writing quite a bit for this course on King’s works and my last post was discussing Robinson’s techniques, it seemed like an obvious choice.

From just a simple glance, you can notice graphological similarities in both works. Neither of them looks like a conventional novel, as it takes on the appearance similar to a script. As I’ve talked about it in my last post, Robinson places a line break at the end of each sentence, and although they look similar, King’s work doesn’t abide by such rules. In King’s work, these line breaks occur conventionally at the end of usual paragraphs, however, the reason it still looks similar is due to the amount of dialogue there is within this book. In fact, the majority of the book is a dialogue between two or more characters, usually exchanging short sentences. The effect of this is a bit similar in both stories, as it keeps the story full of voices, rather than prose.

The narrator is a character in both stories, although neither narrators take part within the story itself. Of course, in King’s novel, the narrator does interact with Dog God and Coyote, he still mostly serves as the observer of what’s happening. Both the characters will often share opinions with the readers and at times, address them directly. This creates the effect of the readers feeling like they have a more personal stake to the story, rather than just a passer-by that happened to look upon the story.
Green Grass, Running Water is especially interesting because it utilizes different styles depending on which character we are focusing on. When we are with Coyote, the narrative style consists of a lot of repetitions, and conversational language, to no surprise, like Robinson’s story about Coyote. When focusing on the tribal elders telling their origin story, the style is also different with unusually short lines, and barebones prose. Then, while telling the stories of other characters, the story feels more akin to a normal novel with a bit more prose accompanying the dialogues. These changes display different storytelling styles, exemplifying the theme of differences in stories that are all equally true. Another effect this has is to ease the readers into the perspective switches, as King tend to jump around quite abruptly.

Coyote and God are presented in both stories in a similar way. For both of them, God attempts to order around Coyote, which Coyote ends up trying to satisfy with some reluctance. They don’t have a very close relationship, and if given the choice, Coyote would like to be left alone, but their companionship is inevitably tied together. Both stories present Coyote as a lover of sleep and a trickster, while God being a forceful character who desires things to be completed as soon as possible. These characters are therefore forced to find a compromise between the two people, but rather than working together, they work to deceive the other party and neither are happy for it. These themes in both stories at the end bleed into the real world, as we see Robinson’s story ending with the narrator sharing his thoughts on the land disputes, and in King’s story the dam being forcefully built in the reserves end up coming down due to an earthquake.

I found it interesting that both of these authors chose the coyote to represent Native Americans in these stories, as there are many other choices for characters within their history. Although he is amongst the most popular characters, I don’t think this was the main reason for their choice. Coyote, the character, was often used as a moral to teach about those who are willing to deceive to get what they want. They are also shown to be quite human, creative, giving into vices, unpredictable, and possible of both good and evil. I think partly, this is why both authors decided to utilize the coyote, as it is a creator of sorts that offer itself as an interesting foil to the Judeo-Christian God who is serious, blunt, “perfect”, and overall inhumane.

Why do you think both authors chose the Coyote? Or do you have any other thoughts about these stories? Let me know!

Citations

CrashCourse. “Coyote and Raven, American Tricksters: Crash Course World Mythology #22.” Youtube, 12 Aug. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAKHGe6x8n8.

Hauser, Elyse. “Greek Mythology and the Judeo-Christian God.” Sensible Reason, 22 Nov. 2014, sensiblereason.com/greek-mythology-judeo-christian-god/.

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

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

Prompt: 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 both King’s article and Robinson’s story.

Writing dialogue provides interesting challenges for writers. You obviously don’t want your dialogue to come off stilted and robotic, so we are drawn to finding how to write realistic dialogue. One of the common advice is to go out and listen to people talk, but interestingly enough, if you really listen to people talk in a casual setting, you’d find that it makes for quite awful dialogue written on the page. People pause to say umm-s all the time, utilize useless phrases such as “like” way more often than we’d like to admit, have incorrect grammar, use the wrong word, conversations are cyclical and can take forever to get to the point. In normal conversation, we easily overlook these small mistakes, so easily in fact, that most of the times we don’t even notice them. But written on the page, where every word can be closely inspected, these types of purely realistic dialogues are annoying to read. The solution is to obviously find a middle ground where we can keep each individual’s’ speech patterns, manners, and intent unique while making it a smooth and concise read.

   This middle ground is absolutely subjective to the writer themselves. In my last semester’s writing course, our professor Timothy Taylor advised us not to write out the accents as it makes things harder to read—so rather than writing “we gon’ huntin’”, do “we’re going hunting”—and just refer to the character’s accent in the prose, as the readers will imagine the accents themselves. While on the other hand, writers like Charles Dickens (it’s kind of a weird example, but I happened to have just finished Our Mutual Friend) will write out weird speech patterns, confusing or not.

   I bring this up because I believe Harry Robinson’s writing really pushes this middle ground to the very edge. Most written stories, even ones told in first person present tense, almost always feels like you are still reading a record of events. However, for Robinson’s stories, I can’t not imagine someone—the narrator—sitting in front of me, telling me this story. There is a raw uneditedness to his stories, not to say they aren’t polished, but purposely full of little mistakes that you wouldn’t find in a normal book.

   The first aspect that I identified is that his entire story is a dialogue already (meaning that any dialogue within the story is a dialogue within dialogue). He does this by the narrator opening up a conversation with the reader with frequent reminders of it. At the start of You Going to Get Married to Coyote’s Son, the narrator says this: “The next stories, that’s another Coyote. That’s another young Coyote. Not the same one … goes up to the moon. That’s not him. This is another one.” (47) and at the end of the story, the narrator says, “Now, here’s another story…” (63) as we are led into the next short story. Through including the reader by addressing them directly, they make them a part of the story, as the listener-storyteller relationships are one of the things that make oral storytelling so unique.

   Another prominent aspect is the amount of repetition in the story. Look at this section near the start of Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England, “And one time, they see somebody on the water. They could see somebody. Looks like somebody was sitting on the boat. There was smoke. They got a fire. And they wanted to get closer. They wanted to know what that was. Looks like a person.” it’s essentially saying the same couple of ideas in different ways many times over. This is brilliant in a couple of ways, first of all, by keeping the sentences quite distinct every line, it prevents the story from feeling too repetitive. Secondly, by utilizing these repetitions, we create an atmosphere as if we are listening to someone tell a story. The reason why we end up repeating so much is that unlike a book, the listener can’t go back to find the word they missed or misunderstood, so for an oral story, important moments has to be highlighted a few times to make sure there isn’t anyone that missed it.

   Robinson also utilizes short sentences (as short as one word), composed entirely of short, conversational words, broken up into its individual lines. The short sentences and conversational words make the story feel like it’s naturally spoken, also it’s another technique that prevents the listeners from getting confused. The line breaks are there to give the story a sort of a rhythm, a pause between lines to slow down the reader, or in an oral situation, give the storyteller a moment to take a breath and for listeners to absorb the recent information.

   Finally, speech patterns are pushed hard. There are constant errors like “That boat supposed to go very fast.” (66) and shortened phrases like “see ‘em” (66). These patterns are heavily applied to the point I could hear the narrator in my head when reading silently.

The missing words and awkward sentences can get a bit confusing at times, but—and here’s the best part—they are not a problem when reading it out loud or, especially, listening to it. That speech conditioning that I talked about earlier—about how we easily ignore common errors within speech—kicks right in here. In that way, by utilizing all these techniques (and many more that I haven’t noticed, I’m sure) the writer compels the reader to read the words out loud, and it feels so natural to do so. When I do, I also take on the speech patterns of the narrator as if possessed and they are speaking through me, reminding me of the connection between the words grammar and grimoire. I like to think that this connection implies the ability for writers to create magic through their words and I haven’t seen such a strong example as this.

What do you think about this? Are there any other techniques that you noticed or something you disagree with? Let me know!

Citations

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

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

Sullivan, Kate. “Found Dialogue: Using the Art of Eavesdropping for Better Fiction.” TCK Publishing, www.tckpublishing.com/better-dialogue-through-eavesdropping/.

Quinion, Michael. “Grimoire.” World Wide Words, 15 Mar. 2014, www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-gri2.htm.

Prompt:

We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?

I would answer yes to all of the above. I would say yes, he is assuming both, that most of his readers belong to the European tradition and that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances—than the other way around. I, again, would say yes, you are being fair to point out this assumption, and Lutz is fair to make the assumption. I think these assumptions are partly due to the book’s intended audience and the European genocide of Indigenous culture.

First of all, let’s think of this book and its intended audience: people that are of, or familiar with European tradition. The most obvious evidence for this is that it is published in English, and even if you aren’t a native English speaker, to learn the language to the level needed to read and understand an academic book like this requires a long time of using the language. To further this point, there is no better substitute for learning to read a language than, quite obviously, reading. This means that people reading this textbook will be quite familiar with European tradition due to having read a decent amount of its stories. Me, someone who isn’t of European tradition, is more familiar with it than my Asian traditions, having lived my entire teenage and adult life in Canada. This makes me a blend of two traditions, it is simply unavoidable as someone who lives here. Also, I’m attending UBC, which, even with all the effort to decolonize, is still very much of an education facility catering to the European tradition.

Which brings me to the next point, it’s an academic textbook and thusly it is aimed towards academics, possibly many of them students like ourselves attending a western university. How do you enter a western academic facility? Through good marks and studying, of course. And how much are we taught and tested on Indigenous performances and storytelling? Virtually none. This means, even if you are of Indigenous background, the reader of this text would most likely be partially of European tradition, or at the very least familiar with it. With being taught so much of European stories in school, and so little of Indigenous stories, for people of our time, it is a sad fact that European stories are indeed easier to understand than understanding something “alien in culture”.

My final point is how much damage that has been done to the Indigenous culture by the Europeans, and that there is lasting cultural damage that is still felt today. As mentioned in the lesson, the Potlatch ban lasted nearly seventy-five years, long enough that majority of the population that was familiar with the tradition to be dead by the time the law was lifted. Of course, we can’t forget about the residential schools, an attempt to exterminate the Indigenous culture within the young of their population. During this time, much of Indigenous culture was lost and later had to be recovered. Now, they are left with reserves which are known for its terrible infrastructure and financial conditions, forcing most Indigenous people to live outside of reserves. In the US, Indian Relocation Act of 1956, pushed many of the Indigenous people off of reserves as well, forcing them into the cities. In such situations, many of these people begin to lose parts of their culture.

With so much damage has been done to the Indigenous culture, even today, most of their people are forced to follow European traditions. So is it wrong for Lutz to assume his readers would be more familiar with European traditions than Indigenous? I don’t think so.

Citations

Indigenous Corporate Training. “Potlatch Ban: Abolishment of First Nations Ceremonies.” Indigenous Corporate Training Inc, 16 Oct. 2012, www.ictinc.ca/the-potlatch-ban-abolishment-of-first-nations-ceremonies.

Penner, Dylan. “Federal Party Leaders Urged to End Drinking Water Crisis in First Nation Communities Once and for All.” Council of Canadians, 13 Oct. 2015, canadians.org/media/federal-party-leaders-urged-end-drinking-water-crisis-first-nation-communities-once-and-all.

Milke, Mark. “Increasing Number of Aboriginals Choose Not to Live on Reserves.” Fraser Institute, www.fraserinstitute.org/article/increasing-number-aboriginals-choose-not-live-reserves.

Whittle, Joe. “Most Native Americans Live in Cities, Not Reservations. Here Are Their Stories.” The Guardian, 4 Sept. 2017, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/04/native-americans-stories-california.

CBC News. “Fear of Losing Culture Rises among Indigenous People in Manitoba.” CBC, 12 June 2017, www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/more-than-half-manitoba-indigenous-culture-eroding-1.4156978.

I’m honestly amazed at how eye-opening this assignment was. People really opened up and shared lots about themselves that gave me an additional insight on how to view people. Home is so much more of a fickle topic than I realized, and I even surprised myself writing my own blog post about it. The word, when heard in passing, is such a casual word I don’t think much about, but this class is really forcing us to dive deep within our memories and values to determine aspects about ourselves and surroundings.

There are a few things that I found in common within many of people’s ideas of home, regardless if they don’t have it, have it, or had it.

These are:

-Time: How long we stayed in the location.

-Safety: Varying widely from physical harm to social judgement, home is somewhere we feel safe.

-Family: Having people we love and trust surround us—parents, siblings, partners, pets…

-Friends: Being in the proximity of others that share our value—teams, social hobbies, religion…  

-Building/Room/Space: Somewhere we can make our own. This varied widely from ownership of property to hanging things on walls.

-Nation: From a single nation to many, a nation we can say we belong to.

-Familiar population/scenery: Nature, urban landscapes, nostalgic places, a location we can remember even after years away.

-Relaxation: Somewhere we can kick out shoes off and let go.

The differences didn’t come from what people thought of home—we seemed to have that down pretty consistent—but of which value we weighed more than others. There are people who needed to customize their room so it didn’t feel so lonely, and although this is a sentiment that I agree with, I’ve never been the type of person to hang up pictures or decorate.

I think time had the biggest factor in determining people’s view of home. They say, “we want what we can’t have”, and it was tragically funny how true that was. People that stayed in the same place their entire life didn’t feel much sense of identity because they felt that they didn’t have much to compare it to, so they would like to move and experience different homes. On the other hand, there are lots of people that moved multiple times at a young age, that don’t feel like they stayed anywhere long enough to belong, and just want to find a place to settle.

Something that was incredibly clear when reading these posts is how helpless we were as children (here’s an interesting blog post about respecting children’s autonomy). Most of the class are in their early twenties and we’ve only (relatively) recently came into control of our own lives. So much of what we define as home was forced upon us as children, and I loved reading about what people are doing with their newly gained autonomy. I hope one day when I’m raising children of my own, I can provide for them a place where they can think back with fondness rather than confusion.

Citations

Ingraham, Christopher. “Moving as a Child Can Change Who You Are as an Adult.” Medium, Washington Post, 17 June 2016, medium.com/@washingtonpost/moving-as-a-child-can-change-who-you-are-as-an-adult-c40e46740156.

Sara. “Freedom Is Not Conditional: 8 Ways to Tell If You’Re Respecting Your Child’s Autonomy.” Happiness Is Here, WordPress, 16 May 2017, happinessishereblog.com/2017/05/freedom-not-conditional-8-ways-tell-youre-respecting-childs-autonomy/.

I never felt like I belonged home, or anywhere else, so I try not to think about it. Home brings mostly depressing memories, and the few sweet moments are snapshots laden with a bitter aftertaste. I don’t like to talk about it because I feel like I have no right to complain—I grew up with both of my parents, we were comfortably middle class, and we even lived well after immigrating to Canada—there are people that faced much worse.

Back in Korea, I was a fat kid, so fat that I had stretch marks when I was only four years old. In kindergarten and elementary, no one came close to how big I was, so I stuck out like a fat, sore thumb. They called me dwaeji (pig), and wangdda (roughly translates to king-loser). Having no friends and self-esteem made me introverted and awkward, making the situation worse. I still remember how it felt when one of my classmates, who also happened to live in my apartment, threw a pizza party and invited everyone in the class except for me. Nobody told me about it until the Monday after. The entire class of first graders had kept the secret from me, even the ones that I didn’t think were mean. I was heartbroken and angry, very, very angry. At times I got so angry that I turned to violence, being too awkward to know how to defend myself with words, I used my body, where I had the size advantage. This resulted in even the teachers turning against me, they saw me as a mean kid with anger issues. My loneliness was deserved.

I hated myself for being fat until I realized something recently. How does a child that young, who has little to no control of their own diet, get so fat, especially with a stay-at-home mom? Well, the reason for it happened to be quite complicated.

To fully understand it, you have to know a bit about my father’s side of the family. When my father was born, his family was in a lot of financial trouble. His father had recently fallen asleep while on shift, which tends to have large consequences if you are a bus driver. Thankfully, having driven the bus into a ditch, the only thing damaged was the bus—damages that he had to compensate for. Being fresh out of a job, under huge debt, and already with three children to take care of, they decided to send their newborn fourth to be taken care of by his aunt. There, my father was neglected and mistreated by his aunt and her two children, until finally returning “home” at the age of eight. His own brother and sisters were strangers to him, and his parents, still working multiple jobs, had little time for him. The neglect, I believe, had damaged him permanently, and he had been a manipulating, apathetic, short-tempered person ever since.

It was my jealous paternal grandmother who manipulated my mother into intentionally overfeeding me. Every single time grandmother visited or called, she would criticize my mother about her awful parenting, about how ugly I was, and that I was too skinny because of her neglect. Bombarded by continuous insults, my mother bent to the words, and to silence it, fed me until I was plump, and when that didn’t stop my grandmother, she continued overfeeding me. At times my mother took out her frustrations on me, making fun of how fat I was, calling me embarrassing for not being able to put on my socks without sitting on my ass, and that she couldn’t find any pants to fit me.

My home was full of screams, either due to my parents fighting, or them disciplining me. Physical punishment was common, and one time, my butt was bruised so bad that I couldn’t sit on the toilet. There, I learned to deal with my problems with screaming and violence.

I feel that my entire family story is of a long, overdrawn divorce. When I was eight, my parents had a fight over something that I was too young to understand. I was hiding in my bedroom with my little brother as we always did, but it felt like the screaming went on forever that night. We heard things being smashed and thrown around, and my mother begging for my father to stop. Eventually, my dad left the apartment, and all that was left was the lonely sound of my mother crying. I found her sitting on the floor of the master bedroom, surrounded by broken glass and a shattered picture frame, trying to tape back together their shredded wedding photo that had always hung on their wall. Before I could say anything, she told me to go back to my room. After that fight, my father didn’t speak a word to my mother for a year and a half while living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed. Can you imagine? That takes some twisted dedication and discipline to maintain something so cruel, but my mother somehow endured it all until my father forgave her.

The situation didn’t change much though. Even after moving to Canada my father continued to be abusive. When I was in tenth grade, he was beating me up so bad I had to run out of home to get away from him, into the Calgarian snowstorm with nothing but shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers. Not thinking straight, I feared he was going to come after me, so I kept running from the house, until, thankfully, a passerby in a warm van picked me up and called the cops. I had to stay at a friend’s place for a little while. Unsurprisingly to me, my mother blamed me for overreacting and betraying my own family. She convinced me to tell the detective nothing was wrong and that it was just a big misunderstanding. Then I was old enough to realize that I couldn’t stay home for much longer, and I moved out as soon as I started university.

Now, I don’t want you to think too badly of my mother. Experiencing domestic abuse first-hand, I can tell you how much people are brainwashed in these situations, and my mother honestly didn’t think anything was wrong. It took her until a few years ago to understand what kind of person my father was when he ran away, transferring their savings in an off-shore account and leaving my mother with nothing. This is when I finally managed to convince her to divorce him—a legal battle that we’re still fighting after two years. Currently, there is no end in sight as my father refuses to cooperate and the majority of their money is still hidden away.

Sorry for not sharing with you any stories that connect me with my home, as there is nothing like that for me, but I suppose my own personal story could be considered a work of non-fiction. I understand “home” can mean more than just your family and dwelling, but having been bullied in Korea and only (relatively) recently gaining enough English skills to properly understand the stories of Canada, I don’t feel connected to either place. Hopefully one day, I will lead my life to someplace I could think of home with a sense of belonging.

(Here are a couple of links to give you an insight into how bullying is like in Korea)

Citations

Before the year of the First Winter, Sun knew only of one people: her own. They were farmers, living off of the work of their calloused hands and sore backs, but knowing of nothing but great health and joyous spirits.

Then one day, she woke up to see her people’s fields and orchards covered in white, like how they covered the faces of their deceased with a white cloth. The winds were colder than anything they had felt before, freezing the tears upon their cheekbones.

Still, her people kept their hopes, they rationed what they had and gathered together in one large house to share a great, roaring fire. They believed—they had to believe—that the winter must end, and that spring will arrive to save them from starvation.

But by the time their pantries ran empty, spring hadn’t arrived, instead, it was Moon and her people that knocked on the door of their home. Moon’s people were of the winter, clothed in animal hides and packing sleds full of meat. They never had a home like Sun’s people, but they were always searching and finding new homes. Today, when they happened upon the snow-covered farm, Moon grew concerned and sought them out. She offered them food, and Sun offered their hearths and homes in return.

Moon’s people hadn’t planned to stay, but they found the land bountiful and the fires warm. When the winter finally ended, Sun’s people shared their harvest, which came reliably and steadily, unlike their hunts.

Slowly over time Moon and Sun grew close together to the point they sought each other’s company whenever they could. While out on long hunts, Moon craved to return to Sun’s warmth, and Sun counted the seconds working the field without Moon by her side.

It was on one of these days of hunts that seemed to last forever that a stranger visited Sun. His face was covered under the shade of a wide-brimmed hat and he walked over to her with a slow and steady purpose. He offered her a story, speaking with a deep, knowing voice that sounded as if it came from within a cave.

“A story?” Sun asked, having never heard of such word.

“A story, my dear Sun, is an event that may have happened, may happen, or may never happen in all of time.”

“A lie, then.”

“A story is many things, but it is never a lie. I offer this story to you, and you may do with it as you wish. You may share it, or keep it for yourself, but only know that once a story is told, it can never be taken back.”

Having no reason to mistrust the man, Sun nodded and listened to his story. He told her about a barbaric people that murdered to live. They were as clever as they were strong, at times patiently setting up cruel traps made of teeth, while other times, mercilessly beating the heads of their victims with clubs made of bone. They knew of nothing but violence and deceit. Travelling from place to place searching for victims, offering them gifts to enter their homes before murdering them in the night. The only survivors were the people wise enough not to trust so willingly.

He said the next part slowly, making sure that Sun could hear every word. “They say, wherever they go, winter follows.” And with that, he bowed to her and walked away, vanishing into the forest.

Sun didn’t know what to make of the story, but she was shaken by the violence and evil, that she ran to her people and told them what she had heard. She didn’t understand the meaning of the story, or that one could even exist, but the part about the survivors seemed a poignant warning.

There was a long silence following the story, and when she felt their fears in the vibrations of the air, she realized her mistake. Then the knocks came at their door, and the whole house jumped. Moon and her people entered, smiling and carrying the bounty of their bloody hunt, only to be met with strange glares. Sun looked around at the eyes of her people who now looked at the hunter’s tools as torturous weapons and their strength as a risk. Sun’s people rose from their seats, shouting and threatening the hunters out of their land by the point of their pitchforks.

They were banished without a reason given, before Sun and Moon could say farewell. Sun, with tears on her cheeks, tried to change the old man’s story, telling a different rendition where it was a lie, but her people’s minds couldn’t be changed. The story was told, and it was forever a part of them.

Thoughts…

I’m so far really enjoying reading and listening to King’s work. I had never thought of the “dangers” of storytelling like the way he tells it. I’ve always been keenly aware of responsible writing as my own writing can sometimes lead to dark places. It’s the type of thought that says, of course, you can write from the perspective of evil/racist/sexist/etc people and they can get away with what they do because it is only realistic, but you have to be careful not to be misunderstood and display them in a positive light or even worse, be encouraging such actions for your readers. King’s type of responsibility is completely different than this, and I love how he uses the difference of the stories coming from Christian cultures and Native cultures to differentiate their cultural values.

I loved reading this story out loud to my friends, I really feel the voice come through so much stronger reading it to people than it does when I read it in my head. I chose to change the story in the way I did because I think the Witch Convention was not a good analogy to teach people why telling a story could be harmful, or even why a story told couldn’t be taken back. I believe that people can become racist without ever having a negative interaction with the said race, due to fear-mongering stories which can lead to an echo-chambers of hate. This is the type of thought that I was trying to channel into this story – something that an innocent person might hear about a group of people and it becomes forever associated, no matter how hard they try to correct it. Let me know what you think about this story!

Citations

Stibel, Jeff. “Fake News: How Our Brains Lead Us into Echo Chambers That Promote Racism and Sexism.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 15 May 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/05/15/fake-news-social-media-confirmation-bias-echo-chambers/533857002/.

I’m going to write about this even though I might be misunderstanding it. I’m going to write about it because it made me think and because I want to hear other’s opinions about it.

Chamberlin implies there are no such things as oral cultures or written cultures because both cultures practice both methods. He says, even though oral cultures might not have a stereotypical written language, they are rich in writing from their weaves, paintings, and carvings. For written cultures, he says that things such as classrooms, churches, and courts are places where oral tradition is held to great importance.

To me, this seems like a classic case of academic over-thinking. First of all, Chamberlin is taking large liberty of stretching the meaning of “writing” to fit this definition. Are we to start classifying painters as writers now? Surely not. He says written cultures don’t exist because they have oral traditions—which is a misrepresentation of how people utilize the phrase “written culture”. When referring to something as a written culture, nobody has ever meant it to mean it’s devoid of oral traditions, and I’d wager Chamberlin knows this. Let’s think about the context people use the term “written culture”—a simple Google search shows that most of the results are linked to the term “oral culture”, thus confirming the two terms’ interconnectedness. The two terms are utilized to compare which methods cultures use to traditionally pass down knowledge, and the difference is not drawn upon written cultures being devoid of orality, but the opposite: the oral cultures not utilizing written language. This is admitted even by Chamberlin in his examples of each (or rather the “so-called”/”supposed” definitions of each).

Then why change the terms that people utilize to easily communicate these ideas, especially when easy communication is the most fundamental use of language? This is where it gets interesting, and the point that got me emotional. Chamberlin points out that these type of thinking “encourages people to treat other societies with a blend of condescension and contempt while celebrating the sophistication of their own.” Which seems very presumptuous of him, and I personally have never felt condescension nor contempt when looking at “oral cultures”. But let’s say maybe it is a problem with many people, then, is the solution really to discard these terms? What term do we use to describe a culture that does not possess a written history? And if we made a new term for them, wouldn’t it have the exact same supposed problem of condescension and contempt?

MacNeil’s article gives a clearer insight into this issue. She mentions how a bunch of early 1900s Caucasian men from Toronto classified orality to be a primitive medium. She goes further to quote Chamberlin saying “Toronto School “has a lot to answer for in the characterization of oral cultures as more or less backward.” ” This part made it a lot clearer for me as to why Chamberlin is so opposed to these terms—he feels guilty for his predecessors and how they treated “other societies with a blend of condescension and contempt while celebrating the sophistication of their own.” White guilt is something that a lot of people deal with today, and those people can ironically try to pass off their new white, guilty viewpoints onto minorities. Am I, a Korean immigrant, meant to feel guilty for what white men said in the 1900s? Is a Native American mistaken to call his culture “oral”?

In my generation where countless podcasts are being created, millions of hours are spent listening to people on YouTube, and audiobooks are becoming more commonplace and accessible, I can’t imagine my generation having contempt towards orality as Chamberlin suggests. Hell, some are calling social media a revival of oral culture in the west. I really can’t help but feel like this is either an academic overthinking, misunderstanding of the terms, generational disconnect, or white guilt. But at the end of the day, I’m just a student studying literature, and he has a doctorate on this stuff, so what do I know. I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this!

Citations
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are your stories? Finding Common Ground. Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2003. Print.

Google Search. Google. Web. 16 Jan 2019.

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

Strayed, Cheryl, and Steve Almond. “How Can I Cure My White Guilt?” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 14 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/style/white-guilt-privilege.html.

MADRIGAL, ALEXIS C. “Oral Culture, Literate Culture, Twitter Culture.” The Atlantic, The Atlantic Monthly Group, 31 May 2011, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/oral-culture-literate-culture-twitter-culture/239697/.

I’m a Canadian, but I wasn’t always one. In my wallet, I have a Certificate of Canadian Citizenship which hasn’t ever come in handy except for being a second ID at bars. I feel fortunate that in all my ten years being Canadian, my citizenship has never been questioned, and I feel especially privileged when I look at how our neighbour, US, treat their own Middle-Eastern and Mexican citizens.

I’m South Korean, and my birth nation has faced colonization and oppression as well, but I consider that an event of the past. Of course, the mere existence of N.Korea is a reminder of the Japanese invasion and the meddling of USSR and USA, but my generation of Koreans just think of the North as our unfortunate neighbours. Most of the racism I’ve received came in the early years of living in Canada, and nowadays, (especially after moving to BC) it’s something that I rarely ever encounter. I do not consider my race as a disadvantage. This might be attributed to my improvement in the English language, but I do truly believe people are becoming more accepting (yes, even with all the bullshit in the US—call me an optimist). That doesn’t mean that I think we are in a great place yet. Even as Canadians, that usually like to think of ourselves as the defenders of human rights, still systematically mistreat our native population. Not too long ago, I found out that some hospitals are sterilizing native women without consent—often with government sponsorship.

I’m also an amateur writer, and I’m looking forward to learning about what it means to be a Canadian writer. I love this country, but at times, I feel confused and disconnected to its history and people—in which, the narrative seems to be in a constant state of flux. I’m hoping this course will help me understand that more. I do find it a bit strange that the course which says will teach us “to be able to recognize colonizing narratives and representations” has a reading list represented by mostly Caucasian people. There are, thankfully, a couple of Native writers in that list, but I was hoping for a bit more diverse list, as, to me, seeing viewpoints from many different races is important in studying Canada. Still, I’m excited to be learning about Canadian literature, and I look forward to discussing it with all of you!

Citations
Parker, Courtney. “AN ACT OF GENOCIDE: CANADA’S COERCED STERILIZATION OF FIRST NATIONS WOMEN.” Intercontinental Cry, Center for World Indigenous Studies, 15 Nov. 2018, intercontinentalcry.org/canadas-coerced-sterilization-of-first-nations-women/.

The Canadian Press. “Canada ‘Clear, Strong’ with Saudi Arabia on Human Rights, Trudeau Says.” The Star, Toronto Star Newspapers, 12 Oct. 2018, www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/10/12/canada-clear-strong-with-saudi-arabia-on-human-rights-trudeau-says.html.