1] 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.

For this blog post, I attempted to read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” in as many ways as I could to get a better appreciation on the oral syntax of the story that this question is concerning. I read it in my head, I read it out loud, I read it to my sister, I read it to my cat (who did not seem overly impressed by the narrative) and I alternated between reading certain passages in my head to outloud. My initial impressions of “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” were that it does need to be read out loud to gain better understanding of it. Many of the passages just sounded better when they were read out loud, particularly some of the stanzas (I’m going off of an impression that this can be seen as poetry due to the story’s structure) which fluctuated in line length.

So they drive the boat closer but they can never get close.
Just about the same distance at all time.
They follow them around and around.
And they couldn’t get close. (Robinson 64-5)

As I read it in my head, I found myself reading the narrative faster, and not absorbing the content as well as I had when I read it out loud. I also found myself either skipping over, or even correcting, the grammatical layout that Harry Robinson employs in “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.” However, when reading it out loud, I felt a certain level of frustration towards the text as I kept stumbling over the words as though it was a word puzzle.

Focusing back on the Thomas King article we read for this week, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” I would like to agree with his opinions on “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.” King speaks of the assumption that key factors of oral storytelling, such as interactions between the listener and the storyteller, are lost when oral stories are translated into written stories. To me, this seems quite obvious, to the point where I had taken this loss for granted. However, King also writes that Robinson is able to work past this “by forcing the reader to read aloud . . . [and] re-creating at once the storyteller and the performance.” (King 186) While I, by no means, felt forced to read the story out loud, I do agree that Robinson is pushing the reader to become the storyteller. I did find that as I read it out loud, particularly for my audience, I did adopt a storyteller’s persona by altering tone and employing gestures.

Blanca Chester also looks at the concept of form in Robinson’s stories in her article, “Storied Dialogues: Exchanges of Meaning Between Storyteller and Anthropologist.” Her article is her own translation of a recording and dialogue between Harry Robinson and his editor, Wendy Wickwire. Before getting to her translation, Chester questions the way these tapes can shift in form when being transplanted from a recording to a written work.

The translation of these recordings into written texts enables one to play with form. Indeed, form manifests itself as an integral component of the dialogue. Meanings change depending on the form and style that is used in framing an oral narrative. Should these stories be presented as prose narratives, or as poetry? Is the prose form more objective than the poetic? What is objectivity? Is the poetic form an imposition on Harry’s text, implying that his speech is, somehow, more natural than Wendy’s? (Chester 14)

I believe that Chester questions what King celebrates in his article. While it is interesting and innovative that Robinson is able to bridge that gap between oral and written stories, Chester questions these choices, as well as if by altering the form, the story loses part of its form.

I would like to direct my attention now to an interesting article I found for this week concerning language and orality in Icelandic sagas. In “In the Refracted Light of the Mirror Phrases sem fyrr var sagt and sem fyrr var ritat: Sagas of Icelanders and the Orality–Literacy Interfaces,” Slavica Ranković discusses the two phrases, “sem fyrr var ritat/ skrifat (as was written before/ as already written), which directly invokes writing, and the appropriated oral-mode mirror phrases sem fyrr var sagt/ getit/ nefnd/ talat/ mælt/ rœtt (as was said/ mentioned/ named /told /spoken of /talked of before)” (299) in Icelandic sagas. While I do not believe that the connection between these referential phrases and our material this week is immediately apparent, it has been making me think about all our material up to this point. Ranković writes that “growing accustomed to the medium had slowly obviated the need of the authors to draw special attention to the fact of writing as such and freed them for a more metaphorical use of language and stylistic exploitation of the immediacy of the spoken word,” (807) which I believe Robinson utilizes in his story by stylistically mimicking oral storytelling.

It also makes me think of our blog posts. Early in the article, Ranković notes that “new communication technologies . . . processes of cultural transition from one dominant mode of interaction to another tend to be evolutionary, as the new media not only never fully supplant the old but also often adopt, adapt, and semantically appropriate some of the existing facets and etiquettes of communication.” (299) Are our blog posts not new technology looking to adopt and evolve the practice of oral tradition? Though our words are written, I do often read our posts as though we are all speaking our words and stories to read other. This translation of the written to the spoken word, again, is what Thomas King believes Harry Robinson is able to accomplish in “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.”

Works Cited

Chester, Blanca. “Storied Dialogues: Exchanges Of Meaning Between Storyteller And Anthropologist.” Studies In American Indian Literatures: The Journal Of The Association For The Study Of American Indian Literatures 8.3 (1996): 13-35. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Ranković, Slavica. “In The Refracted Light Of The Mirror Phrases Sem Fyrr Var Sagt And Sem Fyrr Var Ritat: Sagas Of Icelanders And The Orality-Literacy Interfaces.” Journal Of English And Germanic Philology 115.3 (2016): 299-332. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

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

3. 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 feel as though it is fair to point out this assumption, though perhaps it is required to add this assumption in. After all, academia constantly feels the shadow of the European tradition and, coming from European tradition myself, I did not see this shadow until several Gender and Women’s Studies courses pointed this out to me.

Looking at this question, I was reminded of a novel I once read in a course on narratives. The book that I read was Half-breed by Maria Campbell. The novel is a memoir of her life living as a Metis woman in Canada. Maria Campbell details her life as caught between two different cultures, with those around her assuming she can never fit into either of these two cultures because of her liminal identity. The memoir is her attempt to bring an understanding to the difficulty she had to deal with in her life, though there was always something about the novel that bothered me.

Though I have not read the novel in a long time, I still remember the tone that created a divide between me and the author. It was as though Maria Campbell assumed that the reader came from the European tradition and, because of this, the reader would never fully be able to understand her story. I also remember how alienated I felt reading the novel as she creates a clear divide, separating herself and her people from other cultures in the narrative.

For this post, I read “The Two Way Flow: Connecting Cultures, Understanding Others” by Sanjukta Dasgupta from Landscape, Place and Culture : Linkages between Australia and India. The UBC Library has an eBook version of this article, which is what I have hyperlinked to. Hopefully this will give you a quick route to the book. If I need to edit that, or make it easier to link to the book, please let me know. The article goes over how connection between cultures allows for an understanding that can remove the assumptions that I am questioning. Dasgupta says that, “desires for exceptionalism instead of cultural pluralism ushers in the risk of discrimination and the resultant disinterest in the society and culture of the re-located space” (6). Now, this made me think of Half-breed because, while Campbell does not attempt to exceptionalism her culture, there is a measure of disconnect between cultures throughout the novel. It is the disconnect and disinterest that gave me pause.

Again, I had this feeling as I read the Lutz article for this lesson. Lutz makes the assumption that his reader is European and that they will either need to drastically alter their perceptions, or will be unable to understand first contact stories outside of the European tradition. When I first felt this feeling with Half-breed, I wrote a very long essay about how this alienation created a divide between myself and Campbell, turning my anger into ammunition. As Audre Lorde says in her speech, “The Uses of Anger,” while anger and frustration can often be seen as disruptive and negative, they are also active emotions that can inspire change.

But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies. (Lorde 280)

However, I also detailed that perhaps this was not a bad thing because it inspired me to write about Half-breed, which generates conversation on the topic.

Now that it has been a few years since I wrote that paper, I would like to add something to this thought process. While, normally, I believe that assumptions, such as claiming that someone from European culture can never understand another culture, can be extremely dangerous and create further divide between cultures, I feel as thought it may have been necessary in this case. By pointing this out, Lutz and Campbell draw attention to the fact that the assumed reader will never have to experience being told that they will never understand because, as part of the dominant culture.

This brings attention to the fact that Indigenous cultures often have to deal with this kind of critique. As seen in The Truth About Stories, Thomas King discusses European and Indigenous stories of creation. King notes that European creation myths are often viewed with a grain of truth in them, while Indigenous creation myths are immediately dismissed. I feel as though, by pointing out a similar thought process in “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz is challenging any potential readers that belong to European tradition to think outside of the assumptions that are taught to them.

Assumptions can be very dangerous constructs. They can often be damaging and create an isolation between cultures by alienating cultures from each other. However, this can be repaired. As we go through this course, I believe that we are making steps to repair and dispel these assumptions. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes assumptions about his readers in order to continue his dialogue. In this instance, his assumptions are able to help in his argument because he puts the assumed reader in a space where they can begin to question their own assumptions.

Works Cited

Campbell, Maria. Half-breed. Goodread Biographies, 1983.

Dasgupta, Sanjukta. “The Two Way Flow: Connecting Cultures, Understanding Others.” Landscape, Place and Culture : Linkages between Australia and India, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2001, pp. 2-13.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003.

Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger.”Women’s Studies Quarterly 25.1/2 (1997): 278-85. Web.

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print.

Hello there, English 470! Happy Monday and Happy October to you! Can you believe that we’re already a month into this term? It seems as though September went by so quickly. Anyways, here is my follow-up post to our assignment where we had to list what home means to us. I had a lot of fun reading your stories this week. Here are my observations, which I will be posting alongside some commentary. I, then, plan on following up my observations with an overall commentary on the assignment and my findings.

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SIMILARITIES

Evolution – Many of our stories revolved on the relocation of our sense of home, but it was Colleen Fish that brought the world ‘evolution’ to my attention. She begins her blog post by saying that “the reason why ‘home’ is so difficult to find is because home is something that evolves as you experience life” (Fish). I think this is an excellent way of looking at our sense of home as it is ever-changing as we rotate our location.

Comfort/Safety – Comfort and safety were words that were used often within our blog posts. I cannot agree with this more, as my story ended on me finally getting comfortable in my new house.

Family/Friends/Support System/Love – Out of all the blog posts that I read, I believe that this was among the three most mentioned aspects of the sense of home. The three most mentioned were: evolution, comfort/safety, and love. I believe this is because family is so closely connected with the home, so you feel most at home with those you consider to be your family.

The Attachment of Memories/Stories to a Physical Space – Memories and story were, of course, big themes in this assignment. The assignment was to write a story and, as I will discuss in my additional commentary, it is a crucial part of why a location becomes a home. Lucas Hui discussed the importance of story in his sense of home, while Michael Pendreigh shared memories with us in his story. 

Independence/Evolution of Identity – Finally, while not many mentioned the independence that contributed to my sense of home, Patrick Woo did discuss something similar. In his post, he says “I came to recognise it is not only my father’s home but mine as it helps us figure out who we are” (Woo). I am not sure if he was getting at the same thing as I was, but I think that this indicates that identity and the evolution of an identity can also be part of the process of making a home.

DIFFERENCES

Sense of Belonging – A few of the blogs that I inspected, such as Colleen Fish’s blog, brought up a sense of belonging and its connection to a sense of home. I will discuss this further in the additional commentary section of this post.

Stability – While most of Jenny Bachynski’s story aligned with what I wrote in my story, I thought it was interesting how her early sense of home was tied into the stability of her childhood home. As I moved so much in my childhood, I never felt this, but I enjoyed how she got the sense of stability and how that related to feelings of comfort and home across through her story.

Escape – In Chloe Lee’s blog, she said that “home has been a place of solitary peace for me, where I can escape from the world.” As my sense of home revolves heavily around the people in my life, I had not considered this aspect. However, I do agree that my home is where I find my peace and relax from the pressures of the world outside my home.

Language – As I have only ever lived in a country where my native language is the official language of the country I live in, I have never had to experience what Francisco Araneta has felt. Though, I am bilingual and I have a slight taste of what it feels like to be a fish out of water when it comes to language. I found this to be a very interesting blog post as I had never considered my language to be connected to my sense of home before.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY

I would like to begin this commentary with mentioning how much we all seem to want to give into cliches! I am not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing, but I found it interesting how many of us utilized the phrase “home is where the heart is” or “there’s no place like home.” Even when I was writing my short story on home, I felt an urge to use these phrases as well. Perhaps there is some sort of truth to these sayings.

I also found that, as a group, we had more in common than we had in difference when describing our sense of home. Many of the stories were based around memories or stories that occurred in the location we proclaimed home and it was these stories that made that location a home to us, not to sound redundant. There was also many references as to home being the place where we were surrounded by the ones we love and the ones that love us, whether it be family, friends, or others we are close to.

The idea that home is not a physical space until we make it a physical space was something I also came across quite often, though not in those exact words. Many of the stories began with talking about how home was not a physical space, but it took on these qualities by being the location where the stories occurred. Looking through all of these blogs, I feel as though it is our stories and memories that make our homes.

In terms of differences, I did not find many between all of us. Even in the differences, I found them to be quite small and maybe only different in how we termed them. For instance, I went over the sense of belonging in the differences section of this post. While I did not go over this in my story, I do think that this ties in with home being where your loved ones are because your family accepts you. I also found that Francisco Araneta’s take on linking language to your sense of home also works into the idea of belonging somewhere. It is difficult to feel belonging when you are isolated by a language barrier.

In conclusion, I thought that this was a very interesting assignment. I learned a great deal of things about what I consider to by home for myself, and also learned about what other people consider to me home. While all of our stories were unique and individual, we all shared some similarities in our sense of home. Our theme of storytelling also continued into this week when I found that it was the story of home that transformed our house into our homes.

Works Cited

Araneta, Francisco. “Assignment  2:2, Alienated at Home, at Ease Overseas.” Telling Stories of My Own, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/franciscoaraneta/2016/09/28/assignment-22-alienated-at-home-at-ease-overseas. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Bachynski, Jenny. “Shifting: Assignment 2:2.” Canadian Studies: Exploring Genres through Canadian Literature, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/470acanstudies/2016/09/28/shifting. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Fish, Colleen. “What home is….for me. – Assignment 2.2.” English 470 – Canadian Studies, 30 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/colleenfish/2016/09/30/what-home-is-for-me-assignment-2-2. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Hui, Lucas. “Blog Post 2.2 – “Home” Is Where the Heart Is.” Engl 470A: Seeking new stories to write my own, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/lucashui/2016/09/28/blog-post-2-1-home. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Lee, Chloe. “2.2 Home.” Chloe’s Blog for English 470, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/470chloe/2016/09/28/2-2-home. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Pendreigh, Michael. “2:2 The Sense of a Home.” Michael’s Foray into Home on Stolen Ground: Canadian Literature Discussed, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/michaelpendreigh470/2016/09/28/22-the-sense-of-a-home. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Woo, Patrick. “Canada Is My Home And Not–Assignment 2:2.” We are in the Same Boat: Discovering the Homeland of Canadian Literary Genres in its Historical Context, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/patrickwoo/2016/09/28/canada-is-my-home-and-not-assignment-22. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Home is not a location to me. I’ve lived in far too many places to consider my home as a specific location. Yet, the place where I live becomes my home. What I consider to be an intangible concept of home becomes tangible once I settle in a location, whether this is chosen by me or not. Sometimes, though, this location is never quite able to absorb the qualities that make it home.

I have never thought about it before, but moving was a constant in my life. In my childhood, we moved because of my father’s job as he searched for a better job and a place that we could all call home. My first move happened when I was barely a year old. We picked up everything from our small trailer in Prince George, a place where I was not yet aware enough to call home, to settle in Vancouver with family. As quickly as we moved to Vancouver, we again moved everything to Vancouver Island, in the town of Campbell River.

In Campbell River, we moved twice. It was the second house that I came to call home. This house was located across from a river and surrounded by tall, green trees. All my friends lived on the same street as me, making it possible to go and explore the forest that our house was placed beside. I remember going down to the river to attempt to fish even though my parents had warned me against it because the currents were so swift. I remember not being able to go to school because there was a bear monopolizing the bus stop. This is where my sense of home began to take on its own unique qualities. To this day, I feel at home walking in the forest with my shoes getting damp because I didn’t listen to my mother telling me to wear proper shoes. I’m comforted by the smells of the forest and the river, and I leave my window open to lull myself to sleep with the sound of falling rain.

When I was 10, we moved to the Okanagan Valley. My family settled in Coldstream, which is a small community just outside of Vernon. Again, we moved twice in Coldstream. For a very long time, our first home there didn’t feel like my concept of home. There were no close forests for me to roam around. We had a small creek in the backyard, but it wasn’t the same. As me and my sister settled into our new school, we began to make friends with kids both at school and along our street. This is when it finally began to feel like home. While I was never as good of friends with the kids on my street as my new school friends, running up and down the cul-de-sac tickled the part of my brain that was nostalgic for Campbell River. As long as I had friends that I could spend my time with, Coldstream could be bearable.

I didn’t move again until my second year of college. I was beginning to feel cramped in my childhood home. The friends I was now making at college all lived in Vernon and my job was there as well. So, I moved into Vernon by myself. I lived there for two years before I decided to move back in with my parents when I started going to university full time. It was during this time that I discovered what it was about my home in Vernon that made it home to me. This factor was independence. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, when I wanted. Though I was older and my parents never tried control my schedule like in high school, all of a sudden I had chores and had to work around their lives. The home that I had once called my home was no longer comfortable anymore.

This summer, I moved to Kelowna in order to be closer to university for my last year. It was a nightmare to find a place to live for both myself, my sister and her cat. When we finally found the place, I felt certain that this would just be a temporary stop in my search for my new home. I would have to suffer with living in a small room that didn’t have nearly enough room for all my things. My feelings to this new location were ambivalent as the boxes crowded around my room, monopolizing any free space. Though, as I began to fall to asleep, I realized that this could be my home. There were no parents there, I already had plans to visit my friends the next day, and I would eventually find the space for all my things. I could make this place comfortable. I slid the window open and fell asleep to the sound of the rain falling on my new home.

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Hey, everyone! I hope you enjoyed my short story about what home means to me. I had a lot of fun writing it and remembering all the places where I used to live. I couldn’t really find many places to insert hyperlinks within the story, so I thought I would point out the Meaning of Home Contest here. Habitat for Humanity runs a contest asking for children from grades 4-6 to write an essay on what home means to them, with the money going towards a Habitat for Humanity build as well as the school they go to. They have some postings from the current and past winners that you may want to take a look at.

Works Cited

Campbell River. Heritage River Inn, 2016, http://www.heritageriverinn.com/images/campbellriver1-b.jpg. JPEG file.

The Meaning of Home. Habitat for Humanity, 2016, www.meaningofhome.ca. Accessed 26 September 2016.

“Relaxing Sounds of Rain and Thunder in Woods – The Sounds of Nature 16.” YouTube, uploaded by KMYMedia, 13 September 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6OhIZODLDs.