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I was assigned pages 131-145 which I believe correspond to pages 130 (which begins with “I’ve been elected spokesperson for our table …”) to 143 (the last sentence being “Eli could see the man’s mouth open and close in a shout …” .

The first section is from pages 130-135. The Dead Dog Café is visited by four Americans: Jeanette, Nelson, Rosemarie De Flor and her husband, Bruce. According to the Canadian Literature Guide 161/162, Jeanette refers to singer/actress Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson refers to singer/actor Nelson Eddy. The two of them starred in Rose Marie, a film set in the Canadian wilderness, where MacDonald played Rosemarie and Eddy played Bruce, an RCMP officer. Nelson comes off as a stereotypical womanizer and Bruce is equally annoying with his anecdotes of working in the RCMP. Nelson is also incredulous with the idea that the Dead Dog Café is serving dog meat. However, this is just the kind of stuff with which tourists associate ‘Indians’. In Schwarz’s book, Fighting Colonialism with Hegemonic Culture: Native American Appropriation of Indian Stereotypes, she gives examples of how Native Americans have appropriated stereotypes of Indians, on their own terms and for their own benefit. “The same banalities that have for centuries been used by colonizers to fetishize Indians, thereby inscribing them in a certain disenfranchised societal position in order to keep American Indians powerless, are now being used by Native American nations to empower themselves; by selling product and other means” (Schwarz 4). Although Schwarz’s focus is on Native Americans, in the book, Latisha is able to “[fight] colonialism at home” (Schwarz 5) as the owner of the Dead Dog Café and skillfully knowing what types of stereotypes to play on in order to attract customers.

On page 136, Eli Stands Alone has his typical conversation with Clifford Sifton about getting Eli to give up the land to allow the dam to be used. According to the CanLit guide, Sifton was deaf (150). Therefore, even though Eli may say “no”, Sifton never really listens to the reasons behind Eli’s answers. Sifton believes Eli is stubborn, but Eli has a very good reason through Aboriginal treaty rights not to concede to Sifton. Sifton posesses “the federal government’s understanding of Aboriginal rights and title” which is “based on the assumption that the Canadian state holds underlying title to all of Canada” (Asch 211) when Aboriginal title precedes any claim of Canadian title. Sifton may believe that “those treaties aren’t worth a damn” (King 141), but through the connection of the dam with a sense of home, it is clear that the land itself has more value than a legal contract.

I found an interesting connection between Eli Stands Alone and George Morningstar/George Armstrong Custer and his “Last Stand”. George Morningstar refers to George Armstrong Custer, a general and famous Indian fighter (Flick 149). Custer supposedly had children with a Cheyenne woman named Mo-nah-se-tah and Custer was well known for his buckskins. George Morningstar is similar to Custer in that he tries to immerse himself in the tradition of the Indians but really believes he is superior. Custer’s “Last Stand” is portrayed as a heroic effort, albeit futile, to withstand the forces of some Plains Indians Tribes. One textbook mentions that when Custer and his men crossed the Little Big Horn, “this was the last sight any white man had of Custer’s men” (387). The racist attitudes of the time are unfortunately well reflected in this textbook as seen in the quotation I have included. Custer’s death is the subject of much controversy in terms of who claims to have killed Custer and how. In fact, Custer’s death made him famous and is the subject of many projects of history telling. In contrast, Eli’s “last stand” is a nuisance to those who just want Eli to leave so they can live on the land. Just by reading what Sifton says, it is obvious that Sifton carries the racist thinking of the Canadian government and would prefer to erase treaty history in order to profit from the dam and make a name for himself. Although Eli dies when the dam breaks, those who want the land are still not able to get what they want. Eli’s last stand is successful and allows his family members to get a chance to live in the cabin while maintaining the treaty rights.

The Sun Dance is an important ceremony for the Blackfoot nation (please see the discussion I have with Heather below). King gives the reader a glimpse into the Sun Dance when Eli recounts his childhood memory of watching the men dance (137). However, only two pages later, the story of the man taking pictures of the Sun Dance signals to the reader that we are not to know what takes place in the Sun Dance. In King’s “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial” essay, he describes how associational literature “avoids centering the story on the non-Native community … concentrating instead on the daily activities and intricacies of Native life” (187). In this lesson, we are asked to be willing “to not know” in our initial reading of the book. However, Green Grass, Running Water is a form of associational literature where “For the non-Native reader, this literature provides a limited and particular access to a Native world” (187). Therefore, we are not given access to fully know in the case of the Sun Dance. However, we are still able to witness its significance in the lives of the characters. King’s use of narrative decolonization avoids a “them versus us” dichotomy by showing us that it is okay to not know. At the same time, his story reassures us that we will start to know what we should.

Works Cited

Asch, Michael, ed. Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada: Essays on Law, Equality, and Respect for Difference. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 16 March 2015.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Print.

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

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

Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle. Fighting Colonialism with Hegemonic Culture : Native American Appropriation of Indian Stereotypes. Albany, NY, USA: State University of New York Press, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 March 2015.

Wikipedia contributors. “George Armstrong Custer.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 15 Mar. 2015. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.

Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.” Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer. The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.”

Throughout King’s story, the Blackfoot characters and their stories are often silenced/ignored by those who belong to a colonial legacy. By intertwining stories from Native American oral traditions with narratives that come from colonizers, King subverts the colonial domination and (re-)introduces readers to stories that have existed long before colonization. This act of narrative decolonization allows the Aboriginal voice to be audibly heard when the ‘oral syntax’ of the book makes the reader read out loud, but it also creatively changes the dominant colonial narratives so that the dichotomous nature of colonialism and othering gives way to stories that reconnect and heal.

Page 41. Out of the Christian story of the Garden of Eden, the character of First Woman subverts the notion that males are superior to females. When Adam is called to name creation, he gets it all wrong. Furthermore, the character of GOD, who is just a dog, is portrayed to be a very stingy dog. In contrast to the typical colonial creation story, the Aboriginal creation story of First Woman shows that she has agency, unlike Eve who many feel is a justification to treat women as inferior to men. Although I am a Christian, I recognize that a lot of damage has been done by the use of the Biblical creation story in order to colonize and subjugate those who do not believe in it, as well as disparage women because Eve supposedly brought sin into the world. King’s version instead shows First Woman doing as she pleases because she is part of who created the garden. It is her creation, not GOD’s, and certainly not that of the colonizers.

Page 270. First, we meet A.A. Gabriel who is the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel tries to impose the Biblical story of the Virgin Mary on Thought Woman, but ultimately fails. Instead of having no say, Thought Woman can simply just refuse and walk away. Moreover, King takes the Canadian National Anthem and changes that one line so that it highlights the problem of colonialism that is embedded in nationalism. Indeed, Canada is “our home on Natives’ land”. Perhaps this is an uncomfortable truth, but even this small sentence is a start to changing the way we think about where we live and who we live with. The fact is, colonization was not a one time thing. It was a deliberate process that wanted to dispossess Aboriginal peoples of their rights and their lands. It is also ongoing. But King cleverly shows us that narrative decolonization is more powerful because it can unite perspectives that may once have been at odds with one another.

I recall when I read Green Grass, Running Water for ENGL 222, the professor asked if we thought Christians would be offended with this book. Personally, I do not believe King purposely intended to offend Christians. Instead, through the act of narrative decolonization, he has actually removed the “them versus us” mentality by making the readers evaluate how they perceive and tell stories. In this interview, King explains that he began writing this novel with “the assumption that Christian myth was the one that informed the world that [he] was working with”. However, this did not give him ample creative freedom. King thus weaves Native stories and Western stories together and pushes it through a “grinder … as Native culture’s been pushed through that sort of North American grinder” (68). It may be uncomfortable for some, but I believe that part of healing and coming together requires us to acknowledge problems first and work to find ways for coexistence and cooperation.

This TedxTalk focuses on decolonization by learning to really listen to each others’ stories. Olivia Rutazibwa explains that: “Decolonization is about what type of information is available for our mainstream societies. Secondly, it’s also not about political correctness. It’s not about silencing yourself … it’s the opposite. It’s the call to dig deeper … Whenever you feel silenced yourself, you or your group, or whoever you’re part of, that you step up and take it upon yourself to tell your story.” I think King has taken that step and allowed us to experience these great stories because of narrative decolonization.

Works Cited

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

King, Thomas. Interview with Peter Gzowski. Canadian Literature. n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.

Tedx Talks. “TedxFlanders – Olivia U. Rutazibwa – Decoloniser.” Online video clip. YouTube. Youtube. 27 Sept. 2011. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.

3 ] Frye writes: A much more complicated cultural tension [more than two languages] arises from the impact of the sophisticated on the primitive, and vice a versa. The most dramatic example, and one I have given elsewhere, is that of Duncan Campbell Scott, working in the department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. He writes of a starving squaw baiting a fish-hook with her own flesh, and he writes of the music of Debussy and the poetry of Henry Vaughan. In English literature we have to go back to Anglo-Saxon times to encounter so incongruous a collision of cultures (Bush Garden 221). It is interesting, and telling of literary criticism at the time, that while Frye lights on this duality in Scott’s work, or tension between “primitive and civilized” representations; however, the fact that Scott wrote poetry romanticizing the “vanishing Indians” and wrote policies aimed at the destruction of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people – as a distinct people, is never brought to light. In 1924, in his role as the most powerful bureaucrat in the department of Indian Affairs, Scott wrote:

The policy of the Dominion has always been to protect Indians, to guard their identity as a race and at the same time to apply methods, which will destroy that identity and lead eventually to their disappearance as a separate division of the population (In Chapter, 23).

For this blog assignment, I would like you to explain why it is that Scott’s highly active role in the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people’s cultures is not relevant for Frye in his observations above? You will find your answers in Frye’s discussion on the problem of ‘historical bias’ (216) and in his theory of the forms of literature as closed systems (234 –5).

To illustrate why Frye is not concerned with Duncan Campbell Scott’s active role in the destruction of Indigenous people’s cultures, I want to highlight some key points from his conclusion. In Frye’s conclusion, he situates work early in the literary history of Canada. Frye states that “Literature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of story-telling” (234). However, Frye states that “the Canadian literary mind, beginning as it did so late in the cultural history of the West, was established on a basis, not of myth, but of history” (233). The mythical was actually “prehistoric … and the writer had to attach himself to his literary tradition deliberately and voluntarily” (235).

According to Frye, “Indians, like the rest of the country, were seen as nineteenth-century literary conventions” and so it is no wonder that Frye does not criticize Scott because he supposedly did as any other late nineteenth century or early twentieth century writer would have done – adhere to the literary tradition. Scott’s writing belonged to the “garrison mentality” that Frye speaks of which “begins as an expression of the moral values generally accepted in the group as a whole” (233). Frye also asserts that “Earlier Canadian writers were certain of their moral values: right was white, wrong black, and nothing else counted or even existed” (228). Therefore, Scott viewed the “Indians” as “primitive”, (notice the use of the derogatory term “squaw”) and fitting the convention of the vanishing Indian. Frye ignores this problematic view because it is just a part of the garrison mentality’s development. Frye believes that he garrison mentality will evolve to attack these conventional standards and perhaps Scott’s writing based on history will itself become a myth which Canadian literature can choose to draw from. However, since Scott belonged in a time of early Canadian literary history, to find oneself out of the garrison would have been terrifying and so his racist writing can be excused in this theory. Furthermore, Frye attempts to highlight the clash of cultures and the tension in the use of language between the sophisticated and the primitive. Frye says that to “encounter so incongruous a collision of cultures” (221), one must go back to the beginning of the English literary tradition in the Anglo-Saxon times. Therefore, this tension in Scott’s work is implied to be characteristic of a literary tradition that is just developing and so Scott’s problematic thinking is again excused.

Although Scott’s policies of destruction are not relevant in Frye’s discussion, I think that it is dangerous to theorize early Canadian Literature in the way Frye has. The CanLit Guides discusses attempts to “revive Scott’s reputation” (n.pag.) with regards to his nature poetry. However, the guide reminds us that: “it is important to remember that the beauty of a poet’s expression is itself an ideological tool. Sometimes saying racist things in poetic ways makes them seem all the more true and, in turn, make race seem that much more real” (n.pag.). If Scott’s description of the primitiveness of the “squaw” fishing with her own flesh can be regarded as poetic and allowed under Frye’s literary theory, then the myth of the ‘vanishing Indian’ is still perpetuated.

I always enjoy reading Armand Garnet Ruffo’s “Poem for Duncan Campbell Scott”. The last few lines of the poem demonstrate how Scott’s poetry and literary theory that attempts to justify or excuse racism simply gives it a platform to continue to exist: “Him,/ he calls it poetry/ and says it will make us who are doomed/ live forever.”

Frye states: “If evaluation is one’s guiding principle, criticism of Canadian literature would become only a debunking project, leaving it a poor naked alouette plucked of every feather of decency and dignity” (215). I would like to ask my readers what they think of this statement. Should we pluck the alouette if it was never decent to begin with or should we just let it fly away?

Works Cited

“Duncan Campbell Scott.” CanLit Guides. Canadian Literature, 5 Nov. 2013. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Frye, Northrop. “The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination.” Concord: House of Anansi. 215-253. Print.

Ruffo, Armand Garnet. “Poem for Duncan Campbell Scott.” Canadian Poetry Online. University of Toronto. n.d. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

3] In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.”

The map that the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people presented in Delgamuukw v British Columbia was sarcastically called “the map that roared” by Judge McEachern. This map was an attempt by the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people to “outline their own sovereignty in a way the Canadian court might understand”(Sparke 468) so that their title and rights to land would be recognized. Although McEachern did not rule in favour of the Aboriginal groups, as Sparke argues in his article, the map “roared” in more ways than one and is part of a challenge against Western cartography known as counter-mapping.

McEachern dismissed the map as a “paper tiger” in that the map’s bark was bigger than its bite. After all, in the Western and colonialist view, Indigenous cartographies were anachronistic, their legitimacy long extinguished (if it ever existed), and so the judge could not understand this map. I believe that the judge may have held the view that this map was too “primitive” and thus ascribed an animalistic characteristic to the map, one that an ‘advanced’ being as he would not be able to comprehend. But in fact, Western cartography is prolepetic, projecting the future on to the past which just does not make any sense. Therefore, not only does this map roar against the forms of colonialism Sparke outlines such as orientation systems, property lines, pipelines, etc.; the map also roars of its own existence before colonialism and its existence in the present. Just because Western cartography may be seen as the standard does not mean that Indigenous ideas of land and place cease to exist. The hybrid nature of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en’s map show that Indigenous ideas of cartography can be fluid and incorporate other cartographies. On the other hand, Western cartography is rigid in time and space and hence limited.

Sparke also mentions that McEachern unconsciously recognized Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en “agency and territorial survival” (470) by saying that this map roared. This agency is also expressed in how the map finds the intersections between Indigenous and Western cartography. The two do not need to be separate and it is high time that the government and the public recognized that. In the article about counter-mapping I have hyperlinked, it mentions innovative ways of doing cartography that is based on this hybrid nature. The map and what it represents has never stopped roaring and with these new types of cartography, the roaring of the land that we all live on can hopefully be understood by everyone.

Works Cited

Louis, Renee Pualani, Jay T. Johnson, Albertus Hadi Pramono. “Introduction: Indigenous Cartographies and Counter-Mapping.” Cartographica 47:2 (2012): 77-79. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 463-95. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

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 believe that Lutz’s statement about entering “into a world that is distant in time and alien in culture” unintentionally plays on the discourse of “us” versus “them”. The performances of the Aboriginal peoples are based on stories that they may already have. From Wickwire’s introduction in Living by Stories, the stories Harry Robinson tell are not necessarily distant in time. He includes stories about the recent past and also includes objects that are usually associated with European culture such as guns. Therefore, I think that posing the difficulty of comprehending Indigenous performances in this way categorizes Aboriginal peoples as ‘other’. Certainly, there are always problems in interpreting stories. From Dr. Paterson’s blog on first stories, it is evident that sometimes it is difficult to ascribe meaningfulness to the story when the ceremony of telling it has been lost, and translating and collecting stories present their own issues. However, the performances of Indigenous participants in ‘First Contact’ need not be situated as so far away in a way that suggests primitiveness.

Since Lutz’s paper seems to suggest the divide between the European tradition and Indigenous tradition, I think that Dr. Paterson is fair when she highlights the assumption that Lutz makes about his readers belonging to an European tradition. I can see this creating two problems (please comment if you can think of any more). First, that because someone might belong to the European tradition, it gives them a crutch when they say that they cannot understand Indigenous performances and stories and thus interpret them incorrectly. Then, Indigenous stories may be highly spiritualized through myths, in contrast to the European tradition of a spirituality that is backed by science. For example, this Historica Minutes of the Peacemaker presents the Aboriginal peoples as highly spiritual and even bordering on the occult. But this interpretation is problematic in that if Aboriginal peoples strayed away from the spiritual, then they could be violent. Second, Lutz does not consider readers of non-European traditions. Does this mean then that they do not need to engage in learning to understand and interpret Indigenous stories in order to see the intersections of various cultures? From my own personal experience, I feel like as an Asian-Canadian, many other Asian-Canadians and my own family do not really have much interest in the issues of Aboriginal peoples. We may not belong to the European tradition but it is easy to see how the European/colonialist view is so dominant that we can just follow it as well. In school, I always perceived Aboriginal peoples to be violent, savage, feather-wearing, etc. because that is the idea that was taught. So that shaped how I viewed Indigenous stories as just myths and untrue. I’m really glad that this course and so many others I have taken at UBC are helping me to be more sensitive and informed about Aboriginal stories.

Speaking of non-European tradition, I would just like to mention the TV series Fresh Off the Boat. It seems that a lot of people are raving that finally, after so long, a show about an Asian-American family is finally airing. After years of Asian families not being able to relate completely to European/White families on TV, many Asians are happy that their family life is being represented on TV. But I do not know of any TV shows where an Aboriginal family is featured. If anyone knows of any, please comment! I hope that as we learn more about first stories and the assumptions and differences we all have, we are able to better understand all of the stories that we encounter without seeing them as ‘other’.

Works Cited

Historica Canada. “Peacemaker.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 11 Sept. 2014. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.

Jung, E. Alex, “Watching Fresh Off the Boat with 999 Asian-Americans.” Vulture. 5 Feb. 2015. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.

What our homes have in common:

• Sharing stories (just like how we are now)
• Place of trust and comfort
• Place to overcome obstacles together
• Place we can return to
• Our family that supports us, bears with us, makes sacrifices for us
• We have opportunities to grow and learn from our experiences
• Shared warmth of home and family
• Where we go to in times of need/trouble
• Shaped geographically (is our home far away from others, far away from where we are now?)

For this assignment, I read four of my colleagues’ blogs:

Florence’s, Jeff’s, Leana’s, and Shamina’s. Along with my own blog post, I really got the sense that home is a place of safety, trust, and comfort. We know that we can go to our families, who are a part of home, and the physical home itself to look for these three things. In Shamina’s and Leana’s blogs, they share different experiences of their family supporting them. Though she was eager to get away from home, Shamina still felt the care of her mother from far away. Leana’s mother worked from home to take care of her children and along with Leana’s father helped her brother out of a scary situation. These speaks of how family is integral to the concept of home. Jeff points out that

“Home is a place that values … helping with obstacles along the way”. As we grow up, we find that home is where we have had a lot of learning experiences. Our family has also been an important part of shaping our character and as Florence says, “home is directly involved in our history”.

Geography also influences how we think of home. For Florence who has lived in three different places, she takes Vancouver to be home. As for Shamina and me, we both think of home as living on residence and where we are originally from. Home is able to transcend geographical borders and we are able to take home with us wherever we go.

Interestingly, Florence, Jeff, and Shamina all shared the same music videos. Phillip Phillips’ “Home” and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros’ “Home” were featured in their blogs. These types of songs resonant with people because they can be interpreted to whatever home means to someone.

In general, I believe that the four blogs I have shared on here (as well as my own) take a positive view on what home is. Even though there may be struggles and negative situations at home sometimes, we work to make home a happy and secure place.

Works Cited

Kallu, Shamina. “Home is Wherever I’m With You.” WordPress. 30 Jan. 2015. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.

Lemon, Leana. “How to Save Your House.” WordPress. 30 Jan. 2015. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.

Liu, Jeff. “‘Cause I’m Gonna Make This Place Your Home’.” WordPress. 29 Jan. 2015. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.

Ng, Florence. “Home is a Pie Chart and a Couple of Memories.” WordPress. 31 Jan. 2015. Web. 1 Feb. 2015.

I had never been away from home by myself until Saturday, September 3, 2011. My parents left me. No, they didn’t abandon me. They helped me move into first-year residence and then they flew back home to Toronto. My dad was wearing sunglasses but I knew he was starting to well up. I kept my composure as I saw them drive away. But once I got back to my dorm I just cried. Ironically, one of the biggest reasons I chose UBC was because I didn’t want to stay at home! My grandparents and my parents basically did everything for me. They would drive me to school and pick me up from school even in Junior High when it was only eight minutes away by walking. They cooked for me, washed my clothes, and gave me money. So I knew that if I didn’t go away for university, I would be missing out on the opportunity to grow up and be independent. I think I was okay for the first couple of weeks but I felt alone.

Sunday, September 4, 2011. In Toronto, I knew some people from a church here in Vancouver because they came over for my church’s Summer Youth Conference. So on Sunday morning, I woke up and went to their church. The topic of the message was “The Solitude of Christian living”. The speaker really made me think about what it meant to be alone and to see it as a chance for me to grow as a Christian. In the end, I felt really comforted by the message because I knew that there was purpose to solitude.

Sunday, December 4, 2011. I actually wrote a tumblr blog post about home because I felt homesick even though I was so close to going home for the winter break. I talked about how I stayed in touch with my family by texting and MSN (now we Skype). But in a few weeks, I would get to go home and feel at home.

Today, as I’m telling you my story about my home, a lot of things have changed in my past four years in Vancouver. People always ask me, “do you like Toronto or Vancouver more?” My first two years here I always said Toronto. And now, I say “Well…. West Coast living is really nice.” I even think Vancouver winters are kind of cold now even though I survived the Icestorm of 2013 back in Toronto. It’s true, Vancouver feels more homey to me and that’s probably because I have grown and made a little home here. At the same time, I am still connected to my home in Toronto. So I guess you can say that I live in two places at once.

My faith is a huge part of what home is to me. Since we have a connection between the two meeting places in Vancouver and Toronto, people ask me how I like the fellowship in Vancouver. I say that it’s good because it feels like home. This doesn’t mean that the way I worship with brothers and sisters in Vancouver is exactly the same as in Toronto. It means that I feel at home and I feel that it’s a nurturing environment. Without making it sound like ritual, I know that I can connect to home through my faith because we are learning similar lessons and sharing in our belief.

Two years ago, I had a huge craving for beef tendon. My grandma makes it so well that the tendon melts in your mouth. So I called my grandma and she gave me the recipe. As silly as it sounds, whenever I make beef tendon, I always think about my grandma and all the delicious food at home. Even in the small things, I am reminded of home. On the other hand, when I am back in Toronto, I have taken the Vancouverite way of saying “thank you” to the bus driver even when exiting from the back doors. My friend also teases me for dressing like a West Coast girl with my TNA, Lululemon, skinny jeans, and TOMS. I laugh because it’s true. Vancouver has changed me even if sometimes I don’t like to admit it such as when I feel cold!

One sister from Toronto who married a brother from Vancouver told me “Don’t forget where home is!” before I left. Today, I acknowledge that I have a home in Vancouver and I have a home in Toronto because I am that home. My family, my friends, and my living situation are all a part of this home. It’s taken me a while to understand and accept this concept but I can say that I love my home, it feels good, and this is where I am.

Works Cited

Chen, Jasmine. “Home.” Tumblr. 4 Dec. 2011. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

Kwok, Timothy. “The Solitude of Christian Living.” Vancouver Christian Assembly, 4 Sept. 2011. MP3.

I have a great story to tell you. I think it will explain a lot of things. A couple decades ago in a stuffy classroom, a bunch of educators gathered round and bemoaned the plight of “today’s generation”. “What are we going to do? Instead of enriching their minds with the classics, these children just park themselves in front of the television set and become dimwits”. Luckily, someone suggested that they should come up with new policies to ensure that students would fill their minds with good knowledge and become cultured citizens. Murmurs of agreement circled around the room.

Well these educators were on a mission. A mission to save the generation of youth from intellectual decay. So these erudite scholars pulled out their pieces of chalk, their pens and pencils, and brainstormed. After half an hour, they got back together and shared their profound ideas. One teacher-librarian suggested providing more funding to school libraries. “Too expensive” said one school trustee who just recently acquired a Mercedes-Benz. An English teacher suggested starting reading clubs in schools and providing a new book to each child every month. “A waste of resources” sneered a school board director who just booked a trip to Bora Bora for next week. Finally, the Minister of Education shared his idea. “The Guilt List“, he proudly proclaimed. A list of 194 works of literature that students would need to read before they graduate. The punishment for failing to read the entire list being that a student “has no right to joy!” “In addition,” the Minister bellowed, “a required reading list of ten books per semester — no double counting! — with at least one book by a Canadian author”. The poor English teachers’ cries of “not enough time!” were drowned out by the laughter and high-fiving of the more senior (wealthier) educators and policy makers.

So it was decided. The English teachers did their best to teach ten books in four months. Obviously, Atwood’s “Cat’s Eye” was selected for Canadian content in every classroom and quickly skimmed through. The students hardly had any time to learn anything else, what with their reading list. Their backs hunched over and their eyes turned glazy. There was no joy. Only evil. And the thought of defeating the evil by burning all their books at the end of the semester.

I told this story to my mother and then to my friend. The story stayed pretty much the same when I told it both times. However, I found myself being a lot snarkier when telling the story to my mother because she would understand a reference I made about a real-life school board director. It took her a while to equate my story with evil. She remarked that evil sprung out from a good and noble intention to contribute to society. However, the suggestion was unreasonable and misguided and thus ironically led to evil coming into existence.

However, I read Dr. Paterson’s blog before telling the story to my friend. She reminded us to “be careful about the stories [we] tell … because once a story is told it can never be taken back.” As I mentioned, I made a direct reference to the school board director and something he had allegedly done and thus had to resign. When I thought about it, I realized that though I was trying to be clever, this story about evil coming into existence should not drag a person through the mud. Unfortunately, the story has already been told. Therefore, I decided to change what the school board director did in my story and focus more on the evil that was created when I told the story to my friend. Neither my friend or I read “Cat’s Eye” although some classmates in high school did have to. So I emphasized this reference rather than the original one about the school director. He thought it was a pretty funny story and could picture the “evil money makers” laughing at their cleverness while the teachers suffered.

Personally, I enjoyed telling the story and changing what I emphasized to my audience. The medium of telling my story also changed. I called my mother in Toronto since my parents do not use Skype. Thus, my storytelling depended more on the inflections in my voice. On the other hand, I video called my friend on Skype and so he could see my body language which included a lot of eye-rolling. It was great to make up my own story and relate it to our course.

Have you ever felt a sort of evil lurking when facing a required reading list?

Works Cited

“Impact of Media Use on Children and Youth.” Paediatrics & Child Health 8.5 (2003): 301–306. Web. 24. Jan. 2015.

“The Guilt List.” English and Comparative Literature Department. San José State University. 12 Jul. 2013. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

If oral cultures are “praised for their naturalness and naïveté” while “writing … marked an evolutionary advance” (Chamberlin 19), it is easy to forget that literature begins with a story. As Chamberlin says, “This kind of thinking … encourages people to treat other societies with a blend of condescension and contempt while celebrating the sophistication of their own” (19). This type of thinking is also a contradiction. All cultures involve oral and written forms. Social media is an example of where the two intersect to blur the division between story and literature.

Social media allows people to interact with story and literature in innovative ways. In Lesson 1:2, it is said that a listener has more power over a story than a text that is read, because written words are permanent. If a reader wants to change a story then they must become writers themselves. However, through social media today, this does not have to be the case. If “We live our lives as a tale that is told” (Chamberlin 124), then all of us have a story to tell.

I discovered that Wattpad is a good example of rethinking the divide between story and literature. Wattpad offers “Storytelling Redefined” by being a social platform where readers and writers can interact with one another. Writers can publish their story for free (without a conventional publisher) and readers can read these stories for free. Furthermore, readers do have the power to change the story by leaving their comments and feedback for writers. Writers then can also change the way their story is told, just as how storytellers may not always tell their story in the same way. This video presents some of the challenges Wattpad faces as a business, but it also brings a fresh perspective on how social media enables the intersection of story and literature. Even orature is part of Wattpad. In the Philippines, Wattpad releases users’ stories in the form of a TV episode. The structure of storytelling is almost cyclical; a story turns into a book, and then turns into another story form through a TV episode. In this paper, the authors suggest social media as a way for publishers to reduce the risk for readers when making a potential buying decision (Lis 202). With Wattpad, because all the books are free, the risk for the consumer is minimal and the return is unmeasurable.

Reading on Wattpad, or through any other form of hypertext, allows the reader to go beyond just the one story in front of them. Hypertext allows the reader to choose where they want to go or not. Thus it means that readers may never stumble upon a certain story unless the hyperlink catches their attention. For example, if I tell you to click here for a story, you might not care unless I told you it’s the #1 New York Times bestseller! So while the hypertext is not a text until you click, you might be persuaded to go to that text in some cases more than others even though there is no risk.

Certain stories that may not be picked up by publishing companies can find a way to readers through social platforms like Wattpad. But those in charge of laying out the hypertext should also be wary that they are part of the storytelling process too; they can lead people to stories or dissuade people from them. The benefit of social media is that it allows the sharing of stories on common ground and it helps us rethink story and literature in an innovative setting.

Works Cited

“About Us.” Wattpad. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

“All the Light We Cannot See.” Goodreads. n.p., n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2015.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Vintage Canada. Toronto. 2004. Print.

Lis, Bettina. “Using Social Media for Branding in Publishing”. Online journal of communication and media technologies 1.4 (2011): 193-213. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.

The Verge. “Can Wattpad’s DIY writing empire survive Amazon?” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 18 Apr. 2014. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.