When I first read the Coyote story, I thought there was no middle ground in this story. The twins were divided into older and younger brother, the color in to white and black, and even the paper into those who stole and those who didn’t. The good and evil coexist for human beings, yet this story clearly draws the line between the good and the evil. White and black coyotes exist, but why aren’t there any gray coyotes? If there is one who stole the paper, there must be one who tries to restrain the thief and if there is one who refuses to steal, there must be one who temps the innocent, which none of whom exist within this story. This story is not about coexistence but how did someone entered our territory. After all, the coyotes are twins were birthed from same mother’s womb according to the beginning of the story. When a coyote (the ancestors of Whites) committed a crime and was exiled, why weren’t there any movement to reform this criminal? They only differentiated us from them over time.

I’ve begun to think about what ‘paper’ symbolizes as I read the story. The younger twin brother ran way with the document and also stirred up troubles with it when he returned. The book didn’t mention the content of the paper but I hypothesize it to be about property. Property held different definition to indigenous people and Caucasians. Property to indigenous people ‘belonged to the peoples who told them’ as written in Dr. Paterson’s blog. Furthermore, when they named the property, they wished to express the ‘link of ownership between people and the places’. However, property was just an entity that represent ownership using paper and text to Whites. This difference eventually led to the creation of paper filled with mysterious letters and symbols and granted power to remove the natives from their connected land.

Nonetheless, since they were brothers who shared the womb together as I’ve mentioned in the beginning, I wonder what kind of conclusion the story would’ve had if they shared the ownership of the land and lived together instead of claiming their own.

Sadly, the inconvenient coexistence of indigenous people and Caucasians continue to this day and natives are legally protesting to the government by Whites’ method of writing on a paper. Eventually, tribes who lost their language, culture, or even their identity emerged through the process.

Works Cited

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books2005. (1-30)

NEYLAN, Susan (2018, June 9). Canada’s Dark Side: Indigenous Peoples and Canadian Heritage. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from https://origins.osu.edu/article/canada-s-dark-side-indigenous-peoples-and-canada-s-150th-celebration

It was fascinating to read stories from different perspectives about home. It was amazing that homes are more than just structures that can accommodate people.

Aron’s idea is, “What gives people a sense of home are the people that surrounded by.” Rather than the structure itself, home warmth the people because of the family and friends. Wherever we live, we realize that the atmosphere of those around us could make the home a home.

Nicole’s story of finding a real home was interesting. “So then we moved into an apartment, and it felt a lot like a hotel for a while. Somewhere to sleep, but not somewhere you stay.” Same o Nicole, home is not just a structure that she could sleep, but is a feeling. For her, home is in the experiences she has had, and it is in the moments that shaped who she is and who she will eventually become.

Eva’s story made me smile. Through her story, I realized home is just home. Even in an ordinary situation, we could feel home. Like others, Eva also felt a secure connection to her idea of what home means when she was with her brothers, sisters, parents, and pets.

Kosh’s idea of the home was impressive. “home is not a place or a person, rather it is a state of mind where I can exist as my genuine self.” I only focused on how the home could make someone comfortable, but after her story, I realized home could let me exist as my genuine self.

Georgia’s story described what home is and how people feel about home. I love how she described home. Like other peers, she also mentioned how people and family make the home as home.

CoCo’s story about home was also impressive. Unlike others, she was an international student who had a homesick. However, due to friends, she felt like home in the car. she mentioned she “learned that home is with people that make you feel like you belong and you have someone to go to when you are upset. … When you have all that, it is home, and it is a family. No matter where you are, even in a car, you can feel it.”

After I read a couple of classmates’ notions of home, I realize that the four-letter word “home” has endless definitions. The notion of home is different from everyone; however, somehow, we all could make a smile, if we think about our homes.

Work cited

Diaz, Nicole. “Oh Canada!” Oh Canada, 1 Feb. 2020, blogs.ubc.ca/nicolediaz/2020/01/28/sense-of-home/.

Kosh, Jacob. “Home Is The Place I Am.” Jacob Kosh’s Blog, 27 Jan. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/jacobkosh/2020/01/27/home-is-the-place-i-am/.

Dvorak, Eva. “2.2 A Story Of Home” Oh Canada: Our Home and Native Land? 28 Jan. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/evadvorak/

Masaki, Georgia. “Assignment 2.1: Home.” OH CANADA, 28 Jan. 2019, blogs.ubc.ca/georgiamasaki/2020/01/27/assignment-2-1-home/.

Han, Coco. “Assignment 2:2-My sense of home.” Coco Han ENGL 372 Blog,  28 Jan. 2020, Web 30 Jan. 2020. https://blogs.ubc.ca/cocohanengl372/.

Chang, Aron. “Assignment 2-2: Home.” Our Home and Native Land?  27 Jan. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/aranchang/

“Flowers bloomed in my home town, long long time ago. Peaches, apples, and apricots and pink blossoms too… ”

My grandfather used to sing this song when he missed his home. When I was a kid, he always let me sit on his lap, and he used to sing with his terrible singing ability. By the time I graduated from elementary school, I had started getting tired of listening to his song, I have once asked my grandfather.” Grandfather, why do you sing a children’s song for me? I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t want to listen to your song. You are not good at singing.” Since then, my grandfather started telling me about his childhood story, and I’ve learned that where was the home he thought.

My grandfather’s generation was that went through the tragedy of the Korean war, and he was from North Korea.  During the Korean war, my great grandparents told him to leave North Korea with his uncle while they looked after their house because south Korea was safe, and he was the eldest son. They said to come back after the war ended. So he came to South Korea with his tears. No need to mention, he said that he didn’t say goodbye to leave his parents, brothers and sisters, and a dog in North Korea. It was because he thought that he could go back home after he endured a little, so he was anxious that if saying goodbye would be a forever parting.

” Uncle, when will we go back home?”

” I don’t know.”

” Uncle, do you think my dog is doing well? It’s about to give birth.”‘

” I don’t know. I have to hear the news. Be quiet.”

” Uncle, I want to drink milk left at home.”

” Uncle, uncle…”

” Uncle…”

He said, at that time, he bothered his uncle every day because of the hope that he could go back home. But when his uncle wailed hearing the news about the 38th parallel, my grandfather got a glimmering that he could not go back home. It happened that North Korea and South Korea have separated due to political ideology. It was the time that using a North Korean accent could get a doubt if he’s a commie, and with the North Korean dialect, It was hard to get a job. However, he worked severely and bought his own house. He worked critically and had wealth than others, even though he had lived at a beautiful house, he sang a song about home due to longing for real home until he passed away.

I questioned why he always missed North Korea even though he had lived longer in South Korea. He had his own house, but for him, it might that the only home was the house living his family in North Korea. It was the family and that time of the atmosphere that he missed, then just a house. Because of the longing for it, he might have thought that the home in North Korea was the real home to him. So he might have a hard time when he realized it is impossible to go back no matter how he tried. I used to think that home was a natural gain, and it remained permanently. But thinking of my grandfather made me think about where my house was.

Moving to Canada was full of excitement and filled with hope.   So, when friends asked me where my house was, I answered them quickly that it was in North Vancouver, not a home living my family. But as time goes by, while feeling homesick, when someone asked about my house, there was a time when I hesitated. Even though the house where I live is in North Vancouver, I told my friends that I would like to eat mom’s freshly made meals in my home in Korea. When someone asked about home, I answered that my home was in Seoul city, Korea, while I was living in North Vancouver currently. These kinds of answers make me think of my grandfather. For me, home is a place where I can go back, getting excited if I take a flight for 11 hours during vacations. But his home was forced to be stolen by someone.

For someone, home is a natural gain; For someone, home can be left because of some incident;

And for someone, home is the stolen thing.

What does home mean to you?

Works Cited:

Shin, K. The trajectory of anti-communism in South Korea. Asian j. Ger. Eur. stud. 2, 3 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40856-017-0015-4

TheXezzar. “고향의 봄 (Spring in My Home Town) – Oh Yeon Joon.” YouTube,  14 Oct. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtezwFxAqQg.

I have a great story to tell. Once upon a time, when there was no human being, there was a monkey village. This village was always filled with peace and love. It was just like a heaven with no forest fire, flood, drought, thunder, or lightning, which we can only imagine.  However, change came to this village. This ever-peaceful and quiet place turned into somewhere dull place. So, the monkeys started to beg God for something new. After a month of protesting, God began to ask.

“Alright, what do you want me to do?”
“We are the only creatures in Monkey land. Please make some new creatures for us.”
“Okay, then what kind of creature do you want me to make? Do you want dolphins playing in the water?”
“No, we can’t even swim.”
“I see, then what do you want? Pigeons flying in the sky?”
“No, we can’t even fly.”
“Okay, then just tell me what you want.”

With excitement, the monkeys began to explain to God. “I’d like the one with long hair.” “Please, the one with long legs. Because running on four feet doesn’t look cool. I hope they can run on two feet.” “I wish they didn’t have body hair. My body is hairy, so the hairs stick to my foods whenever I eat them. “They kept on talking about the creature they wanted to God. After God is tired of the monkeys’ protesting, God started to make a man.

“Alright, is this what you want?” Then, the monkeys got noisy in excitement. “What I want is the one with long hair.” “I prefer a woman than a man.” “I wish the waistline was slimmer.”

They, again, began to talk about the creature they wanted. Fed up with the monkeys’ demands, God started to make a woman this time.

After human beings appeared in the world of the monkeys, many things changed. The monkey started to be jealous of human beings because human beings had something that they didn’t have. The human beings knew that the monkeys were envious of them. So, they started to differentiate themselves from the monkeys. People made clothes with leaves and then pointed the finger at the naked monkeys saying that they were dead to shame. Also, they started to make a fire to avoid the cold since they had short hair, unlike the monkeys. That fire became the one that made people warm, but it caught other places in an instant and then resulted in a forest fire. They just felt bored and then wanted something unusual, but the situation flows differently than the monkeys thought. So they desperately called upon God for help.

“You win.” The group of monkeys said. For the first time, they felt an emotion ‘fear’ and then wailed. “This is not what we wanted. Take it back now. Take it back. “

But, of course, it was too late. Once the evil begins, there is no turning back to peace.

Reflection:

I went through many trials and errors because it is the first time for me to write a story like this and tell it in front of other people. Telling a story, I either fleshed it out or simplified it, or I even had to restart talking about it from the very beginning because I was confused with what I wanted to say. Besides, having no idea what message I was going to convey in the middle, I had to rewrite it. Every time I told my story to the listeners, it changed little by little, so none of my stories were utterly the same.

What I felt after telling my story to the listeners was that there was a vast difference between listening to stories and watching them. Even if I said the same story, it subtly changed depending on my voice tone, so the listeners either easily understood what I meant to say or got it slightly wrong accordingly. Some asked a question after entirely realizing the message that I’d intended to convey, while others said that my story seemed to be sarcastic about the creation by God. Some found it fun, saying that it was like a children’s story, while others found it somewhat scary. It was such a scary but surprising experience. Though I told the same story every time, it turned into a different one depending on who listened to it.

When I read King’s book and then heard it in narration, I felt different though it was the same story, and just like me, I think that my listeners may have felt the same way. When I heard the narration of what I had read with a blank look, I could feel the urgency in his voice and then became urgent like him, too. When I heard the laughter of the audience behind his voice, I laughed, too. I think this is the pleasure that the language gives us.

Reference

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

Spoken and written words have long been thought to be superior to each other. According to the education I received in my youth, I was taught Koreans possessed a distinct culture compared to others nation who does not have their own ethnic writing system. This ideology instills national pride and patriotic spirit along with a sense of supremacy to Korean people due to the superb Korean language system. Is it possible for one country to be considered more advanced to another because of the text?

In an article titled “Orality,” Courtney MacNeil states the definition of orality provides a competing understanding of its function, existing both as a medium and as “existing in competition with other media forms.” Furthermore, as her opinion was embraced in the Toronto School of Communication, she affirms that only highly evolved cultures may develop a writing system, and cuneiform becomes a priceless heritage. However, science develops over time and proves that oral culture and written culture are not in a confrontational relationship, but an interdependent relationship, which concludes to an idea that speaking and writing are integral to each other.

Chamberlin declares that whether it’s writing or speaking, it is impossible to replace another. Being both invented by humans and use each part when it’s necessary to their according to needs. Chamberlin objects to the idea of specifying a culture as ‘uncivilized’ for lacking oral culture, and claims, “societies whose major forms of imaginative expression are in speech and performance are classified as oral cultures. (18).” As a result, one is no better than the other, and they are just mingled in complexity.

Generally, being endowed with an ethnical written form of the language within a country meant surpassing and prosperous being. Nevertheless, I believe this perception exists to suppress a country during colonization and by eliminating the oral language of the colonized country to assimilate into the new easily. When European countries occupied other countries during colonization, they spread their alphabet to replace the used languages into their own text, to illustrate the superiority of Europeans accomplished the great work of disseminating ‘prestige texts.’ Korea was also forced to write in Japanese, educated to speak, and write in Japanese during the Japanese Colonial Era as well. Numerous Korean words disappeared and replaced by Japanese words instead of during this time.

We grew up listening to the tell-tale stories from our grandmothers and mothers during bedtime when we were young. Those stories were succeeded by picture books that provided visual stimulations, then into written texts to be passed down to be remembered for ages to come. Is it possible to declare one inferior to another in this process? In my opinion, texts are just a device to record and deliver for the future generation. What is your point of view?

Works Cited 

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

Heinrich, Patrick, “Visions of Community: Japanese Language Spread in Japan, Taiwan and Korea.” Internationales Asien Forum. International Quarterly for Asian Studies. 2013. 44(3):239–258.

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

Richards , Sam, and Paul Saba. Colonialism and Eurocentrism. Revolutionary Communist League of Britain. June 1985. www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.hightide/colonialism.htm.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Hello,Everyone!

I am delighted and excited to be in this class. When I first saw the syllabus and asked me to introduce myself, I thought, wow, what a piece of a cake. But after I saw other students stories, I am kind of nervous about introducing myself. As you all expected, let me briefly introduce myself and tell you why I choose this class.

Maybe some people can see my name and expect that I’m from Korea. Five years ago, I decided to come to Canada based on my parents’ decision. Then I started to google the information about Canada. Surprisingly, I figured out Ottawa is the Capital of Canada. Then I confused and told my friends, “what is wrong with about Vancouver and Toronto? What is that city so famous for?”

The reason I chose this class is simple. I want to learn some Canadian History through literature. Because I think literature has the power, to tell the truth about history. My country, Korea, faced Japanese colonization, and until this day, we are dealing with their repercussions. Canada, with a similar history, wonders how those difficulties are embedded in literature. When I think of Canada, I can only think of positive things, and the image of mosaic country.

I have never read literature written from the perspective of indigenous people. So I wonder if the descendants of European immigrants, who now make up the vast majority of Canada, have banned and suppressed literature, including parables, as Japan did in Korea. I would also like to accumulate knowledge through the literature on how the descendants of European immigrants who always apologize look to Indigenous people.

I’m not a writer or a person who enjoys writing. And because I still haven’t immersed myself in Canadian culture, my writings will have those cultural barriers. But I would like to learn more about Canada by discussing with students through this course.

Works Cited

Oi, Mariko. “What Japanese History Lessons Leave Out.” BBC News, BBC, 14 Mar. 2013, www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068.

An, Sonjae. “A brief history of Korean literature.” British Council, 14, Mar. 2014, https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/brief-history-korean-literature.