Engl 470A Canadian Studies

“Yet I cannot let post-colonial stand—particularly as a term—for, at its heart, it is an act of imagination and an act of imperialism that demands that I imagine myself as something I did not choose to be, as something I would not choose to become.” (King 190)

These are perhaps a few of the most powerful words I have read about colonialism.

Thomas King writes in his essay “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial” that Harry Robinson’s stories, although told and written in English, are crafted with an “oral voice” through “patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters [that] come primarily from oral literature” (186). So it was no surprise that the moment I began to read Robinson’s story, I had the desire to read the story aloud. However, as much as I would like to think that, that very initial inclination came from the storyteller’s intention, that is not the case. As a person, who grew up as a colonized member of a colonized land, the moment I was faced with Robinson’s story, it instantly reminded me of the western tradition of poetry (which in itself compels me to read aloud out of habit). That instinct is not biological, but born out of the socialization and colonization of western education. The form itself reminded me of English poetry, simply because of my reading and educational history. It is unfortunate but as much as I attempt to remove myself from a colonized point of view, my way of reading and analyzing Robinson’s text/story is very much rooted in an experience of reading and analyzing writing written in English. I cannot undo the socialization I have experienced, but I will attempt regardless.

As King suggests, Robinson’s story compels his readers to read the story out loud. The sentences are compact, and succinct. They seem like statements of observation collected over a period of time, instead of one particular moment. They are dialogue, but even in the portions where sentences are not in quotations, they sounded like an ongoing conversation.

Who?

What is it?

Looks like a person.

The Little boat’s got a little shack there.

Never see that before.

(Robinson 65)

Most importantly, the oral syntax as embedded in the story by Robinson creates the effect of a story as told by more than one singular perspective, voice, narrator, or storyteller. This is a powerful design because it allows me (the westernized/colonized reader) to be able to understand and read this story, as least to a certain extent, as separated from the traditional western form of poetry. The orality of the story has the effect of a story told by a conglomeration of people and voices, which also echo King’s point about a category of Native stories—Associational Literature. As King explains, this term refers to literature that avoids a “flat narrative line”, and one that “leans towards the group rather than the single, isolated character, creating a fiction that [is] . . . in favour of the members of a community” (King 187).

When I discussed the story with a friend of mine, we realized that the storytelling works much better when both of us were sharing the reading. For once, sharing the storytelling was helpful because Robinson’s story is lengthy, but it also highlights that fact that a story cannot be told by one person alone. A story with a singular point of view, and narrator is very typical of western tradition when it comes to literature. So even though the form of Robinson’s story initially reminded me of traditional western literature, by reading it (silently, and out loud with a friend), it distinguishes itself (for me, the colonized reader) from other English literature, while he was working “within the confines of written language” (King 186).. This reminds me of another Canadian poet, and writer M. NourbeSe Philip, who illustrates the theme of marginalization and ethnocentricism through the re-working of conventional “English” poetic forms in “Discourse on the Logic of Language”.

Edit: I’m including an excerpt from Phillip’s poetry since I couldn’t find one online. This is an excerpt, not the poem in its entirety (as I’m not too sure about the copyright laws in private blogging)

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What and how do readers make of First Stories in 2014? The readings this week about how stories and storytelling give one’s ownership to their land, and how these stories are built, and built upon, have been particularly challenging. I cannot, and doubt that I ever will fully understand the story by reading these stories of stories. I shall only attempt to dissect it with my understanding, which in itself contains a unique filter constructed by my biological, social, political, and cultural make-up.

Will it ever be possible for us living and reading right now to truly understand the events and experiences of first contacts? Was Wendy Wickwire, who spent more than a decade with Harry Robinson, a rancher, a storyteller and a member of the Lower Similkameen Indian band, able to truly understand his stories? What about the anthropologists, scholars, historians—“recorders” and re-tellers of these first stories—who just like the rest of us, each equipped with their own unique lenses? Who could be considered a reliable source/storyteller?

James Skitt, Matthews, Major. Indian Potlatch Alert Bay, B.C. 1912. Photograph. searcharchives.vancouver.ca. Web. 18 June. 2014.

This gap of time and lives loss “seriously disrupted the continuity and credibility of ascribing land ownership through stories” (Paterson).

As we have gathered from all the readings we have done so far, stories are important to the lives of their “characters”. Brian Thom states in his article,  “The Anthropology of Northwest Coast Oral Tradition.” , that “when chiefs tell myths, or rather have a hired speaker tell them at a potlatch feast, storytelling becomes an explicitly political act, authenticating claims to land” (Thom 9). First stories are powerful in that they created the “link of ownership between people and the places” (Paterson). What happens when the link is interfered with? During the time between 1880, 1951, the “telling and retelling of stories at the potlatch, and other similar First Nations institutions across the country, were outlawed by the Indian Act” (Paterson).When residential schools opened in 1834 until the last one closed in 1996, “six generations were cut off from their family stories . . . cut off from knowledge of their clan histories, territorial rights and their languages”, in addition to the violence and abuse with which children, families, and communities were afflicted (Paterson).

Davidson, John F. James Teit with remains of Indian earth oven in Botanie. 1913. Photograph. searcharchives.vancouver.ca. Web. 18 June. 2014.

Matthews, James Skitt, Major. Hugh Matthews, son [of] Major Matthews, panning gold Similkameen River, near Princeton, 1919 or 1920. 1919/1920. Photograph. searcharchives.vancouver.ca. Web. 18 June. 2014.

Stories themselves inherit meaning from other stories. When a story is presented on its own, the story becomes disconnected from the history and the other stories to which it is related. This is why Robinson can never tell his stories briefly, or for a short while.

Each story is not its own entity, it is both the offspring and ancestors of other stories. There is something so beautiful and hopeless about the impossibility to fully make sense of stories, as each of them becomes permeated and gets more entangled, while it is reproduced and consumed by tellers and listeners.

“[T]he stories is worked by Both of us you and I”–Harry Robinson (21).

For Wickwire, she illustrates that the stories she has listened, recorded on tape, jotted down, take a different meaning during subsequent rereadings. Her understanding of Robinson’s stories was enriched by the time spent with Robinson, not just listening to him tell these stories. Stories become more than just stories, they are a meandering of tangible and intangible things. So how could we truly unravel a story through pages of paper. This reminds me again what Harry says of power: for colonizers—for whites—power was “located on paper” (Robinson 16).

-Kayi Wong

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It was really interesting to read what a home meant to other students, and what kind of relationship they have with the term. While some students have a more concrete and stable relationship with the word, others student, like myself, struggle with having a more tangible answer when the question is asked.

Judging from most student’s write-ups, (including Lian’s, and Bonny’s) home is defined by the memories, rituals, connections, relationships, bedtime stories, and photographs that a person creates within this place.

Perhaps it is because I have moved several times, or simply that I am terrible at remembering things, it was particularly fascinating to read some of my classmates’ posts, where they described their (family) homes with such specific and vivid details. Their memory of where the cracks were, and what wallpaper their family homes had, highlights how much the physicality of a home is attached to one’s relationship with it. For me, and for other students such as Hannia, our sense of homes seems to be attached more to the events that took place while our lives were situated at these different homes, and the feelings we experienced at these different points. At the risk of sounding cliche, home is indeed where the heart is.

Although I have found comfort is not having a solidified sense of home, I am immensely jealous of my fellow classmates, who have a canine member attached to their memory and sense of home.

-Kayi Wong

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1.

A young girl with boy-short hair starts kindergarten. She looks just like her classmates (except for her hair), but her name stands out like capitalized words on a letter. One hundred and fifty years of colonization and everyone have a Disney name. She makes several attempts to have one. Karen. Joyce. Her dad used the name Judy when he went to white man’s university. Why didn’t he give her one? She lives with her parents, and grandparents in a flat so old that when it rains so did the ceiling above her bed. Her mother tells her that once a bell boy called her a boy and she asked for a hair bow the very next day. She makes friends and sings Christian songs in Cantonese every week at a local Christian primary school. By the time she is in primary three, she gives up on getting a new name, and her best friend cries when the girl tells her she is moving away.

1.

A slightly older girl moves to another country with her family. She looks like most of her classmates but she cannot speak any of the languages they can. The form teacher assigns her a buddy, who is a prefect and an immigrant just like her. It calls for a celebration because the girl is having difficulty even asking for permission to go to the washroom during their second language class (not that she even speaks their first language). The prefect spends most of the time calling the girl stupid, but eventually the teacher makes her a prefect too. She is not used to teacher hitting students, and cries out of fear before she even gets her first beating. By the time she speaks like everyone else (she watched a lot Buffy), others made fun of the way she sounds words. “Com-pew-ter” “No, Cor-pew-ter,” her friend advises. She wonders if they would be surprised if they learned that she is receiving a degree in English Literature?

1.

An older girl moves to another country on her own. She doesn’t sound or look like her classmates, and her neighbours. Though she kind of looks like a few of the restaurant owners down by her neighbourhood. Prior to the move, she has read that the city is full of weirdos anyway so another strange looking thing wouldn’t really matter. She is most visible she has ever been in her life, but the city tries to make her invisible enough. No one wants to share an apartment with a foreigner, but she moves in with her first roommate, who reads Murakami in English, and has two cats. All is fine and dandy. She is learning their language, speaking their language, watching their TV, and going to their museums. When she goes to their flea markets on Sundays, she sometimes meets talkative strangers who show disappointment when they find out she is not Japanese. She chats, meets a mentor, and is falling in love with the city. She gets ready to start her life there as if it hasn’t already started, and meets the most wonderful flatmates. The country decides not to recognize her foreign credentials, and so she leaves. She thinks that that must be what it feels like to be cheated on by a husband, or wife.

1.

A much older girl moves back home and then moves to another country on her own again. She looks like a handful of her classmates, which she expects; she is somewhat invisible again. She speaks the same language as everyone but her words are still considered strange. Her first home here is a room in a house that is more than a hundred years old. The neighbour’s cat comes by all the time and she pretends it’s her own. The much older girl enters an ivory tower and this time around, her language is being questioned by someone sitting close to the turret. The foreigner wonders if the Dr. would be surprised now if she learned that the student has been accepted into the program and is graduating with an A plus for her seminar project. The foreigner comes across a video of a successful model giving advice to teenagers. What makes you different is what makes you special. She is referring to her gapped teeth. The foreigner wants to tell her that yes, gapped teeth, beauty marks, and bushy eyebrows are quirks, but what makes you different doesn’t always make you special. The foreigner’s skin colour, and her last name certainly don’t. She wants to say this out loud but she knows very well that children can indeed be cruel. She isn’t complaining because she is at least almost invisible. Though she would need to continue collecting stories in order to say that she belongs here now.

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James Skitt, Matthews, Major. For all the world Bob “peels” the Bell; Rings out the old ‘ear–makes the New ‘ear “swell”. 1938. Photograph. Charles E. Jones and family. searcharchives.vancouver.ca. Web. 2 June. 2014.

As I head to the radio station with my last minute story, if you could call it one, my cell phone vibrates with a new text message from the producer.

Just thought I will let you know that we will be recording in studio 22 instead of 21. We’re really looking forward to hearing your story. See you in a bit!

I did not intend to write this story. I started out with a draft about a father with an addiction to alcohol and two sons. When news broke out last night about a drunk shooter at the local strip mall killing five passersby, I knew I had to come up with something new, or at least something else.

I did not intend to tell the story but I tell it anyway.

There was a group of birdwatchers, and this was their first time meeting one another. They have met through a classified posting, which one member of the group had put up a month ago on the community notice board. The five birdwatchers had nothing in common, except for their intention to compete in the National Geographic annual photography contest, and their fear of being killed by a madman.

Any experienced birdwatcher would know that it would be counterintuitive to chase birds in a group. Most of the time, birdwatchers go out alone, or in a pair. However, since the news of the serial killer broke out, not even the mesomorphic, free-spirited, young man wanted to wander around Beacon Hill Park alone.

There has been no witnesses, who has come forward, and no bloodstained objects has been discovered in the vicinity of the found bodies. The only thing the authorities claimed to know, was that each body had exactly five stab wounds. It’s been six months since the discovery of the first body, and the killer was still at large, free as a bird. By the time of the birdwatching trip, there was no lack of stories going around. The island is huge but it was a village back then. Everyone was related by blood or acquaintance.

There was a story about the killer, who picked his victims randomly at bars because all of them had a good number of empty bottles in their garbage, but at that time, who didn’t? And there was another story about a Bay employee, who committed all the murders because the five male victims were her ex-boyfriends. The speculation was so persistent that a bunch of elementary school kids bullied the suspect’s daughter to death. She was found on the floor of her school’s washroom five days after the rumour started. It was later revealed that the suspect was a lesbian and her daughter was not even her biological offspring.

The birdwatching group was going to start on Dallas Road, walk to Beacon Hill Park, and head to Rocky Point on a rented van. But a sudden downpour had forced them to duck under a gazebo on Beacon Hill until the rain relented. The man, who posted the ad at the community noticeboard and organized the whole trip, began some small talk, and the conversation gradually advanced to the evil killer drifting around the island without a shadow. A few members of the group began taking out their packed lunch to distract themselves from the chills.

“I don’t think he is actually from the island.”

“He? I can bet you the serial killer is a crazy bitch, who lost her trailer park boyfriend.”

“Where do you think he actually kills his victim since the police are saying that they were not killed at home? A barn perhaps?”

“Do you think this guy has a day job? Or a hobby? Or may be killing is his hobby?”

“Probably some creepy ass shit like assembling miniature dollhouses.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if the killer was actually a birdwatcher too?”

The group broke out in brief, polite laughter.

“What if the killer was actually a part of the group? Haha.”

The laughter died down and the rainfall took over conversation again.

When everyone reverted back to staring at their ham and cheese sandwich, the man who posted the ad took out a spear-pointed knife from the back pocket of his rucksack. Everyone edged to the periphery of the gazebo, subconsciously and irrationally hindered by the rain as if getting wet was worst than being dead.

“If you’re the serial killer, you better come forward now. I don’t want to die yet, I will take the chances and kill all of you before I let myself be killed,” said the man with the knife.

“Put the knife down, man. No one is the madman here. We’re just here for the birds.”

“Yeah. And the weather isn’t cooperating anyway, may be we should do this some other time.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, knowing that they will never do this again, but not for the actual reason that determined this their last birdwatching expedition.

“Jason Pierson is a writer, and ornithologist based in Victoria, British Columbia. We will return after a short break, to learn about the fate of these birdwatchers.”

Elijah turns off his microphone, and turns to me. “Hey Jason, not sure if we didn’t communicate clearly enough, but we wanted original writing. We don’t do creative non-fiction here. Your story is just the birdwatching incident in 1955. What’s up with that?”

“What if I told you that my story—or the “retelling”—of the event has actual details about the event that has never made it to the public before? Would my story be worth telling then?”

I begin with the engraving on the knife, and the constellation of moles on their bodies. Then there was the precision of the incisions, and the oozing of the guts, in details as vivid as my obsession with crossword puzzles enables me. Everything, except for the rationality because there was not any known to me.

“But where would you have gotten this information after all these years? All but one person died in that mass murder . . .” Before Elijah could finish the sentence, he freezes. So did the producer, and the sound engineer, whose fingers are still fastened to the buttons of the sound board.

“If I had known you would react this way, Elijah, I wouldn’t have told the story,” I say to his now bloodless face.

“I wish I haven’t heard it either,” Elijah says as his fingertips touch the edge of the telephone. So I do what I have to do, the same thing I had to do, when I was a teenager.

As the producer, the sound engineer, and Elijah’s eyes blink for the very last time, I realize a red light has been beaming quietly in the corner of the studio.

Recording.

Recording.

So I do what I haven’t had the guts to do, the same thing I should have done when I was a teenager.

-Kayi Wong

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“all cultures are oral and all cultures are literate”—Dr. Erika Paterson.

Osborne J. Pierce. Winifred Mabel Pierce sitting by a table writing in notebook. ca. 1900. Photograph. L.D. Taylor family fonds. searcharchives.vancouver.ca. Web. 22 May. 2014.

For anyone who do not consider themselves as luddites, it is apparent that technology has changed and expanded the concepts of communication and literature significantly over the last few decades. As Courtney MacNeil writes in her essay about orality, “orality is the dominant art form” in many cultures (MacNeil par. 13). And to consider literature, the written form as superior, and less “primitive” than spoken words, is an position that is likely to have stemmed from an ethnocentric, and eurocentric mindset (MacNeil par. 2).

Digital Literature

However, in addition to racism and eurocentricism, a disturbing implication of this hierarchical binary of literature and orality is that the concept is entirely ablelist. For anyone who is visually impaired, they would not be able to consume literature visually. Since literature, “by definition, is written down” and “textual”, does that mean that a blind person is never able to consume “literature”, and never be considered a “reader” (Paterson, Story)? This brings me to the first product of technological advancement that challenges this traditional idea of literature—audiobooks. This format, which is related to both the written and spoken word, is simply an audio recreation of a written, literary product. Audiobooks as a format undermine the distinction between the written and spoken word. Although the listeners/consumers of audiobooks are not made up exclusively of a visually-impaired audience, this technological product gives this marginalized group an access to “the written word”, which they might not have had before.

Self Publishing by Writers and Readers

The role of readers have also changed due to other developments that came with the internet. Traditionally, publishing has always involved a writer, a manuscript, an agent, a publisher, an ISBN number, and brick-and-mortar bookstores. However, as the tragic deaths of bookstores in the last ten years have indicated, the publishing paradigm is drastically changing. At present, one can write a poem or short story and upload it on Gumroad or Smashwords, or upload an ebook or audiobook through Amazon, and sell directly to potential readers. Being a writer and creator in this type of consumer-driven market means that they can write stories that do not necessarily have a mass market appeal, one that does not bring in enough profit to feed a company of a thousand employees. And as a reader of this time, one can seek out niche stories that cater much more closely to our own individual experiences, or literary preference. With the popularization of self-publishing and crowd-funding platforms (such as Kickstarter), the roles of readers/consumers are more influential and powerful than before. Readers and consumers can decide what to read because they can decide what is being sold to them.

Another form of self-publishing also takes place in the form of fan fiction writing. Listeners become readers when they take ownership of a story as they become writers themselves. Readers create their own story, by basing off on an existing story by another writer. They can also easily extend their reading experience of one fictional world through the writings created by other readers. With these new avenues, listeners can easily become readers, and writers. Although adapting existing stories is not an unique undertaking of our time, online sites (such as fanfiction.net) have certainly normalize the activity and created a community for readers-writers.

The www and social media platforms are not without their faults, but they have certainly provide additional access for some consumers and creators of literature, who had limited access in the past. The divergence from the traditional publishing and writing formats also meant that both the writing and reading experiences have diversified. While story-telling, and story-reading used to be an uniquely solitary activity in the past, the changes brought about by technology have given the activity of reading and writing much more possibilities for collaboration and community-building. As technology continues to impact the landscape of literature, the voices, experiences and imagination of stories will only continue to multiply, and hopefully, become more inclusive.

-Kayi Wong

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