“First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlain, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?”

In King’s description of the two creation stories: Genesis and the story of Charm,  his personal preference is clear, as he tells the story of Charm in a whimsical and playful tone. The characters that appear in this story are silly and humorous, there are talking toes, trees, and  animals. The characters all cooperate to build the world. Charms twins, “ a boy and a girl.  One light, one dark. One right handed, one left-handed”, both cooperated to create the world as it is today (King 18).One smoothed the land while the other built mountains and valleys, the animals made suggestions as to what they wanted on earth. The twins granted the animals’ requests creating waterfalls, trees with nuts and fruits, and more humans. This process was peaceful collaborative and collective.

After the story of Charm, King goes along to tell the “serviceable creation story” (King 21) of Adam and Eve, which often overshadows other creation stories like the story of Charm.  King reiterates this typical story, how God creates “night and day, the sun and the moon, all the creatures of the world, and finally towards the end of his labors he creates humans. Man first and then Woman” (King 21). Then Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and are tossed into a less than perfect world where there is disease hatred, sickness and war.

While both stories are creation stories, there is an obvious dichotomy that exists between them. The story of Charm demonstrates cooperation, and unity while Genesis is based on God individually creating the world. I noticed Genesis to be a little misogynistic as God (most often interpreted as a man) created man first then a woman.  Also, while both Adam and Eve ate the apple from the tree of knowledge, the blame for this “sin” often lies predominantly on Eve. In contrast, the story of Charm demonstrated egalitarianism as Charm had twins  “a boy and a girl.  One light, one dark. One right handed, one left-handed”(King 18).

King also illustrates how the tone of a story can change the impact it has on the audience as well as how the audience perceives the story. The humour and comical aspects of the story of Charm “diminishes its authority while the Christian story…creates a sense of veracity”(King 23). King goes on to say that “If we believe one story to be sacred, we must see the other as secular” (King 25). In modern society it is obvious which story most people believe to be sacred.

References:

King, Thomas. “”You’ll Never Believe What Happened” Is Always A Great Way To Start.” The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2003. 1-29. Print.

Paterson, Erika. ““ENGL 470 Canadian Studies ;Canadian Literary Genres.”University of British Columbia. UBC Blogs. 2014. Web. Web. 16 Jan. 2014.https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl470/unit-1/lesson-12/

As I mentioned before, I am half Japanese one quarter Trinidadian and one quarter English. I grew up in both Japan and Canada for the first decade  of my life. We spent most of the year in a town called Shinmatsudo close to Tokyo in Japan, and spend summers in Courtenay, a small town off the coast of BC  (because the summers in Japan are unbearably hot and humid)  until I was about eleven. Then we moved to Canada and  visited Japan regularly.

For as long as I can remember, my sense of home has always been a little ambiguous. While in Canada, I often felt home sick; I missed Japanese food, language, and culture, however, when I was in Japan for extended periods,  I often felt the same way about Canada. I haven’t been back to Japan in over 3 years now and I often have dreams about returning;  shopping in Harajuku, visiting my grandparents house, and returning to the house and neighborhood where I grew up .

Although I consider both Japan and Canada to be home, I have realized that  in both countries I often feel as if I am a foreigner

Generally in Japan, individuality is discouraged and there are strict  guidelines as to what is classified as appropriate.  In school, we wore uniforms,  and make-up, jewelry, nail polish and hair dying was prohibited. Assimilation was greatly encouraged.

My father is much taller than the average Japanese man so in turn in Japan I was  always the tallest in the class and because  my mother is half black and half white I inherited her darker complexion, and curly  hair which I straightened relentlessly in an attempt to fit in a little more.

Despite my efforts, I stuck out, standing about half a foot taller than everyone else with  hair so frizzy it added a couple of more inches. People often referred to me as “Gaijin” which means  foreigner or “the black girl”, I look back on this now and find it kind of strange that I was the “black girl”, after all, I am more Japanese than black or white. In Japan, one is Japanese or not;  so all mixed-race children are considered foreigners.  I guess , to some extent  I experienced what is referred to as the one drop rule.

Living in Canada  is not  much different,  almost every person I meet asks me where I am from.  I respond with,  “Well, I was born here so I am Canadian and I have Japanese citizenship.” Most people are dissatisfied with this  answer, wanting to know my ” actual back ground?” and ethnicity rather than where I was born.

And when I moved back to Canada and attended  high school in a predominantly white neighborhood, I became “the Asian girl” opposed to “the black girl” I had been asin Japan.

As a child, I experienced some what of an identity crisis, however after (meeting an array of different people from various cultural backgrounds at university, I now feel more comfortable calling myself Japanese or Canadian regardless of what others may think or assume.

References:

Davis, James F. “Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition.” PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2014.

“Memories of Shin Matsudo – GXR A16.” Six Days in Chiba My Views on Japan, News, Politics and the World. N.p., 5 Apr. 2012. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

Paterson, Erika. ““ENGL 470 Canadian Studies ;Canadian Literary Genres.”University of British Columbia. UBC Blogs. 2014. Web. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl470/unit-1/lesson-12/