Each student will be assigned a section of the novel Green Grass Running Water (pages will be divided by the number of students). The task at hand is to first discover as many allusions as you can to historical references (people and events), literary references (characters and authors), mythical references (symbols and metaphors).

Assigned section: “Oh Oh, says Coyote, I don’t want …” [162] End: Eli drove the car through the gravel ….”[171].

I’ll begin by quickly summarizing my assigned section for context. In the first part of the section, I tells the story of Changing Woman, who is stuck on an island. One day, Changing Woman is approached by a ship. She is invited onto the ship, which ends up being full of whale fishermen, the captain being Ahab, a short man with a wooden leg. The ship is called the Pequod. Changing Woman meets a young man names Ishmael, and he renames her Queequeg. The seamen spot a whale and kill it. Then, they see another whale, this time a black female whale, and call it Moby-Jane, the Great Black Whale.

The second part of my assigned section follows Eli and Karen on their way to visit Eli’s family at the Sun Dance. During their trip, Eli also engages with the story of Iron Eyes and Annabelle, a story that parallels his own. Iron Eyes, and Native man, falls in love with Annabelle, a white woman. He is “forced to choose between Annabelle and his people” (King).

Allusions:

Changing Woman is a Navajo Deity, “a holy woman of miraculous birth” (Fink 152). According to Navajo Legend, she represents “the power of earth and of women to create and sustain life”. King suggests she’s a lesbian in other parts of the text.

White Whale. The seamen are looking for a white whale, emphasizing the allusion to Moby Dick. In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab’s obsession with the White Whale overtook his life.

Ahab alludes to the Captain Ahab in Moby Dick.

The Pequod is Captain Ahab’s ship. Alludes to Moby Dick, but also to the Pequots, “Natives of the Eastern Woodlands” (Flick 158). Flick explains that during the Pequot War of 1637, most Pequot peoples were killed or enslaved (158).

“Call me Ishmael” is the iconic opening line of Moby Dick.

“I’ll call you Queequeg”. Queequeg is Ishmael’s friend in Moby Dick. He is “a variation on the faithful ‘Indian’ companion” (Flick 142). He’s a harpooner on the Pequod in Moby Dick. By renaming Changing Woman as Queequeg, King “inverts traditional binaries” (Davidson 93). When Ahab says that they “only kill things that are useful or that we don’t like,” Changing Woman (or Queequeg) calls him out on that, saying that his actions are “crazy”.

Moby-Jane subverts Herman Melville’s male- and white-dominated text. She is a black female lesbian whale, indicated when the seamen exclaim, “Blackwhaleblackwhaleblackwhalesbianblackwhalesbianblackwhale.” When she is introduced in the text, Ahab refuses to believe that she’s a woman, saying “You mean white whale, don’t you? Moby-Dick, the great male white whale?”. Coyote interrupts I’s story, and says, “She means Moby-Dick… I read the book. It’s Moby-Dick, the great white whale who destroys the Pequod.” I replies, “You haven’t been reading your history… It’s English colonists who detroy the Pequots.”

Through Moby-Jane’s introduction, King examines both the “white-washing and masculinizing history (Davidson 92). By rewriting this narrative, King inverts traditional binaries.

De Soto. This car is named after Hernando De Soto, a Spanish Conquistador who moved through Flordia, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, “wreaking cultural havoc” (Flick 158). Eli and Karen travel in the De Soto to the reservation. Along the paved roads, the car works fine, but when it ravels off the asphalt and onto the unpaved lease road, it “became a different car,” one that is more challenging to drive and that causes more discomfort and destruction. This seems like an allusion to De Soto’s destruction of uncolonized towns.

Iron Eyes alludes to Iron Eyes Cody, an American actor who portrayed Native Americans in the media. Wll known for his Crying Indian PSA, he represents the stereotypical image of a Native person.

Works Cited:

Davidson, Arnold E., Priscilla L. Walton, and Jennifer Courtney Elizabeth Andrews. Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural Inversions. Toronto: U of Toronto, 2003. Web. July 11 2015.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. July 09 2015.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Kindle eBook.

“Hernando De Soto.” History.com. 2009. Web. 11 July 2015.

Moby Dick – Enter Queequeg. YouTube. 23 July 2007. Web. 11 July 2015.

“Navajo Legend – Changing Woman.” Native American Art. 2010. Web. 11 July 2015.

The Crying Indian – Full Commercial – Keep America Beautiful. YouTube. 30 Apr. 2007. Web. 11 July 2015.

1. What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?

Creation stories are tremendous things. They’re stories that tell us something vital about religion, about culture, about beginnings. They indicate the very start of life, the universe, god(s), and tradition.  In this way, they’re pretty spectacular. They’re huge. They try to cover a lot of ground while still keeping us interested. And somehow, these incredible stories are perceived as truth.

I grew up in the Catholic School system. We had school mass every week, school-wide confession, morning and lunch time prayer read over the PA, and an entire course called Christian Education to teach us all about the nuances of Roman Catholicism. I spent many hours in class learning about creation stories, about the book of Genesis, how God created the earth in 7 days, the Garden of Eden, and the ways we’re being punished because two people were fooled by an (actually very charming) snake. For many years of my life, these stories were my truth. Until one day, they weren’t.

King says, “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” In this way, we’re quite dynamic. Stories change as they are told and retold. King explains the modified versions of the story of the earth on the back of a turtle, saying, “I’ve heard this story many times, and each time someone tells the story, it changes.” The same goes for the stories we write for ourselves. So, as for me and the creation stories I learned: I believed, and then I didn’t. Now, these particular creation stories are just stories to me.

For some, entire belief systems are built upon the retelling of a narrative. Creation stories carry a lot of weight in different cultures and religions. They’re “snapshots,” as King says, of a larger picture, and these snapshots tell us a lot. They’re foundations on which a lot of beliefs are built.

If there’s one thing that the creation stories I’m familiar with have in common with King’s retelling of the Woman Who Fell From the Sky, it’s that they’re malleable. They have bones, sure: a man and a woman in a garden are tempted by a snake to eat an apple, they eat it and ruin everything, and: a woman falls from the sky and lands on a water-covered earth, lives on the back of a turtle, sea creatures build land and she gives birth to twins who create good and evil. But both stories can get weirder, or they can sound more serious, depending on how they’re told. They can be taken literally, or they can be conveyed as tales about morals, about good vs. evil.

Season 10, Episode 18: Simpsons Bible Stories

We also have the story that God created the world in seven days. This story is very similar to Charm’s. One by one, new things are added onto the earth. It’s very logical, methodical, to-the-point.

The way that these stories are different is the degree to which they can be modified. As we read in King’s retelling, Charm’s story is very unique, gripping, quite intriguing. But the story of Adam and Eve is still very dry. There’s not much room for anything exciting unless you alter its foundations.

A big reason for this is what King eloquently refers to as, “the thunder of Christian monologues.” The story of Adam and Eve is one that virtually everyone knows, more or less, and one that has a lot of power in the “North American paradigm”. Because Adam and Eve’s story is so well known, altering it is immediately met with side-eyes and strange reactions. Quite contrarily, the story of the Woman Who Fell From the Sky is more obscure and therefore more easily altered. Charm’s story is one that subverts the idea of a normal creation story: namely, no omnipotent, unseen power (read as: no God). So, Charm’s story needs to be a bit more glamorous for most European North Americans to even consider it.

Creation stories, regardless of origin or culture or religion, are tremendous things. And even as someone who is quite skeptical about their truth, I do see legitimacy in their power.

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2005. Kindle ebook.

“Simpsons Bible Stories.” IMDb. IMDb.com, Web. 03 July 2015.

In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

The Immigration Act of 1910 is a restrictive immigration legislation that gave the Government of Canada a great deal of power when dealing with Canadian Immigrants. The Act places significant restrictions on a number of citizens, creating artificial boundaries for who is and is not considered worthy of entry into Canada. The Act creates terms for non-citizens, calling them “aliens,” a term we hear often in reference to what some consider Illegal Immigrants (a term many people, including myself, are not comfortable with. See: no one is illegal).

The Act says that an “‘alien’ means a person who is not a British subject”. It goes on to explain the “definition” of a Canadian citizen.

Canadian Citizen means:

1. A person born in Canada who has not become an alien
2. A British subject who has Canadian domicile; or
3. A person naturalized under the laws of Canada who has not subsequently become an alien or lost Canadian domicile

The Act specifies “prohibited classes,” including, “idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, and persons believed to be insane within five previous years,” or otherwise people who are “mentally defective” (4). It also specifies that people with diseases, those who are “dumb, blind, or otherwise physically defective,” prostitutes, beggars, and “charity immigrants,” meaning those who are able to land in Canada through money donated by a charitable organization, are also prohibited from immigrating (2). As Kevin and Charmaine explain, Immigrants from Asiatic countries, particularly Chinese Immigrants, were governed under even stricter rules than the Act entails, building larger boundaries around who can enter the country.

This Act also states that “the Governer Council may, at any time, order any such persons found by a Board of Inquiry or examining officer to belong to any of the undesirable classes… to leave Canada within a specified period” (16). This is unfortunately not an obsolete law; on April 1st, 2015, Canada saw massive deportations of low-waged migrant workers in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP).

The Immigration Act allows the Government of Canada to practice complete control over any person entering the country. Instead of treating people like humans, they are treated as second class citizens, arbitrarily classified by an outdated system.

The Immigration Act of 1910

The jargon used in the Immigration Act on its own is incredibly exclusionary and demonstrates Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility. Coleman says that “beginning with colonials and early nation-builders, there has been a ‘literary endeavor’ to ‘formulate and elaborate a specific form of [Canadian] whiteness based on the British model of civility” (Coleman in Patterson). He goes on to say that we see this “white civility” in “regularly repeated literary personifications for the Canadian Nation” which have “mediated and gradually reified the privileged, normative status of British Whiteness in English Canada”.

This “fictive ethnicity” that Coleman refers to is constantly referenced in the Immigration Act, starting with the definition of an “alien” as someone who is not a British subject. This of course gives Canada a white, civil identity. Instead of honouring the First Nations of Canada, the history is erased and replaced with an image of, as Coleman states, white civility.

The Act also states that a person is a Canadian citizen if they are “naturalized under the laws of Canada.” The CanLit guide tells us that “a nation is a group of people who regard themselves as sharing the same culture.” What the Act is saying then is that in order to become a part of the Canadian nation, one must assimilate with the constructed culture of Canada — that is, a culture of white civility.

As Coleman states, “Canadians need to be reminded of the brutal histories that our fictive ethnicity would disavow” (9). Legislation like the Immigration Act is a tacit demonstration of the Canadian government’s attempt to rewrite its history of violent colonialism. However, as we know, colonialism still continues today. It isn’t history yet.

Works Cited:

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. April 4^th 2013.

“Immigration Act of 1910.”Pier21.ca, Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier21, N.d. Web. 26 June 2015.

Li, Charmaine. “Race, Nationalism, and a Forgotten Story” Canadian Yarns and Storytelling Threads. 26 June 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.

“No One Is Illegal – Vancouver.” No One Is Illegal Vancouver RSS., N.d. Web. 26 June 2015.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3:1.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia Blogs, 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.

Sun, Kevin. “Politely Taxing the Chinese?” Many Homes, One Earth. 26 June 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.

Syed, Fatima. “Temporary foreign workers face deportation come April 1.” Rabble.ca, 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.

“To raise the question of ‘authenticity’ is to challenge not only the narrative but also the ‘truth’ behind Salish ways of knowing” (Carlson 59). Explain why this is so according to Carlson, and explain why it is important to recognize this point.

I find that there is a tendency in powerful people (or people with perceived power) to regard facts or stories that diminish or challenge their power as inauthentic. These same people tend to disregard and even discredit stories or cultures that they don’t understand or that they can’t relate to because it’s simpler than working with them or getting to know them (see: Donald Trump’s presidential announcement speech). Carlson, in “Orality about Literacy,” refers to this tendency, saying that “non-Natives have generally not been overly concerned with the historical legitimacy of Aboriginal legends and myths… because they assume them to be fiction” (56). While authenticity is not so much implicit as it is created, the inclination to disregard an entire culture’s stories is not only disrespectful but unwise. As we know, there is a lot to be learned in Indigenous storytelling. It is a powerful, meaningful aspect of Indigenous culture and to question its authenticity does more than just overlook the meaning of the story itself, it also calls into question, as Carlson states, “the ‘truth’ behind Salish ways of knowing”.

Authenticity is a tricky word, especially in the context of what we’ve been reading and discussing so far this term. What really can be deemed authentic? And who is the rightful judge of what is and is not authentic? In a world full of prosthetics — computers that pass as humans, humans aided by technology, technology advancing more rapidly than we could’ve ever imagined — where do we draw the line between what’s genuine and what is created? When we’re talking about stories, what do we define as truth? Is there even such a thing is a universal truth? McLuhan (a controversial scholar to bring into this conversation), says that “language is a metaphor in the sense that it not only stores but translates experience from one mode to another” (5). If we experience things differently, then the language we use to describe the experience must vary too. Where do you find authenticity?

Instead of focusing on the validity of products or stories, the focus is better placed upon the individual. Because credibility is a perceived truth that can easily be disputed, it is more reputable than searching for truth in stories. It’s easy to see the power of credibility in today’s media. For example, journalists like Brian Williams, whose careers are based on storytelling can lose everything by compromising their credibility. Chamberlin says “a story’s subject neither guarantees nor compromises its credibility,” meaning the onus lies not in the bones of a story but instead on the storyteller and their own reputation.

This is why calling into question the authenticity of the Salish peoples’ stories is damaging. Carlson points out the importance of accurate storytelling in Salish culture, saying that “Salish historians have long been sensitive to the need to ‘get the story right’ even if the consequences of bad history are conceived differently”. He says that “for the Salish historian, bad history is considered to have potentially tragic consequences to both the teller and the listening audience” (58). Clearly, the significance of accurate storytelling in Salish history is not only to represent factual events but also to avoid damaging consequences. We can see that calling into question the accuracy of Salish narratives also means calling into question the legitimacy of their history, the validity of their beliefs, and the truth in their culture.

Works Cited:

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. 43-72. Web.

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Reimagining Home and Sacred Space. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2004. Kindle ebook.

Donald Trump’s Best Lines During His 2016 Speech. Perf. Donald Trump.YouTube. CNN, 16 June 2015. Web. 19 June 2015.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: U of Toronto, 1962. Print.

Steel, Emily, and Ravi Somaiya. “Brian Williams Suspended From NBC for 6 Months Without Pay.” New York Times. N.p., 10 Feb. 2015. Web. 19 June 2015.

1. 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 Chamberlin, 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?

As this week’s prompt states, King offers us two distinct, dichotomous styles of storytelling in his retellings of “The Earth Diver” and the Genesis story. King’s retelling of “The Earth Diver” is exciting, giving the story life and making it captivating for readers. His retelling of the Genesis story is a stark contrast to The Earth Diver, told simply and matter-of-factly with few adjectives and very little attention to detail. While the Earth Diver felt like a story, the creation story felt like a dull occurrence that happened a long long time ago. He didn’t even try to make us care about it.

The question, of course, is why did he tell the stories this way? The easy answer is that the creation story is a well known one, while Charm’s narrative is unique. Putting effort into retelling a story we already know is boring and tedious. But Charm’s story is a new one, and that’s what makes it interesting. So, because nearly everyone knows the creation story, it didn’t need to be intricate. On the other hand, Charm’s story, because of its novelty and uniqueness, needed to be told. 

I feel that ultimately King is telling the stories in distinct ways to emphasize the way that a story’s believability is based on the way that it’s told. Chamberlain emphasizes the fact that credibility comes from storytelling, saying that “a story’s subject neither guarantees nor compromises its credibility”. Instead, credibility lies in the storyteller, the way the story is told, and the way the listener chooses to interpret it. I believe that this is what King is trying to demonstrate in the drastically different tellings of the two stories. If we’re being pragmatic, we know that neither story is particularly believable. But the way that King chooses to tell the stories allows us to suspend our disbelief, even if just for a moment. Some readers may find that King’s retelling of the creation story in such a mechanic, to-the-point kind of way makes it sound more believable than the highly stylized retelling of Charm’s story. On the other hand, some readers may find Charm’s story to be more believable because the power lies in a tangible hand rather than the hand of an unseen, omnipotent God. Of course, as we discussed in a previous lesson, history plays a huge part in a story’s believability. Religious folks may find Charm’s story entirely unbelievable because the creation story is so engrained in their faith, while agnostic folks may weigh the two equally. To some, the stories don’t matter. To others, the story is the ground on which their world has grown.

As always, it is open to interpretation.

Works cited:

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Reimagining Home and Sacred Space. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2004. Kindle ebook.

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2005. Kindle ebook.

This week, we opened up about home, a topic that seems straightforward but that evidently carries a lot of weight for many of us. A common insight that was discussed had to do with the dynamic nature of the term “home,” that it can shift shapes to mean different things and is constantly in flux. In the case of Hava Rosenberg, Angela Olivares, and

Hava Rosenberg, in Home is Where I Want to Be, But I Guess I’m Already There, says that “home is less of a physical space than it is a collection of fragments and memories that assemble themselves into a cohesive whole”. This idea that home isn’t any one physical space or a single person, but instead a collection of meaningful, familiar things really resonates with me. Myself and evidently many others agree with Hava in that home isn’t found in a house. Home can be found in memories, in little things that stir something up in you. Hava mentions things like scent, driving down familiar roads, and listening to music from your childhood as being the types of memories that evoke a sense of home. I think that’s really beautiful.

Angela Olivares talks about home being characterized by her entire family gathering for Christmas in the Philippines. She mentions that since moving to Canada and no longer gathering with her big family during the holidays, home isn’t here. She says, “this is where we live, not what we can really call our home.” I found this to be particularly touching, as my mom, who has lived in Canada since I was born, still says she’s “going home” when referring to going on a trip to the Philippines, a place where we no longer have many familial ties. In the same way as Hava’s story, home isn’t a house for Angela. Instead, it’s a vivid memory.

In Home. Yes, We Are Home, Jamie King alludes to home being associated with memories as well. Her emotional recounting of the death of her theatre company’s Technical Director, the vivid descriptions of the events after his death, the sense of community and the retelling of stories — these are all memories that are clearly very close to her heart. She says that “there is a sense of shared experience that creates a space rather than a permanence of location,” and that “there is a sense of home in their hellos”, evoking this sense that home is found in memory.

Home is a complicated thing. Home can mean where you’re from, where you’re going, or who you are. It can be comfort or it can be mourning. Home is always something we carry with us, whether the weight is heavy or light. It lives in our memories.

Works Cited:

King, Jamie. “Home. Yes, We Are Home.” Engl 470A: Oh Canada. 5 June 2015. Web. 8 June 2015.

Olivares, Angela. “Home, Ya Filthy Animals.” Engl 470. UBC Blogs. 6 June 2015. Web. 8 June 2015.

Rosenberg, Hava. “Home is Where I Want to Be, But I Guess I’m Already There.” O Canada? UBC Blogs. 4 June 2015. Web. 8 June 2015.

My earliest memory of home was in 1998. We lived in a modest house in Coquitlam then, two stories, three bedrooms, with different coloured carpet in every room. The backyard was small and overgrown, and on the days that we weren’t busy building cities with lego or running around the block, my brother and I would sit in the grass and watch our neighbour’s sattelite dish swivel slowly back and forth. I was 5 then, too young to really understand the difference between home and not-home, but I know I felt a soreness when I stayed overnight at my aunt’s house, this longing for something that I didn’t understand. I’d cry (as kids do) for my mother. But really, what I was crying for was home.

A year later, my parents split up and we moved from the house I called home. My grandma, my mom, my brother and I moved into an apartment on the other side of Coquitlam. Then two years after that, we moved into a townhouse just down the street from the apartment. Fast forward five years, and we moved into a new house, this time with my Stepdad, a place I felt was home for many years. After that, home was constantly changing for me: a dorm room, a suite with roommates, a subleased studio apartment. Now, home is a comfortable apartment in Vancouver, a place I’ve shared with my partner for almost two years.

Our little home.

After moving as many times as I have, I realize that home was never the house I lived in. I never felt I had enough time to really lay down roots in any specific place. Instead, home has to do with history. The places I feel at home are the places I’ve grown into (neighbourhoods, cities, libraries and coffee shops), the people I’ve grown with. Or, more accurately, home is where I’ve let myself grow. Home is about the rituals I perform, the person I live with, the feeling I get when I walk in the door. Home is comfort, safety, and the knowledge that the place that I am, here and now, is a place where I can be honest and unedited without fear of judgment or scrutiny.

It’s been a challenge letting myself get attached to any one place or person, so really accepting anywhere or anyone as an emblem of “home” is monumental for me. I think this is common with children from less-than-perfect homes. My parents split up when I was very young and then my dad moved to Thailand and disappeared for most of my life. This sounds like a sad thing but really it’s a whatever thing. I was young when it happened and quickly got over it. However, it did make me more practical (read as: hardheaded) when it comes to relationships. As a rule, I tend to assume the worst out of every scenario before I prove myself wrong. So many times I’ve pushed against the idea of making any place or person home because I know of the impermanence and unreliability of these things, but often the idea finds its way into my head. While I always felt like this was a good thing, I realize now (as I’m getting older and letting myself be a little bit more vulnerable in relationships), that being hardened is a really good way to feel isolated and lonely. Malleability and bonding are important. Who would’ve thought?

Laughing with my beautiful Nanay.

I’m lucky to have a large, close-knit family on my mother’s side. Culturally, Filipino families are like that: intimate, absolutely nuts, and full of love. I always had support, even through my dark, don’t-go-near-me days. And while I’ve struggled with my cultural identity (being half-Filipino and half-Dutch), I still feel like eating Pancit and Ginataang Bilo-Bilo with my Nanay has always been home to me.

Works Cited:

Estrella, Serna. “The History of Pancit.” Pepper.ph. N.p., 19 May 2014. Web. 5 June 2015.

Lalaine. “Ginataang Bilo Bilo.” Kawalingpinoy.com. N.p., 17 Feb. 2015. Web. 5 June 2015.

I have a great story to tell you.

Not long ago, there was a small town where evil didn’t exist. The town was out in the forest, amid hundreds of trees and small creatures who co-existed peacefully with each other. The townspeople were friendly folks, and each of them had jobs to help the town run as smoothly and peacefully as possible.

Mark was a metalsmith. Heather was a woodworker. Gina was a doctor. Tim was a teacher. John was a firefighter and Kathy was a baker.

Everyone in town had a special job to do. Even the children helped with farming, cooking, cleaning, and feeding the animals. Giving everyone responsibility for the town made everyone care for it a little more, and gave everyone a sense of belonging. The community was strong and people cared for their homes, their land, the animals, and each other.

Then one day, a new person stumbled into town. Jimmy, a man from another town, a place where evil did exist, happened upon the town while exploring the forest. He left his home a few days prior, and got lost while hiking the woods. After a long night of wandering in the dark with nothing but his hunting rifle and a small pack, Jimmy was thrilled to see the light of the quaint, peaceful little town.

“Hey, stranger!” said Mark.

“Whaddaya want?” replied Jimmy.

“I’m just saying hello. Haven’t seen you around here before.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I’m from another town, far away from here. I got lost in the forest… Been searching for my way back for days. Where can I get some food around here?”

Mark spotted Kathy and waved her over. “This is Kathy, our town baker. I’m sure she can fix you up something warm to eat.”

Kathy smiled and nodded, “It’ll just be a minute,” and she hurried off towards her bakery.

Jimmy stood awkwardly with Mark, looking around. He glanced to his right and spotted a deer peeking out of the forest, slowly gnawing on some grass. “Deer meat,” he thought, “that’s what I need. Better than bread.” He cocked his rifle and shot, missing the deer’s head and hitting its stomach.

“Shoot,” Jimmy whispered. He readied his rifle again.

“What are you doing!” screamed Heather, running towards where Jimmy and Mark stood. Mark was shaking with a stunned look on his face.

“Why? Why would you do that?” mumbled Mark.

The deer was squeaking and writhing in the grass. More townspeople gathered around.

“I’m hunting. What? You people never seen a hunter before? You live in the woods…”

“What’s hunting?” Asked Tim, the teacher, who knew just about every word in the book but was baffled by this strange new one.

“Uh… Killing animals. To eat. Sometimes just for fun. And since I missed this deer’s head, we can’t eat ‘er anymore. So I guess this was just for fun.”

The townspeople stared at Jimmy, confused. How could you kill for fun? Death, to them, was a sad affair that only ever occurred in inevitable circumstances. Although evil did not exist, death still did, and death was always something sorrowful, something everyone wanted to avoid.

Very quickly, a crowd formed around the deer, which now lay completely still, its tongue hanging loose out of its mouth, its eyes glassy and open.

“I don’t like this,” said Gina, “You have to leave now, sir.”

Kathy came back with a basket of warm bread. She handed it to him, staring at the deer.

Jimmy shrugged, grabbing a piece of bread. With a full mouth, he said, “Oh, come on! This is nothing. Where I’m from, people kill other people. People fight in wars. This is just an animal. I’m not hurting anybody.”

“What do you mean, people kill other people?” said Mark.

“What’s war?” asked Tim.

Jimmy was stunned. How do these people not know what murder is? How do they not know war?

“Murder. Killing other people. Killing them, you know…. dead. War, countries fighting each other. Massive battlefields where people shoot each other, people bomb each other.”

The townspeople all began mumbling. War? Murder?

“See, killing this deer is nothing. This is survival. This isn’t bad.”

“I don’t like this,” said Gina, “You’re frightening the children and making the townspeople uncomfortable. You should leave.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry folks,” Jimmy said, chewing another piece of bread, “Just pretend I was never here.”

Jimmy disappeared into the forest again, but the deer still lay quietly and still. Blood soaked the green grass, and the children walked in the sticky, dark red residue. Nobody in the town knew what to do. Although Jimmy left, the memory of the day was still there. A town that never knew evil, never even heard the word, learned about murder and war, terrible things that happened in places not far from their own homes.

——

When I told this story to my partner, he laughed because of the use of hunting as an introduction of evil. I’m a omnivore and while I would never hunt, hunting out of necessity doesn’t bother me. Aside from that, he also found it hard to believe, seeing as evil has always existed in the world and imagining a town where the residents work together and are completely blind to evil reminds him of towns like Wayward Pines, or Stepford, where evil exists but is masked by mechanic, shallow, eerie niceties.

And I guess that reminds us that story is always shaped by history. Either the teller or the listener is influenced by what they already know. Then, of course, that new story becomes a part of them, however small, and influences the way they tell or hear the next tale. Strange how that works.

Works Cited:

Hodge, Chad. “Trailer.” Wayward Pines. Dir. M. Night Shyamalan. Fox. Vancouver, BC, 13 May 2014. YouTube.

The Stepford Wives. Dir. Frank Oz. Paramount Pictures, 2004. YouTube.

“In many ways, home is an image for the power of stories. With both, we need to live in them if they are to take hold, and we need to stand back from them if we are to understand their power. But we do need them; when we don’t have them, we become filled with a deep sorrow. That’s if we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, we go mad.”

Chamberlain, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? 

I work at the UBC Learning Exchange in the DTES, in the Drop-In, a safe space for DTES residents to meet people, drink coffee, play cards, and use the computer. While the Learning Exchange’s programming focuses on community engagement and community-based experiential learning, the Drop-In is a place where most people come because they know it will be safe, warm, and welcoming. Many of our patrons are homeless or nearly homeless. Others are living in poor conditions — SROs, poorly managed BC Housing buildings, bouncing from shelter to shelter. Some are just residents of the DTES, a community in flux, looking for a stable place to get to know people in their community.

Many of the regular patrons who visit the Drop-In are Indigenous men and women who live in the area. Aboriginal peoples are overrepresented in the homeless population of Vancouver, making up for over a third of the homeless population while only representing 2% of the entire population in Metro Vancouver (Greater Vancouver Regional Steering Committee, ii). Over my last month working at the Learning Exchange, I’ve gotten to know many of the regulars pretty well, and some of them have been generous enough to share their stories with me. Without getting into details, most stories I hear have to do with Aboriginal people being taken advantage of in their own homes, being displaced, being disrespected, being told that they don’t belong in a city that is rightfully their home.

This is where home gets tricky. Chamberlain says, “home may be in another time and place, and yet it holds us in its power here and now.” This is the case with many Indigenous people living in Vancouver, in the Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Home doesn’t exist here anymore. Since contact, white settlers have been taking things away from the Indigenous people. Language and land, two powerful aspects of any culture, were stolen from the Aboriginal people. Today, things are still being taken away. Entire city blocks are being gentrified to be more appealing to white middle class Canadians, who are colonizing the DTES by destroying the area because they think it’s their right to do so.

Photo by DM Gillis

The other aspect of the Learning Exchange is the English Conversation Program, a volunteer-run program that supports English learners by giving them a space to practice their language skills together. Most of the learners are Chinese seniors, many are low-income, living in Chinatown.

Just like the rest of the DTES, Chinatown is another rapidly changing area in Vancouver. Places like Matchstick Coffee, Bestie, Mamie Taylor’s, Nelson the Seagull have been weaseling their way into Chinatown and the DTES for years, getting a new kind of crowd involved in the neighbourhood.

Will these newcomers to the Downtown Eastside continue to use their comparative wealth as a tool of acquisition, compelling those they judge surplus to leave? At the moment, it looks that way. But the current drivers of gentrification must know that they’re small fry compared to the corporations that will follow, using their corporate power and wealth to displace them. And when all that is left is a Disney-fied strip mall of Starbucks, 7-Elevens and Money Marts, will the owners of Cuchillo and PiDGiN be proud to say that they helped make it all possible?

DM Gillis

I was chatting with my coworker outside of work the other day, standing on the corner of Main and Keefer, and we couldn’t help but notice the strange mix of people in the neighbourhood. There was a group of young, hip 20-somethings with sour looks on their faces skateboarding past a Chinese senior couple, shuffling slowly along the sidewalk. There were men is suits stepping out of the new Starbucks across the street (which I’ll mention in a minute), and a bustling Chinese market right next to where we stood. These images alone indicate to me that the town is changing.

The Keefer Block is a new condo development on Main and Keefer, and is a testament to the changes in the neighbourhood. The development’s website boasts the boutique apartments, saying that buying one of their being a part of Vancouver’s “vibrant cultural identity,” but that are really displacing people within that culture. You likely know of this building because it’s home to the first standalone Starbucks in Chinatown. If you didn’t believe Chinatown was dying before, this must convince you.

Artist Rendering of the Keefer Block. Very few features of Chinatown are represented in this photo — you’d almost think this was Yaletown.

Just like with the Indigenous people, Chinese peoples’ land is being taken away, their language is being stolen (signs are popping up in English only, making many businesses inaccessible to non-English speakers), and they are being displaced — priced out of their own neighbourhoods because yuppies want to live in a cool, hip, edgy neighbourhood.

The following is the trailer for Julia Kwan’s documentary “Everything Will Be,” a film that explores the rapidly changing Chinatown.

“When the horse dies, you walk on the ground. No matter how difficult, one must keep walking.”

So, what is home? I think it’s a place where you can firmly root yourself, where you’re welcomed and comfortable. For many, I don’t think the concept of home truly exists.

I’ll leave you with these questions (since I feel I’ve veered off of the prompt quite a bit): What do you think of gentrification? Do you agree that it destroys homes, cultures, and community? Or do you think it’s a necessary development, an investment, the natural progression of things?

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Reimagining Home and Sacred Space. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2004. Kindle ebook.

Everything Will Be. Dir. Julia Kwan. National Film Board of Canada, 2014.

Greater Vancouver Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness. (2014). Results of the 2014 Homeless Count in the Metro Vancouver Region.

“Keefer Block.” Vancouver Condo. Web. 23 May 2015.

Hi everyone! My name is Melissa, and I’m an English Lit major entering my fifth year at UBC. This summer, I’m filling my time working a co-op job at UBC Learning Exchange, trying not to freak out about my upcoming grad, riding my bike around the city, and, of course, learning more about Canadian history through literature!

I’m in love with Canada. No, seriously. Growing up in BC felt like such a treat to me. You hear it all the time, but it really is incredible to be able to see the mountains, the ocean, and the city all in one day. I won’t ever get over that luxury. I recently took a trip to Montreal and Toronto and I fell even more in love with the country. Canada is such a beautiful place to be!

Found on Of Two Lands (click for link)

Despite all this, I know there’s a lot more to Canada than beautiful landscapes and friendly strangers. That’s why I’m taking this course.

I’m thrilled to be a part of this class because it approaches Canadian Lit, a genre that is often underrated, in a completely unconventional way (read as: no Margaret Atwood). What really drew me to this course is the focus on learning more about Indigenous narratives, storytelling, and orature. These narratives are overlooked, and more often than not, completely forgotten, and I’m so glad to be a part of a class that not only looks at these stories but also critically looks at what is being told, what’s not being told, and why. We’ll also be examining colonizing narratives, something that will allow us to become more critical and aware readers. It’s so important to learn more about the way Canadian history is represented in literature and to learn more about alternative narratives. I’m looking forward to learning more about what “intersections and departures between European and Indigenous traditions of literature and orature,” really entails.

It’s not only the course readings that excite me, but also the way this course is being approached. Being a class that looks at alternate ways of storytelling, it’s fascinating to also be using unique techniques to learn. Not only this, but being a class that looks at intersections in two very different cultures, using modern mediums to teach literary history also offers its own innovative intersection. Blogging, creating “collaborative online working spaces,” vlogs, and even online group work — I’m thrilled to be a part of this!

If you can’t already tell… I’m looking forward to learning and exploring with all of you! Enjoy May long, and please, don’t be shy… Introduce yourself! 🙂

96% of Canadians are putting away the winter plaid and bringing out the spring plaid

— Stats Canada (@stats_canada) March 30, 2015

Works Cited:

49°20’34.1″N 123°06’53.5″W. 2014. British Columbia, BC. RSS. By Florent and Amberly. Web. 15 May 2015.

Stats Canada (Satire). Stats_canada. N.p., 30 Mar. 2015. Web. 15 May 2015. <https://twitter.com/stats_canada>.

“The UBC Learning Exchange.” UBC Learning Exchange. Web. 16 May 2015. <http://learningexchange.ubc.ca/>.