Question: 

“In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures, as well as the themes and characters, come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to both King’s article and Robinson’s s story.”

 

Response: 

Who do you imagine speaking when you read a story? Well, that definitely isn’t a question that can be answered simply. It depends on who you ask, the story they’re reading, the writer’s intention, and a conglomeration of external socio-cultural factors. From my experience as a reader, voices can be active, passive, clear and ambiguous. They come from someone, who came from somewhere, which has a history, which often informs the story.

Whose voice whispered in your as an adolescent, you read tales of National pride in your social studies textbook? What did they sound like? Where they confident? Curious? A little unsure? For me, I could imagine the voices as distant, presumptuous and unrelatable. My nationality was hung up in all the spaces in the Canadian narrative where I didn’t belong. The canon of Canadian literature has proven throughout history that it favors stories by settler Europeans. These are the voices that generations of readers have deemed Canadian. The homogeneity of the canon affects how we see ourselves, in relation to how we see the nation.

This week we looked at how the stories in Susanna Moodie’s in Roughing it in the Bush, who helped not design what has embodied “Canadian Literature,” but most importantly, it exemplified the European thought ways Moodie and many others had brought with them. Moodie’s stories of her first encounters with Indigenous folks and turtle island emphasize the “danger of assumptions”, expressed further by Thomas King.

In King’s Godzilla Vs. Post Colonial we further consider how prior assumptions can be damaging to stories that will come to shape our identities. The voices we have heard in the popular Canadian literature we are expected to read partakes in the erasure of the Indigenous voice and experience. King explains that although Post Colonial scholarship works to deconstruct Colonial confinement and oppression, it continues to abide by and rely on Colonialism. The Post-colonialist mentality takes away from Indigenous storytelling practices that developed before and beyond first contact. The act of storytelling is not homogenous, and rather, can be used as a tool to diversify the voice, perspective, and intent of the writer.

Harry Robinson narrates stories that have been told to him, using his own oral traditions that have been transcribed into writing. Although these stories have been traditionally told through the voice itself, the words by Robinson are not incarcerated on the page by European written practice. Instead, Robinson rejects the laws of English grammar, and as King, explains “creates his own oral syntax”. The language used by Robinson undeniably produces a prominent voice. It’s not loud, not necessarily clear, but it is heard. Robinson manages to carry the oral tradition forward, transcending the written practice, unapologetically entering the minds of the reader.

It’s liberating reading Robinson’s stories. Not only because they engage the reader through his unique voice, but rather because his voice and stories intersect multiple perspectives of self and nation throughout history. In his telling of “Coyote makes a deal with the King of England” we witness in a multitude of ways how Europeans were perceived, easily tricked, pretentious, and oftentimes stubborn. Through his narrations, Robinson takes his space. He merges histories, adopts different accounts, while still maintaining an “oral syntax” which is true to his indigeneity.

 

 

How are stories being addressed today? How can stories be utilized to expose National injustice against indigenous people, communities and their lands? Watch the first video below if you want to see how stories intersect and resurrect. If your interested in Indigenous Storytelling, and the need for its’ growth in Canadian Literature, read the article “Canada needs to give Indigenous stories the platform they deserve” by Jesse Wente bellow.

 

 

 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/canada-needs-to-give-indigenous-stories-the-platform-they-deserve/article34046186/

 

 

 

Works Cited

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 04 april 2013.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.

Settler Decolonization. Stories of Decolonization: Land Dispossession and Settlement. YouTube, YouTube, 23 Nov. 2016www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTruP6r2cAA.