For this assignment I will be using the last 10 pages of part 1. First off what surprised. me most about this assignment was how many allusions and references King was able to fit into 10 pages of this story. This is a novel that I would have more than a few times in order to start being comfortable with the allusions and references and what is going on. I feel that even if I read this novel 10 times there would still be references that I would miss. However, I have only read this book once and this is my best attempt of analyzing the allusions and references of the 10 last pages of section 1.
Babo recalling the “Indians’” story to Officer Jimmy Delano
This section starts off with Babo trying to recall the “Indians” story for the officer Jimmy Delano. Flick explains that the character Babo is an allusion of the character Babo in the story “Benito Cereno”. After reading a summary of the book “Benito Cereno” it was clear to see the references that King made to the character Babo in “Benito Cereno”. For example Babo in Green Grass, Running Water exclaims that her great-great-grandfather was a baber on a ship (King). And in the story “Benito Cereno” the character Babo is a barber on the ship San Dominick and the leader of a secret revolt (LitCharts). In Green Grass, Running Water Babo is a janitor of the asylum from where the “Indians” escaped and she is being asked by officer Jimmy Delano to repeat the story that the “Indians” told her and in this scene she keeps starting over, getting distracted, and forgetting the story’s details. And by comparing her to the character in “Benito Cereno” there is reason to think that she is deceiving the officer and hiding the truth. This is because in the story “Benito Cereno” Babo deceives the character Captain Almasa Delano into thinking that the racial hierarchy is normal on the ship and there’s no revolt happening(LitCharts). Furthermore, It is not a coincidence that the officer that Babo is talking to happens to have the same last name of the naive captain Amasa Delano. Therefore Babo and Officer Jimmy Delano may be a representation of the illusion of racial hierarchy as Delano feels like as an officer he is in control of Babo as she is giving him all the information about the “Indians” but most likely this is an illusion and she is holding information back. However, Flick also explains that Jimmy Delano also could be an allusion of Columbus Delano who was a “a career politician who was head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.” (Flick, 146). Flick explains that Columbus Delano was known for “[defending] the BIA against charges of mistreatment of the Indians in the Red Cloud Agency in South Dakota” (Flick146). After some research on him I also found out that he was known for “allowing millions of bison to be slaughtered in order to compel the Indians to move to and remain on their reservations” (Peoplepill) and this caused the “destruction of the Plains Indian culture, including their economy, cosmology, and religion” (Peoplepill). Overall he was known as someone who had power and was corrupt and that passed policies that exploited the Indigenous people. And I feel like this also is a representation of the officer in the book Green Grass, Running Water .
Dr. Joe Hovaugh talking about the “Indians” to Sergeant Cereno
In this scene the Sergeant Cereno is asking Dr. Joe Hovaugh the head of the asylum to tell him about the four Indians that escaped his facility. First off, Flick discusses that Sergeant Cereno is an allusion to the captain of the San Dominick Don Benito Cereno in the story “Benito Cereno”. Flick explains that early on in the story “Babo asks Sergeant Cereño “Is that [name] Italian or Spanish, or what?” (25); “What’s your first name? Let me guess. Is it Ben? That’s my boy’s name” (26).” (Flick, 146). Dr. Joe Hovaugh on the other hand is a play on words on Jehovah which is a name of God. And the first hint that King gives readers to show he is referring to this allusion is that Dr. Joe Hovaugh tells Sergeant Cereno that his great-grandfather was an evangelist and an evangelist is a person who converts others to christianity. Furthermore, we see King alluding to this reference through Dr. Joe Hovaugh hobby which is gardening, his hobby shows that he likes to control nature. In the section I am analyzing when Dr. Hovaugh is talking to Sergeant Cereno as he gets distracted by looking out the window at the grass, the elms, and the big oak and he seems discontent that they are “unusually dry” and are not doing well.
Lionel and Norma giving the four “Indians” a ride
In this next scene Norma and Lionel are driving and they “see four old Indians standing by the side of the road” (King). In this section Lionel wonders if “Cecil made it to Wounded Knee after all” (King) . Flick explains that Wounded Knee is a reference to the “ site of the last major battle of the Indian Wars” (Flick, 148). I did some more research on this and learned that the US army slaughtered around 300 Lakota Indians at the “climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century [in order to] repress the Plains Indians” (Britannica). This reference really relates to the ongoing theme in the story which is stories of colonialism. Next, when Norma and Lionel see the “Indians” standing beside the road she says to Lionel “better give them a ride … they look about as lost as you” (King). I feel that this reference kind of relates to the theme of traveling, being on the road, and being lost and not knowing what direction you should go in life. And this relates to most of the characters in this novel as Alberta is having a difficult problem deciding what direction she wants to go in her life, she does not know if she wants to be with Charlie or Lionel. And Lionel also is kind of lost as he has been selling stereos and Tv’s for a long time and does not know what he wants to do with the rest of his life.
First Woman and Ahdamn go to Florida to draw pictures
In this next section here First Woman and Ahdamn are chained up on a train going to Florida. And when they get to Florida they are sitting around drawing pictures. This is an allusion to the Fort Marion Prisoners in 1874 and this is actually mentioned in the beginning of the story. Earlier on in the story Alberta is teaching a class and she discusses how In 1874 the US army attacked Southern Plain tribes and captured prisoners to send to Florida and were prisoned at Fort Marion and were provided materials to draw. The interesting thing about this illusion is I did some research on the Fort Marion Prisoners and learned that “most of the prisoners were men, [however] the group included one Cheyenne woman” (nativeamericannetroots.net). And I was curious if King was trying to represent Adhamn and the First Women as these Indigenous people who were captured and if the First Women was supposed to represent the one Cheyenne women in the group. Furthermore, In this chapter it is explained that “Ahdamn becomes a big star. People from New York and Toronto and Chicago and Edmonton come down to Florida to watch Ahdamn draw pictures” (King). And I feel that this is a reference to the Indigenous people in Fort Marion who were imprisoned being encouraged to produce works of art for sale and the drawing being sold (nativeamericannetroots.net).
Thank you for reading my blog, like I said before I probably missed some references and allusions so if you caught someones that I did not catch please let me know in the comment section!
Admin. “The Fort Marion Prisoners.”Native American Netroots, 24 Feb. 2012, nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1269.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”Canadian Literature, 1999.
Hudson, Myles. “Wounded Knee Massacre.”Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 17 Jan. 2020, www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre.
King, Thomas.Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins e-Books, 2016
LitCharts. “Benito Cereno Summary.”LitCharts, www.litcharts.com/lit/benito-cereno/summary.
Melville, Herman, and Mary V. “Benito Cereno Characters.”GradeSaver, www.gradesaver.com/benito-cereno/study-guide/character-list.
PeoplePill. “Columbus Delano: American Politician (1809-1896) – Biography and Life.”PeoplePill, peoplepill.com/people/columbus-delano/.
6. Find three examples of names that need to be spoken aloud in order to catch the allusion. Discuss the examples as well as the reading technique that requires you to read aloud in order to make connections. Why does King want us to read aloud?
Green Grass, Running Wateris a book that requires it’s readers to play a game of mad gab while also having background knowledge in European and Indigenous culture in order to understand the on going jokes.
Have you ever played the game mad gab? Mad gabs is a puzzle party game that requires players to figure out “the proper phrase from a collection of words that otherwise mean nothing by themselves” (How do you play it). For example “Dawned Rink Hand Arrive” would be “Don’t drink and drive”. When playing this game in order to find meaning in a meaningless phrase it often helps to say the meaningless phrase out loud. In Thomas King’s novel in a way is like the game mad gab as he has many character names that seem like they are meaningless until you say them out loud and catch the allusion. However, King’s novel is not a normal game of mad gab, King’s novel has a big twist and this twist is that readers have to have knowledge on Canadian history, Canadian politics, Native studies, and European literature to be able to catch the allusion (Fee & Flick, 132). Catching these mad gab illusions were very difficult for me as a reader, and I found I needed a lot of assistance from “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water” by Jane Flick in order to to decipher this novel. However Fee and Flick make me feel a little bit better about not being able to understand much of the allusion in the novel as they explains that “There is no reader of this novel, except perhaps Thomas King, who is not outside some of its networks of cultural knowledge” (Fee &Flick, 131).
The first character name that was an allusion that I was able to catch was Ahdamn. This one is a little be bit more obvious as the story line shows pretty clearly that this Ahdamn is a “play on Adam and the Garden of Genesis” (Flick, 147). Another character play on words that I was able to understand with a little bit of help from some secondary sources is Dr. Joseph Hovaugh.Flick explains that “Dr. Joe Hovaugh is a play on the name Jehovah” (Flick, 144). And this is fitting as the character Dr. Joseph Hovaugh is obsessed creating order out of disorder as he “[creates] a carefully manicured garden” (Chester, 50). And he is also the authority figure running the asylum keeping which is keeping the Indians from escaping (Flick, 144). Chester explains that the connection that King makes with him to Jehovah is suitable as “Hovaugh [is shown playing] God with the lives of Indians” (Chester, 52). The last one that I was able to catch was the allusion of the charactersLouis, Ray and Al from Manitoba, and this was all thanks to my grade 11 social studies class. Flick explains that Louis, Ray and Al is a pun on Louis Riel (Flick, 161). Other than the name and the place another hint that is given is that the character Louie in Green Grass, Running Water is a poet just like Louis Riel.
The last part of the question that I am answering asks me “Why does King want us to read aloud?”. And I feel I have discussed this question a lot in my previous blog post’s therefore I will give a shorter explanation here.It is clear to see King made his characters’ names play on words because he wanted to encourage and reward readers for reading out loud. And I feel that King wants his readers to read out loud because it adds to his oral syntax and makes his literature a hybrid of traditional oral and written stories. Furthermore, King ‘forcing’ the readers to read out loud in a way could be him paying homage and preserving oral traditional stories.
Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel” Canadian Literature, 1999.
“Develop Your Listening Ear with Mad Gab: CanScribe.”CanScribe Career College, 2 Apr. 2019, canscribe.com/develop-listening-ear-mad-gab/.
Fee, Margery, and Jane Flick. “Coyote Pedagogy Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.”Canadian Literature, 1999.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water” Canadian Literature, 1999.
“Louis Riel’s Handwritten Poems Displayed for the Public | CBC News.”CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 17 Feb. 2009, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/louis-riel-s-handwritten-poems-displayed-for-the-public-1.776023.
King, Thomas.Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins e-Books, 2016.
“Mad Gab Rules: How Do You Play Mad Gab?”How Do You Play It, 12 June 2018, howdoyouplayit.com/mad-gab-rules-play-mad-gab/.
For this lesson I decided to answer question 5 which is asking me to compare Harry Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” with King’s Green Grass, Running Water. In this blog post I will first discuss the differences in writing style between the two authors and then move on to talk about the power dynamics of Coyote and God in each story.
In the question the professor gives a quote by Blanca Chester that explains how Robinson’s literature has had a huge impact on the way King writes. Blanca Chester’s (46) quote explains that Robinson’s literature has caused King to make changes in the way he writes dialogue, addresses readers and characters, chooses characters (for example adopting characters from Indigenous cultures) and connects his story lines (as cited by Paterson Lesson 3.1). After I read part one of King’s book Green Grass, Running WaterI agreed with most of what Chester says, as I can see many similarities in both Robinson’s and King’s literature. I see similarities when it comes to the unique role of narrator being able to communicate with the characters and/or with the readers and the using characters form Indigenous cultures and Christianity. One thing that stood out to be a little bit more complicated to me was the amount and the extent that oral syntax was used by both writers. It is explained on a Wikipedia page for Green Grass, Running Waterthat King “has been hailed as a merger between oral and written tradition” (Green Grass, Running Water Wikipedia) and although I do agree with this statement I do feel that King has not preserved the oral tradition of the story to the same extent that it is preserved in Robinson’s book. In Robinson’s stories the reader is almost forced to have to read the stories out loud because Wickwire writes in a way that uses oral syntax and imitates human speech. In King’s Green Grass, Running Water there is some of this oral syntax presenthowever it is only used in some of the story lines and is not used to the same extent that Wickwire used it.
Now I will move on to talk about how Coyote and God are represented in Robinson’s and King’s story and the interesting power dynamic between them. In Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” God sends down an Angel to Coyote and it is explained that the Angel says to Coyote that “God says at one time you work for him… But now God sent me here to hire you again, just for a short time.” (Robinson). In this situation it feels like Coyote is working for God, and God is represented as more powerful as Coyote. What I find really interesting is that in King’s story God and Coyote have a completely different power dynamic. For example in the beginning of the story Coyote in a way creates GOD as GOD comes from one of Coyote’s dreams (King). Coyote at first says to the dream that the dream should be a dog as “Dogs are good. They are almost as good as Coyote” (King) I feel this somewhat represents that Coyote is more powerful than GOD. However, there is more to this relationship as throughout the story GOD and Coyote talk to each other like they are on the same level. What is also really interesting is how GOD is portrayed in King’s novel. CanLit GUIDES talks about the key themes of Green Grass, Running Water and cites Goldman explaining that in the story God is casted as “one of Coyote’s dreams that’s become egocentric and egotistical” (as cited in CanLit GUIDES). I totally agreed with this interpretation as I felt that in the story GOD was often acting selfish and bossy, for example he would not let others share his food in the garden and his excuse for this was it was against “Christian rules” (King). I have been thinking about why these two stories would portray the power relationship between Coyote and God so differently, and I have a few theories but nothing developed enough yet that I would be able to share. If people reading this blog have any theories to why the power relationship is so different I would love to here it!
Cooper, Guy H. “Coyote in Navajo Religion and Cosmology.”Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 1987, pp. 181–193.
“Green Grass, Running Water.”Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Grass,_Running_Water#Merging_oral_and_written_tradition.
“Key Themes.”CanLit Guides, 22 Nov. 2013, canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/green-grass-running-water-by-thomas-king/key-themes/.
King, Thomas.Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins e-Books, 2016.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.”English 372 99C Canadian Studies, blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/.
Robinson, Harry.Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. e-book.
Rose, Marion. “Moon Talk – Coyote by Marion Rose.”Fine Art America, fineartamerica.com/featured/moon-talk–coyote-marion-rose.html.
Hello! These are the three blogs that I want you to evaluate. The first one is the introduction blog and this blog is one of my favourites because I talk about how I plan to apply the knowledge that I gain in this course to my future career. And I also talk about a really amazing film called Edge of Knife which I really wanted to tell you about.
The second blog is from lesson 1.2 and in this blog I was discussing the last chapter in Chamberlin’s book If This is Your land where are your Stories. And the reason why I chose this blog is because the chapter taught me more about Indigenous stories and how these stories are not entirely fiction and how they often have a lot of facts and real history in them. I feel that the chapter inspired me to speak about how Indigenous stories have been treated unfairly as society often views these stories as purely fiction.
The third blog is the most recent one that I wrote and this one is from lesson 2.3. regarding how Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England ” uses oral syntax. I liked this blog because I am fascinated by the concept of oral syntax. I thought that it was impossible to write down an oral story and still preserve some of the storyteller elements until I saw how oral syntax can be used. * On a side note just wanted to inform you that I made a mistake in this blog that one of my peers pointed out to me I kept referring to Robinson as the writer because his name is on the cover of the book as the author and I should have been referring to Wickwire as the writer because she was the one who was actually writing in the oral syntax. https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372blog/2020/02/19/assignment-2-6-is-it-possible-to-properly-transcribe-an-oral-story/
For assignment 2.6 I decided to answer the first question regarding oral stories and how Robinson’s story “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” uses oral syntax in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud (King, 186). This question was initially interesting to me personally because as an Asian studies major I had experiences looking at Chinese vernacular written oral stories from the Ming dynasty called huaben. These huaben stories use storytellers rhetoric and tell the story in a way that feels like the narrator is speaking to a simulated audience by using transitional terms like “behold!” and “there, for all to see …”. Because I had all of this knowledge on huaben stories I wanted to see if there were any similarities between vernacular huaben stories and Robinson’s stories that use oral syntax (long story short, I found out that they were totally different from each other!).
Because Huaben stories and Robinson’s stories that use oral syntax are so different from each other I am going to move past trying to compare and contrast these two type of stories and focus on trying to uncover how the oral syntax works in Robinson’s stories. Most of us already know that “First Nations storytelling involves expert use of the voice, vocal and body expression, intonation, the use of verbal imagery, facial animation, context, plot and character development, natural pacing of the telling, and careful authentic recall of the story” and when trying to transcribe oral stories we often loose all of these features that make oral stories special. However, King explains that “Robinson, within the confines of written language is successful in creating an oral voice” (King, 186). And in order to figure out how Robinson successfully writes in a way that captures an oral voice I have read one of his stories called “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” as this story uses oral syntax in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud.
By reading this story once in my head and once out loud I learned how Robinson plays with syntax and structure in order to encourage readers to read the story out loud. When reading Robinson’s story silently in my head I initially felt that the rhythm of the story felt choppy and awkward. And some of the reasons why I felt awkward while reading this in my head is because there were sometimes missing words in the sentence, some of the sentences were fragments, sentences repeated themselves, abbreviated words and some of the sentences used grammar that I deemed to be “incorrect”. However, when reading Robinson’s story out loud it felt much more natural, I realized that Robinson was writing not in sentences but in utterances as when you said the story out loud it sounded close to how people speak in everyday life. Like for example when we are speaking in everyday life we do not have really long grammatically perfect sentences we speak in shorter choppier utterances and we are often dropping off words, using abbreviated words, and repeating our words and phrases to emphasize important points of our speech. Furthermore, I realized that the choppy lines were actually an indication for where to take breaths and how long you should pause. For example in the story when the story goes:
“And the fog come.
The fog on the lake … and they disappeared.
And they don’t see ’em.
So they go back.
Another time.” (Robinson)
readers know that there are short pauses between the first three lines and then long pauses for the fourth and fifth line as the spaces between the utterances are much longer.
I feel that because Robinson is writing in a way that is mimicking natural speech this encourages the readers to want to read this story out loud rather than read this story in their head. When reading this story in your head it just feels wrong and in my opinion is harder to understand and make meaning out of the story. When reading it out loud it sounds more natural and it feel like someone is actually telling you a story as is written in a way that mimics human speech patterns.
“Story Telling.”First Nation Pedagogy Online, firstnationspedagogy.ca/storytelling.html.
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.
Theobald, Ulrich. “Huaben 話本, Story Scripts.”Huaben 話本 (Www.chinaknowledge.de), 3 May 2013, www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Terms/huaben.html.
“Why Human Speech Is Special.”The Scientist Magazine®, www.the-scientist.com/features/why-human-speech-is-special–64351.
The question in the lesson that interested me the most was the one that discussed the reasons why we have limited understandings about first nation stories.
The professor discusses that the first reason why we have problems understanding first nation stories is because “the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness” (Paterson). I totally agree with as I believe that when an oral story is written down on paper it often ends up being watered-down and is not as meaningful or impactful as it was intended to be originally. When researching about aboriginal stories I found a website that said “in some cultures, if a story is written down it is degraded” (Indigenous corporate training), and I feel like this is the case for some of the indigenous stories as when they get written down the whole oral performance of the story is lost.
Next the professor explains that First Nation children being taken away from their families and put into residential schools have “disrupted the continuity and credibility of ascribing land ownership through stories” (Paterson). I also agree with this point as it is widely known that residential schools “[contributed] to a general loss of language and culture” (Indigenous foundations) , this is because the residential schools took the First Nation children away from their families and this caused the children to not learn the stories and to be unable to pass them down.
Another reason why it is hard to understand the full meaning of First Nation stories is explained in the introduction of the book Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memoryby Harry Robinson. Wendy Wickwire explains that after hearing the story from Harry she went to look at “oral narrative collections for this region to see how Harry’s forebears had depicted Coyote” (Robsinson, introduction) and she found multiple versions of Harry’s Coyote story but the problem was that the “extensive variations among them made it impossible to find anything close to a single storyline” (Robsinson, introduction). Therefore, another limitation for having a deeper understanding of First Nation stories is that there is no single story line because of the many variations of a single story, and it is hard to understand the deeper meaning as these variations conflict with each other, lack detail, and are missing important parts (Robinson, Introduction).
Erika, Paterson. “Lesson 2:2.”English 372 99C Canadian Studies, blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/.
Joseph, Bob. “11 Things You Should Know about Aboriginal Oral Traditions.”11 Things You Should Know about Aboriginal Oral Traditions, www.ictinc.ca/blog/11-things-you-should-know-about-aboriginal-oral-traditions.
Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Talonbooks, 2005.
“The Residential School System.”Indigenousfoundations, indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/.
It was so interesting to read about the meaning of home from a variety of different perspectives. Some of my peers had ideas that related really closely to mine and others had really unique ideas that I have never even considered. The blogs I read were from Sarah Afful, Gaby Rienhart, Maya Sumel, Claire Taylor, Navid Yazdani, and Brenda Druhall.
Similarities among all of the blogs:
- Lots of us talked about wanting to move out of a small home town because of various reasons. Sarah Afful talked about how in the beginning Nina thought of her small home town as “repressive” (Afful, 2020). Personally in my blog I exclaimed that I was getting “bored of going to the same restaurants, and shopping at the one mall” (Scharf, 2020).
- Maya Sumel and Gaby Rienhart both talk about how home is not always with your family it can sometimes be with friends or others that you have “soul-level connections with” (Rienhart, 2020). Maya Sumel similarly says in her blog post “But home does not have to mean you are with your family. Home can be with your loved ones too, or even on your own” (Sumel, 2020).
- Brenda Druhall discusses homesickness and how she has to overcome homesickness in Vancouver and eventually she starts feeling that Vancouver is her home (Druhall, 2020). Homesickness is something I touched on but did not go into depth in my blog, but I feel that we both had similar feelings when it came to moving to another place and slowly becoming less homesick and the new place becoming your home.
Differences among all of the blogs:
- Sarah Afful and my blog post differ as we both had different feelings about how a loss of a family member effects our perceptions of home. Sarah Afful says in her blog post how “there is something about losing a parent that makes you feel like you’ve lost a piece of home” (Afful, 2020) and how when Nina losses her father she feels that “If dad was gone than it definitely couldn’t be in that town thatdressed her” (Afful, 2020) . I whole heartily agree with her statement but when I went back and looked over my blog post I saw that I interpreted my loss of my Father and the connection with my home a bit differently. In my blog I explain how when I lost my Father I feel like my connection with my home became stronger as my relationship with my mother and sister grew and now this home I lived in was a vessel of memories of my father and I grew closer to the home (Scharf, 2020).
- Navid Yazdani’s blog was very unique and different from the rest of the blog’s I read. Navid wrote about home being a physical place, Navid explains home is “a place where shutting the doors behind me gives me a feeling of shelter. Home is the feeling of locking out the chaos behind me, separated by just inches of building material” (Yazdani, 2020). I feel like Navid took the question in a very literal way but was still able to make connections and discuss home values and what they feel home is and what they look for in a home. I really enjoyed reading Navid’s as it was refreshing to read something that was unique.
Here I will summarize all that I have learned from reading different peoples blog posts. Lots of us feel that we have to get out of our small town in order to search for home. And lots of others feel like where your family is is not always where home is as sometimes home can be with close friends or others. When breaking out of our shells and moving around to find a place like home and people that make us feel like home we all often feel homesick but this does go away as we get more used to the new place and the new people we are living with. A loss of a love one can affirm our connection with home or send us to search farther for a new home. And lastly we should not forget that home is something that is literal as it is what protects us from the elements and we should be thankful that we are able to live in a home.
Afful, Sarah. “Dressed by my Mother” SarahAfful Just another UBC Blog site, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/afful/2020/01/.
Druhall, Brenda. “2:2 A short story about home” English 372, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/brendadruhall/
Rienhart, Gaby “The story of home”Explore Gaby’s Blog,2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/gabyliteratureexplorer/2020/01/28/the-story-of-home/.
Scharf, Sidney. “Assignment 2.2 Sense of home”Canadian literature,2, Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372blog/.
Sumel, Maya. “Assignment 2.2” OOH CANADA!,2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mayasumel/.
Taylor, Claire. “Assignment 2.2” ENGL 372 Claire Taylor, 2 Feb. 2020 https://blogs.ubc.ca/clairetaylor/
Yazdani, Navid. “2.2-A WARM HOME”CANADIAN STUDIES, 2 Feb. 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/nyazdani/
Home used to be a small farm nestled beside a river out in the countryside. During the winter home was the smell of wood on the fire in the house, and during the summer home was the smell of horses and hay outside. Home was the beautiful view of the river and the mountains from our backyard. Home was the feeling of a warm horse beneath me when I was riding bareback. Home was the numb tingly feeling that you get in your fingers when carrying out water pails to the horses in the middle of December. Home was the sound of frogs in the backyard on a summer night. And it was also the sound of hungry horses neighing because they want to be fed in the morning. Home was the taste of burned marshmallows in the summer and hot chocolate in the winter. For my childhood this was home, but due to unforeseen circumstances I was forced to grow up and leave this place that I called home.
My next home was in a small town, this home was very different from my first home and it took a while to get used to. Back on the farm there were beautiful green mountains with tall trees that were the homes of squirrels. In this new home the mountains are all brown decorated with cactus and sagebrush which were the homes of rattlesnakes. Back on the farm it was just the four of us my Mom, Dad, little sister, and myself. But now this new home is really busy and loud filled with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends all coming over to say goodbye. This home is the place where I also had to say goodbye to my Dad as in this home he passed away from cancer. Our family of four soon became a family of three the house went quiet. This home although filled with painful memories is still a home that I love as it is also filled with happy memories too. One memory I have is sitting outside with my father in the backyard watching big fluffy bumble bees pollinate the pink flowers in the tree. This was also the home where I became closer to my mom and sister. It is the home where we three girls united together and planned vacations to Hawaii, bought a hot tub, held parties, and watched TV in bed together. My relationship I have with my mother and little sister grew a lot in this home. But soon I grew out of this home. I got bored of going to the same restaurants, and shopping at the one mall that we had in this little town. And I just did not picture myself going to one university we had in town. I knew that if I went to this university I would be going to school with all the people I went to highschool with I was no longer a teenager I was becoming an adult and therefore I moved out on my own.
The home that I live in now is in Vancouver. For me Vancouver is a place of independence, freedom, opportunity, and new experiences. Of course when I first moved here I often got homesick and yearned to be back in my little town but soon that changed. Vancouver is now my home as it is a place where am able to follow my dreams and passions. Here at my home I can study what I am passionate about as I am able to attend UBC which has “one of the leading Asian studies programs in Canada” (The department of Asian studies). I also am able to pursue my dream of becoming an English teacher and be able to choose from an abundance of different teaching jobs. I am also able to develop new hobbies as Vancouver gave me the opportunity to become an avid cold water scuba diver. The multiculturalism in Vancouver is another reason why I call it home as I am able to meet new people, try new food, and practice speaking new languages. And now when I go back to my small hometown, I feel homesick and cannot wait to get back to Vancouver.
Overall when I am told to write a short story that describes my home I cannot help but write about a bunch of different places. For me I had a different place that I called home for each stage of my life. These places all hold a special place in my heart and I could not say that I loved one more than another.
Before writing this story I did a little bit of research to look into how to write captivating descriptive passages. I learned that it is good to use all of the human senses (Anders) and this is what I tried to do for most of my story.
Anders, Charlie Jane. “How to Write Descriptive Passages Without Boring the Reader or Yourself.” io9, io9, 16 Dec. 2015, io9.gizmodo.com/how-to-write-descriptive-passages-without-boring-the-re-1479764153.
Andresen, Brendan. “Scuba Diving Club Vancouver Courses Lessons Training.”UBC Aqua Society, diveubc.com/.
“The Department of Asian Studies: University of British Columbia.” Department of Asian Studies, asia.ubc.ca/.
I have a great story to tell you. This story starts off with the children the most innocent and naive members of the village. The children that lived in the village all grew up being taught and told stories about the greatness of their leader. The village referred to their leader as Father as he was the protector and provider of the village. Every child learned in school the great story of how Father fought off the bad people who threatened the security of their village. The children loved hearing these stories and even created a game that they would play after school. The children would pretend to be Father and his army and would run and catch the other children who pretended to be the bad people. They ran through the woods with sharpened sticks yelling I am going to catch you and I am going to kill you, the game only ended when all the bad people were caught and ‘killed’.
The children had to attend school everyday, and everyday during class one child was picked to tell a story to the class. Most children told stories where they confessed their love for Father or of the greatness of Father. But today the story told was very different. Today a little girl named Lily was chosen to tell a story. Lily was an abnormally small orphan child who was adopted into their village, everyone loved Lily as she was very kind to everyone she knew. Lily started off her story by describing a beautiful scenery of a village that was nestle by a mountain next to a waterfall all the students were captivated as they never heard of a village this beautiful. A student cried out “I want to travel to this village it sounds like the setting of a fairytale!”. When Lily heard this her eyes got shallow and dark, “You can’t travel to this place anymore this village was burned to the ground and everyone is now dead,” she said in a hollow tone. The whole class waited for her to continue they were all on the edge of their seats. Lily then described the gory details of the burning and slaughtering of the people in this village, she ended her story by stating “the man that all of you refer to as father is the one who did this to my village”. Everyone gasped in horror, a few children started to cry, and the teacher’s face turned sickly pale. This was the first time the children learned about the evil that was present in their world. The teacher hurried to rush Lily out of the room, she then returned to the class telling them to forget the story and that it was not true. “But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world” (King, 10).
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories (CBC Massey Lectures) (p. 10). House of Anansi Press Inc. Kindle Edition.
Commentary what I discovered
I found this assignment more difficult then I expected. I actually had to do some extra reading when it comes to writing a story, I learned that it is always helpful to write stories that are similar to own events in your own life this helps you add real and authentic emotion into your story (Jenkins). Furthermore, I read about the importance of sharing your story and I felt having a fictional story that I could connect to myself is a way to get my story out in a way that does not feel like a violation or a threat to my privacy.
When reading my story out loud I felt it was great to get some feedback from my peers and I ended up changing my story a lot after reading it to them. I feel like when you share your story out loud you are forced to really hear what you are writing and this causes you to want to change things or to come up with new ideas to make it better.
Jenkins, Jerry B. “How to Write a Short Story: 9 Steps from a Best Selling Author.”Jerry Jenkins | Proven Writing Tips, Jerry Jenkins, 12 Nov. 2019, jerryjenkins.com/how-to-write-short-stories/.
“The Importance of Sharing Your Story.”Communication Skills | ReachOut Australia, au.reachout.com/articles/the-importance-of-sharing-your-story.
In my blog post I will be summarizing three significant points that I found interesting in the last chapter of Chamberlin’s book If this is Your Land, Where are your Stories. The last chapter of Chamberlin’s book is called Ceremonies and I was curious when the chapter explained that in order to tell the indigenous stories the proper ceremony is required (Chamberlin, ch.11). In J. Edward Chamberlin’s book interview he explained that an “elder … wouldn’t [tell the story] if the conditions did not exist [and] he was quite willing to die and not transfer the stories because the conditions were not right the ceremony could not be produced properly so the story would not be told” (Knopf). However, westerners also have ceremonies too as they need certain conditions to be met in order to accept the story. In the interview Chamberlin gives an example of this in his book as people needed to go through the “process of proving the geological record that yes a landslide took place 7000 years ago that corroborates some native myth” (Knopf). Overall my take away from this was that people have different conditions that need to be met in order to accept/transfer the story.
The next point I found interesting about in this last chapter was the Western dominance that was present when deciding what story confirms the truth. It was explained that “the court was inclined to see the scientific story as confirming the legendary one. However, the elders of the Gitksan were at pains to persuade the judge that each story was validated by the other; that neither had a monopoly on understanding what happened” (Chamberlin, ch.11). This goes to show that Indigenous knowledge is still being viewed as being fictional and this most likely is due to the racism that is still present in society. It has been proven that “there are many cases where science and history are catching up with what Indigenous people have long known” (Nicholas), however society seems not to accepted this as many people still look at Indigenous stories as being fully fictions.
Lastly, what I found interesting in the last chapter was how it touched on the question of what makes a story fictional and what makes it real and then it shows how the lines are often blurred. In the chapter Chamberlin explains how “the problem with poems and paintings and performances from other cultures is not their strangeness, which some part of us always welcomes, but the way in which they give a signal that we are at the border” (Chamberlin, ch. 11). This border is a “visible boundary from everyday life to the theatre” (Knopf) or how I like to think about it is the line between reality and fiction. In society we see some things as being black and white like it is either fiction or reality and nothing in between however Chamberlin explains that this is wrong to see things this way. Chamberlin further says how science is often looked at as “hard practical reality” (Knopf) but this is wrong as it does have some element of fiction in it as scientists have never seen an atom yet they draw pictures of atoms and we believe that these pictures are truthful (Knopf). Society gets to decide what is truthful and not. People sometime have issues in believing that Indigenous stories are truthful and are based in reality and this is most likely because of the the gap that society has created between Indigenous education and Western education. “In pre-colonial times, the process of learning for Aboriginal young people was very different from educational systems found in Western societies“(Simpson) and just because something is different it does not mean it is wrong or untruthful. Overall the Indigenous stories should not be thought of something that needs to be backed up with science, chapter 11 shows that their is value looking at scientific data and Indigenous stories equally backing up and confirming each other (Chamberlin, ch.11).
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? . Knopf Canada. Kindle Edition.
Knopf, Alfred.“If this is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?” The Writer’s Cafe, 2003, http://writerscafe.ca/book_blogs/writers/j-edward-chamberlin_if-this-is-your-land-where-are-your-stories.html. Accessed 16 Jan. 2020.
Nicholas, George. “How Western Science Is Finally Catching up to Indigenous Knowledge.”Macleans.ca, 11 July 2018, www.macleans.ca/society/how-western-science-is-finally-catching-up-to-indigenous-knowledge/.
Simpson, Leanne. “Stories, Dreams, and Ceremonies: Anishinaabe Ways of Learning.”Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education, 7 Mar. 2012, tribalcollegejournal.org/stories-dreams-ceremonies-anishinaabe-ways-learning/.