"The truth about stories is that that's all we are"
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The blurb
"Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous."
In The Truth About Stories, Native novelist and scholar Thomas King explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. From creation stories to personal experiences, historical anecdotes to social injustices, racist propaganda to works of contemporary Native literature, King probes Native culture's deep ties to storytelling. With wry humor, King deftly weaves events from his own life as a child in California, an academic in Canada, and a Native North American with a wide-ranging discussion of stories told by and about Indians. So many stories have been told about Indians, King comments, that "there is no reason for the Indian to be real. The Indian simply has to exist in our imaginations." That imaginative Indian that North Americans hold dear has been challenged by Native writers - N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louis Owens, Sherman Alexie, and others - who provide alternative narratives of the Native experience that question, create a present, and imagine a future. King reminds the reader, Native and non-Native, that storytelling carries with it social and moral responsibilties.
"Don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now.
The Review
Had I seen this book on a shelf, or read the blurb, I never would have picked it up. It's not a book I would ever buy for myself; on the face of it, it ticks none of my boxes. It's non-fiction, historical, political, slightly autobiographical.....
And yet - it ended up utterly ticking all of my boxes (including some I didn't even know I had.)
King tackles a really tricky subject matter - the treatment and degradation of Native culture, literature and lives. These lectures, although clearly worthy in their content, could easily have been heavy going. But King has such a deft hand, everything is delivered with his standard tongue in cheek manner. I mean it's depressing subject matter - the continual oppression and erosion of native culture and yet...King never made me feel anything but hopeful.
I'm usually a staunch believer in plot over everything. I can make my peace with most literary styles if the plot is good enough to grab me. I've ignored people when they've said the way the story is told matters.
But now I believe it. In this book King makes it abundantly clear how the context, the delivery, the way a story is told - all shape how we understand it. And it matters. It matters when the stories we pass on are about real people who aren't getting the chance to tell their own story.
It made me laugh. I just wasn't expecting that. His sarcasm and banter with the reader (frequently talking to us in asides) is captivating. It made me laugh out loud several times at his wonderful and witty observations. Especially within 'You're not the Indian I had in mind'. The way he got across the reality, that to be valued as 'authentic' Indians, his people have to live up to some ludicrous stereotype that was borne out of Western stories. Of the brave, silent Indian, with the feathered headdress, on his noble steed. He takes these complicated ideas and sets them out so simply for you with his sharp cultural observations, its impossible to argue with his rhetoric.
I was confused to begin with at the start of each chapter - why was this passage being repeated? In employing such subtle tactics, King reinforces everything he's been telling you in his essays. But he also makes the book lyrical, whimsical - you just kept coming back to this passage that made you smile. It brought together these essays so simply and beautifully - the type of elegant simplicity you know must have been really hard to pull off.
In short, I loved this book. I'm going to go back to it again and again. I'll quote it frequently. I'm going to recommend it onwards - and so the story will continue.
Thank you to the friend that recommended this to me. You nailed it.