Narrative Voices In Thomas King's One Good Story, That One
Postcolonial Text, Vol 2, No 3 (2006)
Dances with Coyote: Narrative Voices in
Thomas King’s One Good Story, That One
Maria Truchan-Tataryn and Susan Gingell
University of Saskatchewan
Clearing a Conversational Critical Voice
—So. You know that book by Thomas King I told you I was going to read?
—One Good Story, That One?
—Yeah, that’s the one.
— Such a great title!
—Well, it sure is an appropriately tricky one. Made me expect a novel, not ten stories. And they don’t all add up to one larger story, either. There are pretty different versions of reality alongside one another in the various stories. —What do you mean exactly? Like in Green Grass, Running Water?
—Like that only more so, because King adds science fiction to the …show more content…
If King’s books put him in good company in terms of not just
Aboriginal, but also Indigenous writings of the oral—and One Good Story,
That One is no exception—the book is exceptional in having attracted little critical commentary. A number of critics refer briefly to the book or
4
Though there is still no uniformity of terminology in the field, Indigenous seems to be the increasingly preferred term to refer to Aboriginal peoples internationally. In Canada, the term Aboriginal is widely used to designate First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples, though Native is also common in this context and a naming that King himself uses, along with Indian. Wherever possible we use a specific First Nations designation, but when referring to an international context choose Indigenous, and use Aboriginal and Native interchangeably for the Canadian and American contexts.
5
In a 1994 interview with Jeffrey Canton, King reported this feeling of being at home on the Alberta prairies (99). Blaeser’s discussion of tenured identity can be found in her essay “Writing Voices Speaking: Native Authors and an Oral Aesthetic” (54).
Dances with Coyote: Narrative Voices in
Thomas King’s One Good Story, That One
Maria Truchan-Tataryn and Susan Gingell
University of Saskatchewan
Clearing a Conversational Critical Voice
—So. You know that book by Thomas King I told you I was going to read?
—One Good Story, That One?
—Yeah, that’s the one.
— Such a great title!
—Well, it sure is an appropriately tricky one. Made me expect a novel, not ten stories. And they don’t all add up to one larger story, either. There are pretty different versions of reality alongside one another in the various stories. —What do you mean exactly? Like in Green Grass, Running Water?
—Like that only more so, because King adds science fiction to the …show more content…
If King’s books put him in good company in terms of not just
Aboriginal, but also Indigenous writings of the oral—and One Good Story,
That One is no exception—the book is exceptional in having attracted little critical commentary. A number of critics refer briefly to the book or
4
Though there is still no uniformity of terminology in the field, Indigenous seems to be the increasingly preferred term to refer to Aboriginal peoples internationally. In Canada, the term Aboriginal is widely used to designate First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples, though Native is also common in this context and a naming that King himself uses, along with Indian. Wherever possible we use a specific First Nations designation, but when referring to an international context choose Indigenous, and use Aboriginal and Native interchangeably for the Canadian and American contexts.
5
In a 1994 interview with Jeffrey Canton, King reported this feeling of being at home on the Alberta prairies (99). Blaeser’s discussion of tenured identity can be found in her essay “Writing Voices Speaking: Native Authors and an Oral Aesthetic” (54).