JSalter PhD Final Thesis Submission.pdf - University of Guelph

listening/telling storytelling exchange. Reciprocity manifests itself as much in the
narrative and meta-narrative aspects of such novels as in the ethics that characterize the
relationships between the teller/listeners. I posit that if both teller and listener (can)
collaboratively take responsibility for the story’s meanings, this kind of reciprocal
storytelling functions as a discursive strategy that has a transformative potential to
heighten critical consciousness and facilitate social change. 6
In this context, I see contemporary diasporic authors in Canada utilizing the novel
as a site where the words and concerns of old female storytellers reach and potentially
engage a larger audience in intra- and cross-cultural dialogue. I would argue that many
novels written by Indigenous authors in Canada also provide an important lens through
which readers can gain insight into the significance of old women in the family and the
larger community. Here, I am thinking of Ma-ma-oo in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach,
Old Ella in Lee Maracle’s Ravensong, and Niska in Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road.
These novels all feature storytelling as a mode of articulation that can transgress cultural,
linguistic, and generational boundaries to potentially help both listener and teller
negotiate complicated subject positions informed by liminality and marginalization. As
Silko emphasizes in her closing lines of “Language and Literature,” storytelling reveals
the “boundless capacity of language” to “bring[…] us together, despite great distances
between cultures, despite great distances in time” (72). While these novels characterize
the development of reciprocity between teller and listener as integral when sharing stories
about trauma and dislocation, they also reflect how the diverse tensions and challenges
6 Conversely, disagreement and differences of interpretation between teller and listener
can also lead to new social understandings, but I would argue only if both participants
remain open to the recognition of multiple perspectives.
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