Refusing to Listen and Listening to Refusal: Dialogue, Healing, and Rupture in Green Grass, Running Water

Gage Karahkwi:io Diabo

doi:10.33776/candb.v8i1.3607

Gage Karahkwi:io Diabo University of British Columbia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6307-5614

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33776/candb.v8i1.3607

Keywords:

First Nations Literature, reconciliation, dialogue

Supporting Agencies

FRQSC, SSHRC, Concordia University, University of British Columbia

Abstract

In Red Skin, White Masks Glen Sean Coulthard speaks to the asymmetries that plague state-driven attempts at enforcing recognition, reciprocity, and reconciliation with First Peoples communities in post-TRC Canada. Although the exigency of achieving a mutually-beneficial, reciprocal form of communication between settler-state and First Peoples has grown especially visible in our present moment, the mechanics of listening and speaking both within and between communities have in fact long been a pivotal concern in First Peoples’ fiction.

This project investigates the functions of dialogue in Greek-Cherokee novelist Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water With attention to King’s unique style of writing non-dialogues between characters, as well as the structural role that dialogue plays in his writing more broadly, my analysis shows how the act of refusing to listen becomes a means for transforming and generating new conversations across different (typically intercommunal) power dynamics.

Author Biography

Gage Karahkwi:io Diabo, University of British Columbia

Graduate Student (PhD-level)

Department of English Language and Literatures

University of British Columbia

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