Some Interesting Stuff
Here are some things that might interest you for our class:
THOMAS KING
- The introduction to a book about Thomas King and his writing is available online for free.
- There’s an interview with Thomas King from CBC Radio here.
- Here’s another interview with King.
NALO HOPKINSON
- There are some interviews with Nalo Hopkinson on this page. The earliest interview, in May 2003 (Episode 154) includes mention of the book Skin Folk winning the World Fantasy Award. (The story we’re reading is from that book.) Also interesting is the discussion of the idea of “Code Sliding,” which Hopkinson discusses in more detail on her website, here. Code sliding is a particularly useful idea for discussing this story. (The concept in Linguistics of “Code switching” is comparable, and also useful for discussing this story.)
- Here’s the sample MP3 of Nalo Hopkinson reading from the introduction of the novel that the story we’re reading is part of (titled The Midnight Robber). we listened to (original Realaudio sample here). I’ll give you a copy of this text, too, but I’m giving you the sample now mostly so you have some idea of the sound of the language that Hopkinson uses in the book, the accent, the vocabulary, the dialect, and so on. And yes, some native speakers of English do speak like this. And yes, I had to listen to it a few times to understand it, too. (And I didn’t get it all until I read it on the page. It’s a foreign dialect to me, also. But the sound of it is just magical, isn’t it?)
- Hopkinson’s bio is worth checking out. There are a few interviews worth looking at, too, here and here. She also says things about culture and genre that are interesting here.