The Name is "Hoe ... Ivanhoe"

            On Tuesday morning after yoga I did my journal posts and then returned to working on the Ask the Author assignment. I had sent several questions to Justin, hoping he would pick his favourite three to answer, but he answered them all. He’s set up a Google Doc for us to work on together. Yesterday I deleted some of the questions and answers. Since there has to be a narrative flow between the answers and the questions and since I’m the interviewer it seems to me that my questions are responsible for the flow so I’ve narrowed it down to three questions, despite the fact that Justin is attached to a question I want to get rid of because although I like it too, it doesn’t fit. I revised the first two questions and uploaded them. In my mind there is just one left to revise. The deadline is at midnight, or rather 23:59.

            At 11:00 I logged on to my Canadian Literature lecture. 

            The professor chatted for ten minutes about taking walks. She lives at Avenue Road and Bedford. 

            I was disappointed to learn that our final exam would be on December 22. I had been hoping to be free after the first week in December. We will be tested on our knowledge of the material and our writing skills. 

            On the Ask the Author assignment she said that some students did not collaborate, so I guess I’m lucky that I chanced on someone I could work with. 

            The first half of the lecture was on David Chariandy’s Brother. 

            Jelly is brought back by Aisha and he brings changes. Like a ghost he is haunting Michael. It is as if he had died and returned. He feels guilty because Francis died in defence of him and Michael thinks he should feel; guilty. He is also jealous of Jelly. 

            We learn that Jelly can cook. The hot peppers incite coughing in Michael which appears like distress and causes Jelly concern, but Michael’s mother laughs for the first time and this is a turning point. Food creates community. 

            Aisha is a black female bildungsroman. Black women are strong, individual, have agency, are “the exception”. She breaks through the divide and is nurturing without being motherly. Her arrival mediates the shift from personal to collective grief. 

            The gathering is a deferred wake, ten years late. Strangers versus friends. It reproduces Desireae’s. Jelly arrives to cook and clean. Michael sees them as intruders and lowlifes, entering his home without permission. 

            I say that Michael’s lack of welcome is a parallel of Dru’s at Desireae’s but she thinks Dru was welcoming. I wouldn’t find someone shouting, “Shut the door fool!” as welcoming. He let people stay but he wasn’t overtly welcoming in an emotional way. 

            Michael doesn’t want to be under surveillance. 

            The professor finally mentions that Jelly and Francis were lovers. This is hinted at in only very subtle ways.

            Jelly cleans because he does not want to leave stains of grief, memory or juice. 

            There is mention of a “good cop”. 

            On the last page I said that Nina Simone is obviously the voice they are listening to and that she is almost a character in the story. Since Ruth first frowns and then calls for volume this song is probably “Ne me quitte pas”, transformed from a song of despair to one of hope. 

            Hip Hop is dialogic. It responds to community. The four people at the end are a new family. 

            I say that “volume” is also a definition of space and so it’s about not living in a small world anymore. 

            We took a break. 

            I noticed there were 37 students. 

            We began talking about Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. 

            The novel speaks to a lot of Indigenous concerns. It is about an epidemic. It won the Governor General’s Award for Young Adult Fiction. The professor provided a link that summarizes the novel and the characters. 

            In an interview with the CBC Dimaline said she wanted to put aside defensiveness. She wants people to say, “I would never let that happen again.” 

            There have been genocides in the 20th Century. The Muslims in Yugoslavia and the Holocaust.

            History is not over. It resides in the present. The TRC defined cultural genocide. In the 1950s Inuit were forcibly removed from Labrador to Ellesmere Island so there would be a population there to support Canada’s claim on the territory. 

            The residential schools were run by churches. Three fifths Catholic, one quarter Anglican and the rest between United and Presbyterian. In the whole history 150,000 students attended and 6000 died. The last school closed in 1996. They cut students’ hair, threw their clothes away, gave them numbers, fed them a substandard diet, abused them, did not report abuse. She showed a before and after photo of a Cree student named Thomas Moore Keesick. 

            In 2008 after the Reconciliation Commission report, Harper apologized. A culture of apologies does not erase the history. Reconciliation is ongoing. There need to be reparations and follow through for real change. Land acknowledgements are insufficient. 

            The marrow is where 500 billion blood cells are produced every day. 

            Dreams are produced by memory. They are brought to life by stories and establish relations. She quoted “Memory Serves” by Lee Maracle. Memory creates kinship. It is an act of witnessing and a way of storing community knowledge. “All my relations.” Memory serves as evidence and it is different from that of property based societies. The personal and the collective are important. Internalized loss produces trauma. White settlers are still extracting from Indigenous people. 

            The bones dance. The bones are the keepers of stories. Bones are stones. There is an organic interrelationship with the universe. 

            Speculative fiction combines science fiction and fantasy. Temporality speaks to the present without losing sight of the past. Speculative fiction is a non-mimetic genre, meaning it is not based on reality. By not mimicking the present the reality imagines the present otherwise. It follows some traditions of romance. It is not necessarily an objective or authentic glimpse into the future. It is concerned with justice, prophecy and the environment. Examples are The Handmaid’s Tale, Salt Fish Girl, Tiger Flu, Frankenstein, and Alice in Wonderland. Its characteristics are alien and alternative settings, different technologies. Harvesting Indigenous DNA is already happening. Usually for benevolent reasons. Speculative fiction asks “What if?” and serves as a tool to dismantle and subvert the western paradigm. 

            Dystopia is a sub-genre of Science Fiction. The universe is imagined in a negative outcome. Characters are threatened or oppressed. Information and freedom is restricted. The is surveillance and fear of the outside world. There is government, technological or corporate control. Philosophical or religious control. People are trapped and trying to escape. Young Adult novels are coming of age stories, eco-conscious, counter-hegemonic, resistance writing. Young Adult dystopias try to frighten and warn, engage the reader globally, deal with the fragile bond between tech and self. Story as medicine. 

            I had chips and salsa for lunch. 

            I tried to take a siesta but I couldn’t sleep so I got up after fifteen minutes. 

            I typed my Canadian Literature lecture notes and finished at 16:09. 

            I got back to work on my Ask the Author assignment. I finished it around 17:00 but I have to wait to see if Justin wants to make any changes before handing it in. 

            A little later Justin informed me that the deadline has been changed to this Friday. I still wasn’t sure because there are conflicting dates. 

            I took a siesta in the late afternoon and when I got up there was a confirmation from Justin that the date has definitely changed, so I’ll wait. 

            The Introduction to Canadian Literature course is so disorganized compared to the Introduction to British Literature. There are conflicting dates all over the place in ITCL and the syllabus has changed three times while with ITBL nothing has changed from day one.

            I had a potato, my last steak and gravy while watching the first episode of Ivanhoe, the 50s TV series starring a young Roger Moore. Unfortunately I could only find four episodes. 

            This story is set in the same era as The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Richard the Lion Heart as the absent King of England and Prince John his brother trying to grab the throne. It even begins like Robin Hood with the hero returning from the Crusade. But the look of the show is very different with knights dresses as one might expect from a King Arthur story. 

           When Ivanhoe is on his way home to Rowenwood Castle he is stopped by the soldiers of Sir Maurice who demand that he go to Maurice’s castle. Maurice asks him to attend a meeting with Sir John to which Ivanhoe’s father Sir Cedric has already gone. But when Maurice talks about opposing Richard, Ivanhoe says he will go alone rather than travel with a traitor. As Maurice is leaving he sees a young serf about to be whipped as his father tries to stop it. Ivanhoe steps up and frees the boy. Maurice has ordered it because the boy named Bart has a pet cockatoo named Abdul that he nursed back to health and a serf is not allowed to have such birds. Maurice comes and tells Ivanhoe to mind his own business but Ivanhoe challenges Maurice. There is a joust but Ivanhoe’s saddle is sabotaged and Ivanhoe falls from his horse. But he pole-vaults with his lance and unhorses Maurice and then defeats him on foot, earning the freedom of Bart and his father Gurth. Maurice and his men chase them back to Rowenwood and they make it just in time. Knight in charge of Rowenwood says that Sir Cedric has disowned Ivanhoe for disobeying him and going to the Crusade. Bart and Gurth offer to help Ivanhoe as it turns out that Gurth is the finest blacksmith in England. Meanwhile at Prince John’s, when Cedric hears that John wants to claim the throne he refuses to help. John orders the capture of Cedric and his ward the Lady Rowena. Bart learns of their capture and tells Ivanhoe. With the help of Bart, Gurth and five knights from Rowenwood, Ivanhoe sets a trap for Maurice’s men with trees rigged by Gurth to swing down in their path. There is a battle and Maurice and his men are sent running. Ivanhoe is welcomed home by Cedric and Rowena, the woman he loves but he says he must leave to fight Prince John. 

            Rowena is played by Norah Gorsen, who co-starred in the 1950 TV series “Little Women”. She co-starred in the film Geordie. 

           This was Roger Moore's first starring role, although he'd been in the business of acting on screen for ten years. He looked so young in this show compared to his later roles and he was already 31. I’ll bet he never thought while playing a knight in 1958 that 45 years later he would actually be made one. That night I looked outside and it was snowing. It did snow overnight a couple of weeks ago but this was the first snowfall I’ve seen this season.