Is Literature All in English?

“English embeds certain things just by virtue of its structure. It’s a very thing-ifying language; it’s very noun-heavy. Most of the Indigenous languages that I know of are very relational and verb-heavy. It’s a fundamentally different way of relating to the world and to community. If [the] Indigenous literature [you see] is all in English, then you’re missing a significant reality in terms of Indigenous forms of expression.”

In this episode, we welcome Daniel Heath Justice, a Colorado-born citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He works on Musqueam territory at the University of British Columbia, where he is Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English and holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture. A literary scholar, fantasy novelist, and cultural historian, his critical and creative work considers Indigenous kinship, sexuality, speculative fiction, and other-than-human relations.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the role of storytelling in shaping culture, the politics of what gets validated as literature, the power of speculative fiction in seeding imaginations for other ways of being, and more.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Tear Down The Wall by Forest Veil. The episode-inspired artwork is by Subin Yang.)

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