The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-book review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. When considered against the context of the book as a whole, which is the best summary of the idea conveyed by King’s repeated cautions about believing him as a narrator?

A) Marginalized peoples have a built-in motivation to twist the truth.

B) Stories can have power over us whether they are true or not.

C) An audience has to take responsibility for knowing something about the storyteller.

D King also functions as a kind of Trickster figure in his role as narrator.

2. Within the context of this book, what can King’s repeated use of the phrase “it’s turtles all the way down” best be understood to mean?

A) Stories are inherently unreliable and should be regarded solely as entertainment.

B) There are an infinite number of ways to tell any given story.

C) Stories rest on other stories, so there is ultimately no way to assess the truth value of their “foundations.”

D) Native storytelling is an ancient practice that deserves recognition as “foundational” to Native life.

3. Which story from his own life is most clearly intended to be the culmination of the motif King introduces with this repeated warning: “Just don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story”?

A) the story about the Cardinal family

B) the story about searching for his father

C) the story about his photography project

D) the story about working in New Zealand

4. Which is the most accurate term for the structure of King’s discourse in this text?

A) linear

B) episodic

C) epistolary

D) recursive

5. What does King’s use of historical information throughout the text convey about his beliefs regarding history?

A)History is not as relevant to present experience as most people believe.

B) History is composed of narratives and is yet another form of story.

C) History is cyclical, and it is the small variations that really matter.

D) History is a public record, not a private one, and as such is more accurate.

6. Which view of Native peoples is conveyed through King’s stories about photography, Native authors, and King’s own experiences with Native identity?

A) Native identity is largely a construct of outsiders and is irrelevant to actual Native peoples.

B) “Authentic” Native identity is a chimera that distracts Native peoples from achieving their potential.

C) Native peoples and their experiences are diverse and characterized by varying combinations of beliefs and practices.

D) Most Native people are so thoroughly acculturated that they are no longer meaningfully distinct from the dominant society.

7. The narrative about his father that King returns to throughout the book functions as an illustration of which of King’s assertions?

A) Performing “Indian” identity is exhausting.

B) Stories are only as reliable as their narrators.

C) Stories are all that we are.

D) Reality does not fit neatly into dichotomous categories.

8. Which of the following describes King’s language in this text?

A) conversational

B) pedantic

C) vernacular

D) comic

9. Which is the most likely intended function of King’s use of repetition, recursive structure, and informal style?

A) to reinforce his status as a Native American author

B) to keep readers engaged and entertained

C) to increase the clarity of the flow of ideas

D) to bring oral storytelling tools into a written narrative

10. How do King’s personal stories illustrate his assertion that some details of any story are unknown even to the storyteller?

A) His stories sometimes omit elements like clear context, thorough development, and tidy endings.

B) His stories contain details that are clearly meant as hyperbole or mythic embellishments.

C) His stories explicitly point to missing details and ask readers to fill in details and meanings of their own.

D) His stories are obviously fictionalized, containing names and dialogue that are drawn from his imagination.

11. When someone comments to King that he is “not the Indian I had in mind,” which of King’s assertions does this support?

A) Stories are often used as excuses.

B) Stories create our realities.

C) Stories change with repetition.

D) Stories are always incomplete.

12. King’s discussion of Louis Owens’s suicide is most clearly related to which of the book’s repeated elements?

A) his opening of chapters with the story about the earth on turtle’s back

B) his closing of chapters with the comment, “Just don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story”

C) his repeatedly urging the reader to question his reliability as a narrator

D) his frequent return to the story of his father’s abandonment of the family

13. According to King, what do ideas like the “National Indian” and legislation like Canada’s 1876 Indian Act have in common?

A) They are both unreliable narratives.

B) They are examples of how storytelling reveals the character of the storyteller.

C) They demonstrate how central Native peoples are to the Western imagination.

D) They both result in erasure of Indian identity.

14. Which of the following anecdotes best conveys the text’s thematic concern with the struggle between image and reality?

A) the storm King encountered while moving to Alberta

B) King’s failure to support the Cardinal family

C) King’s reaction to the critic of his radio show

D) the elderly farmer whose tomato crop was destroyed

15. Which of the following anecdotes best conveys the text’s thematic concern with the fluid nature of stories and the truth?

A) King’s changing perception of his father

B) the discrimination King’s mother faced at Boeing

C) King’s job culling deer in New Zealand

D) King’s reaction to seeing the Will Rogers exhibit

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating text details to support your response.

1. Explain the significance of photographs to King’s narrative.

2. What is ironic about King’s own use of dichotomous thinking, and what is the likely reason he uses it?