Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural Inversions (review)

If Robert Frost is right that there is something “that doesn’t love a wall,” that “something” lives in Thomas King’s stories; humor is King’s version of the “frozen ground-swell” that undermines and eventually topples it, and we, as readers, become part of that ground-swell. King’s stories do not merely seek our imaginative engagement; they require it. They cross borders, dissolve boundaries—or at least compel us to question their wisdom and challenge their authority—and by so doing reveal often unexpected likenesses and relationships. King tells his stories through novels, short stories, photographs, a children’s book, a popular radio program, film, critical articles, and television appearances. The authors of this valuable study of King’s creative oeuvre reveal with precision and thoroughness the ways in which King uses humor to blur the boundaries that restrict and compromise not only the physical and spiritual lives of Native peoples but also the intellectual and creative potential of all of us.

King’s “pan-Indian self-positioning” is crucial to this endeavor, a “powerful tool, which acknowledges post-contact interaction with non-Natives, yet focuses on the experience of contemporary Natives.” “I think a lot of people think of pan-Indianness as a diminution of ‘Indian,’” King has said, “but I think of it as simply a reality of contemporary life.” Though his pan-Indian stance “makes him vulnerable to exclusion from both Native and non-Native arenas,” Davidson, Walton, and Andrews (hereafter referred to as “the authors”) tell us, “[i]t is our goal to explore the richness of this positioning and the relevance of his various border crossings” (28).

King’s pan-Indian positioning is not only rich in imaginative potential but also essential to his interrogation of the artificial, self-imposed tyrannies of the various boundaries he crosses, such as gender, race, nation, and genre. Separate chapters deal with King’s perception of the nature and consequences of these boundaries and the different ways he uses humor to obscure them, such as his use of “trickster discourse.” Coyote, for example, in King’s second novel, Green Grass, Running Water, and several short stories, exposes the binary thinking that underpins categories such as race and gender. Coyote teaches us “how to survive and celebrate the disorderly aspects of life” and “embodies the resistance and endurance of Native North American communities, whose belief systems have been marginalized or suppressed by White institutions” (34). King, in effect, creates his own trickster discourse through comic inversion; he “incorporates elements of paradox, irony, and parody” not only “to undermine some of the standard clichés about Native peoples” but also to “dismantle the hierarchical relationship between Natives and non-Natives living in Canada and the United States” (35). Ultimately, King’s comedy is a force that “takes on a life of its own in a Native North American context by bringing communities together, facilitating conflict resolution, and establishing a common bond between otherwise divided nations” (35).

Border Crossings is especially strong in its treatment of the intentions and variety of King’s comic strategies and in the insight it provides into the vast scope of his comic endeavors. His humor targets not only what we think but also how we think, Natives as well as non-Natives, and the laughter it provokes allows readers a productive, relatively painless way to engage in the self—as well as social criticism necessary to promote understanding and improve communication between Natives and non-Natives. At its best, it advances the decolonizing process by opening all minds to the rich potential of the imagination, intellect, and perspective of Native cultures to create a better place for all peoples.

That potential resides in the inclusiveness of Native cultures, which have traditionally fostered dialogue, consensus, and harmony between individual desire and personal fulfillment and the communal good. The authors’ consideration of King’s sense of audience—and his relationship to his...