Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol.4 Issue 10 2014

Journal of Literature
and Art Studies
Volume 4, Number 10, October 2014 (Serial Number 35)
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Journal of Literature
and Art Studies
Volume 4, Number 10, October 2014 (Serial Number 35)
Contents
Literature Studies
Li-Young Lee’s “I” Poetry: In Quest for His Self as a Diaspora 755
LI Gui-cang
Oral Narrative an Underutilized Tool of Transformation: The Case of Ateso Folk Tales
in Iteso Communities of Uganda and Kenya 767
Simon Peter Ongodia
George Orwell’s Experiment With the Ironic Narrative Structure in Nineteen Eighty-Four 784
Louai T. ABU Lebdeh, Amaal Al Masri
Debt in the Quebecois Novels of the 1960-1980 792
Marie-Dominique Boyce
Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul 802
Mirjana Marinković
The “Mother Complex” of Martha Quest 810
Rukhsana Rahim Chowdhury
Writing as Shamanic Consciousness in DainaChaviano’s Fables of an Extraterrestrial
Grandmother 817
Robin McAllister
Contesting Veterans’ Identities: Reflections Upon Gender Roles and History in
Pat Barker’s Regeneration 822
Denise Borille de Abreu
Verbal Images Paradigm in Different Lingual Cultures 831
Yermekova Zhannat
Tagore’s Poetry—Universal Psychospirituality 837
Tinni Dutta
Art Studies
A Great Citizen Is Still “Under-Construction”: The Conflicting Self-Identity
in Sayonara 1945 840
LEE Shin-yi, CHEN Jui-sung
Special Research
The Concept of Peace in the Pentateuch 848
Uri Zur
Popular Catholicism Based on Sensory Engagement and Corporeal Perception 857
Euna Lee

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836
October 2014, Vol. 4, No. 10, 755-766
Li-Young Lee’s “I” Poetry: In Quest for His Self as a Diaspora
LI
Gui-cang
Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China
As one of the representative contemporary Asian American poets, Li-Young Lee in his two poetry collections
entitled Rose and The City in Which I Love You, recuperates his fragmented family history of immigration, and
reconstructs a dynamic relationship with remembrance of the past that writes about him and defines his sense of
self. This paper from the multicultural perspective argues that understanding the past through understanding his
godlike father, Lee not only negotiates the formation of his subjectivity and identity, but also establishes a spiritual
origin and belonging not merely with his ethnic communities but with all the immigrants as well. The paper finds
that the strategy he employs in his articulation of his self is marked by his excellent execution of poetic epiphany,
and metonymic cannibalism.
Keywords: Li-Young Li, sense of self, Asian diaspora, poetic epiphany, metonymic cannibalism
Introduction
Juliana Chang (1999) in her award winning essay Reading Asian American Poetry identifies two dominant
critical perceptions of reading this body of works. The first is to practice what she considers a “privatization of
poetry, which would imply taking [the ethnic poetry] more lightly than prose narrative”, whereas the second
“conceive[s] of poetry as heavily social” (p. 85). The privatization reading is further enunciated as a critical
assessment of poetry as “a private and subjective luxury in the context of current multiculturalism” (p. 86). In
contrast, the socialized reading is said to “extol poetry as a direct and powerful embodiment of the social or
historical” (p. 86). Chang critiques these two dominant approaches to this body of works and asserts that
“whether poetry is perceived as erasing or creating racial and cultural differences, the [two] readings are in fact
inflected with and serve to maintain dominant ideologies of language and writing, race and nation” (p. 89). In
other words, whether critics privatize or politicize poetry, their critical preference reflects the mainstream
cultural ideology. As regards the critical perspectives, the two approaches as she identifies may loosely apply to
Asian American poetry as a whole, but critical readings of individual poets have to alter in alignment to the
unique qualities of their poems, because poetry criticism cannot be generally subsumed under the logic of either
privatization or politicization. Specifically, not all criticisms are adequate and productive in reading Asian
American poetry, for particular poems are intended to be interpreted particularly. For instance, contemporary
Chinese American poet Li-Young Lee presents his persona in Rose (1986) and The City in Which I Love You
(1990) as an Asian diaspora, who maneuvers across the interstices of diverse cultures, histories, discourses, and
poetic traditions in search of his identity as a diaspora; hence an obvious choice here to discuss his poetry that, to
Li Gui-cang, professor, Dean, College of International Culture and Education, Zhejiang Normal University.
DAVID PUBLISHING
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LI-YOUNG LEE’S “I” POETRY: IN QUEST FOR HIS SELF AS A DIASPORA756
borrow Homi Bhabha’s words in Location of Culture (1997), addresses “a cultural politics of diaspora and
paranoia, of migration and discrimination, of anxiety and appropriation” (p. 59). To be noted that Lee’s poems
are overtly “personal”, they do not demand a privatization reading, simply because the core of his “cultural
politics of diaspora” constitutes a relentless quest for whom he is in relation to his self consciousness, histories,
memory, and the depth of his character as a diaspora. The author will focus on his rhetorical delineation of his
subjectivity in the context of cultural politics that articulates historical, familial, racial, and geopolitical issues in
the hope to understand his multivalent sense of self as results from his lived experience of a diaspora.
After briefly discussing the identity question addressed in Li-Young Lee’s poetry, Yu (2000) in his Form and
Identity in Language Poetry and Asian American Poetry claims that Lee’s work is rooted “in a coherent, physical
self”, and “grapples with the self all the time” (p. 447). Yu indicates that the thematic content and formal choice of
Lee’s poetry are mainly constituted of representations of that “coherent self”. This paper argues that the quest,
delineation, examination, and interrogation of his complex and dynamic self as a Chinese diaspora are what render
Lee’s poetry the most self-exploratory, and in a sense, special in contemporary Asian American poetry.
Hardly can one find a Descartes’ sense of a “coherent self” in Lee’s poetry. Rather, a casual glimpse of
Li-Young Lee’s poetry would even impress readers that questions of “I” and the construction of subjectivity are
particularly complex and central to his work. De facto, the imminence in Lee’s poetry is his undertaking of a
herculean effort in articulating and constructing his subjectivity and cultural identity by making sense of his and
his family’s particularity in transnational geopolitics.
Of all the Chinese American poets, Lee is likely the only one who fuses subjectivity and family history in
such a manner that the self, as manifest in most of his poems, is maintained and revised by the past and other
factors in his life. Apparent in his poetry is a surging desire always at play to reconstitute through “constant
remembrance” his fragmented life into an emotional quest for subjectivity and cultural identity (Lee, 1990, p. 14).
He defines and redefines his subjectivity by writing and rewriting about his and his family’s past, which
represents loss, meaninglessness, political persecution, personal tragedy, disconnection, and dislocation. The
nature of what he constructs and negotiates is as Bhabha (1997) states in Location of Culture that “[i]t is in the
emergence of the interstices—the overlap and displacement of domains of difference—that the intersubjective
and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated” (p. 2). Bhabha
points out here that subjectivity and cultural identity cannot be ascribed to pre-given, irreducible, prescriptive,
coherent, scripted, and ahistorical individual and cultural traits that define the conventions of ethnicity. On the
reverse, “subjectivity” is an entity that is fluid, rather than “coherent”, and constantly changing along with other
social, political, and cultural factors: It is historical, and as well as cultural, as is apparent in Lee’s poetry.
To Lee, “historical” here refers to familial and personal history, hence memory and past remain seminal in
his construction of subjectivity as manifested by his inexhaustible effort in constructing a dynamic relationship
with his father and the other members of his family through “constant remembrance”, because, as he understands
it, “Memory revises” him (1990, p. 14). He never writes about the past as a way to escape the present and future.
Rather, he firmly believes that the meaning of “what I am” depends solely on the incorporation of the past into his
everyday life. It is the past, or the past related with his father, that defines his true self. In a sense, the past is not
what he writes about. Rather, it is the past that writes about him. Since his father represents all the meaning of the
past to Lee, understanding the god-like man foregrounds his reconstruction of self: his attempt to understand his

LI-YOUNG LEE’S “I” POETRY: IN QUEST FOR HIS SELF AS A DIASPORA 757
father takes three forms: philosophical meditation, poetic epiphany, and cannibalism. Through remembrance he
reconstitutes his family’s past, which serves as a force to strengthen his subjectivity and identity, and a source of
his personal integrity, values, emotional and intellectual power as a Chinese diaspora in the United States.
Philosophical Meditation: Spirituality and Subjectivity
Chinese American poetry, like any other ethnic literature in the United States, is mainly concerned with the
search and reconstitution of subjectivity and identity. In his foreword to Li-Young Lee’s Rose, Gerald Stern
(1986) characterizes Lee’s poetry as “a pursuit of certain Chinese ideas, or Chinese memories… and a moving
personal search for redemption” (p. 9). Stern does not outline what those “ideas” entail, and nor does he underpin
what that “personal search for redemption” designates. A more convincing argument would be that Lee searches
for the meaning of self in the context of the loss of self, disconnection, fragmentation, and the ever present
anxiety over the loss of spirituality as the result of his life as a Chinese diaspora, and, of man’s obsession with
materialism in general.
Like most modern masters of poetry, Lee is concerned with spirituality in relation to his subjectivity. In this
sense, he is in philosophy more leaning to the Hegelian in this regard. Lee acknowledges Eliot’s influence on him
in his interview with Tod Marshall. Lee believes Eliot’s lifelong concern with modern man’s inadequacy,
ineffectualness, and spiritual futility through his overt contrast of the grandeur of the past with the sordidness of
the present as evident in The Waste Land, influences Lee so much that he is totally committed to his poetic
preoccupation with his own spirituality as an immigrant, and spirituality of life in general. He despises poetry
represented by William Carlos Williams, accusing it of being “so concerned with apparent materiality” (Marshall,
2000, p. 133). Like Eliot, Neruda, and Tu Fu, Lee delineates the condition of man’s spirituality. Look at his
version of The Waste Land, where materiality is shrouded in death:
Dead daisies, shriveled lilies, withered bodies
of dry chrysanthemums. Among these, and waste leaves
of yellow and brown fronds of palm and fern,
I came, and found
a rose
left for dead, heaped with the hopeless dead,
its petals still supple. (Lee, 1986, p. 37)
Yet, unlike Eliot, Lee seldom displays Eliot’s cynicism about human spiritual retrogression: The rose
survives among the “hopeless dead”. In this respect, Lee resembles Tu Fu, whose unsurpassed representation of
the miserable fate of the ordinary people serves almost as an unlimited source of inspiration for all the poets of the
Chinese language or heritage. Like Tu Fu, Lee believes that human spiritual degradation partially results from
man’s placing too much significance on materialism and the selfish pursuit of power and status. Lee approaches
spirituality by the denial of any significance of materiality at all, as is footnoted in his assertion that “[T]he true
self is the one that speaks, and it does not give a damn about the one that walks in clothes. The rest is Chaff”
(Marshall, p. 135). In other words, spiritual gain and perfection can only be accomplished through denial of the
physical. Such a position may sound a little extreme but understandable if we know all the ordeals his family has
undergone: Spiritual tenacity is what invigorated them to live on; material possessions would have been
necessary but not essential in their struggle for a more meaningful survival and life.

The seemingly overt emphasis on spirituality reflects Lee’s concept of the relation between spirituality and
subjectivity. To him true subjectivity can only be negotiated through the understanding and pursuit of man’s
spirituality: “It is the exercise of the mind to think constantly that this false identity (all the things in the room) is
fading away” (Marshall, p. 134). Lee believes in the possibility that through logos or Tao or God, man can
articulate his true self. Most of Lee’s poetry attests to his unyielding belief in the shaping power of spirituality in
his search for meaning. Even in his many references to the body of his father, the material/physical substance
gradually disappears. In its place emerges the inexhaustible search for spirit and soul. An interesting illustration
of how the material aspect evaporates and the spiritual sustains is found in the title poem The City in Which I Love
You (Lee, 1990):
A bruise, blue
in the muscle, you
impinge upon me.
As bone hugs the ache home, so
I’m vexed to love you, your body
the shape of returns, your hair torso
of light, your heat
I must have, your opening
I’d eat, each moment
of that soft-finned fruit,
inverted fountain in which I don’t see me. (Lee, 1990, pp. 51-52)
Only the spiritual sustains. And the material merely functions as an avenue toward the spiritual. Again, the
negation of the material seeks to reveal a possible fullness and fulfillment of human spirituality.
An interplay of spirituality and remembrance is captured in the following lines about his acute sense of
disconnection and dislocations:
Will I rise and go
out into an American city?
Or walk down to the wilderness sea?
…
That means I was born in Bandung, 1958;
on my father’s back, in borrowed clothes,
I came to America. (Lee, 1990, p. 13)
A similar significance of remembrance in the construction of his subjectivity and identity is unmasked in
Bhabha’s Remembering Fanon. Bhabha (1994) contends that
Remembering […] is a process of intense discovery and disorientation. Remembering is never a quiet act of
introspection or retrospection. It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of
the trauma of the present. (Bhabha, 1994, p. 121)
Given that, but how can the remembrance of the past revise Lee in particular? The philosophical emphasis
on the shaping abilities of the past and reminiscence is well elucidated in Lee’s own explanation of the Chinese
notions of what the past, present, and future are:
The Chinese word for the day after tomorrow is hou, meaning behind, and the word denoting the day before
yesterday is actually chien, meaning in front of. So, you see, Tod, that to a Chinese mind, tomorrow, the future, is behind

me, while the past lies in front of me. Therefore, we go backing up into the future, into the unknown… and everything
that lies before our eyes is past, over already. (Marshall, 2000, p. 133)
He then uses the stars as an analogy to illustrate his point that what we see is done, over with, gone, or even
dead long ago. In other words, the present, as well as the future is illuminated and enunciated by the
understanding of the past. Such an epistemology of the relationship between the past and future demands a
constant return to the past in order to understand the present and the future, or “the unknown”, as Lee calls it
elsewhere in the interview.
Poetic Epiphany in Understanding His Father
The remembrance of past experience facilitates an access to knowing his father in order for Lee to define his
subjectivity through an epiphany. In the sixth section of Rose, Lee recollects one of his visits to his father’s house,
which is almost buried in rotten fruit and wild grass. He stands in the desolate yard “not for the scent/of their
dying…/Not for the wild grass/grown wild as his beard in his last months/not for the hard, little apples that
littered the yard” (Lee, 1986, p. 42). And then, “The rain came. And where there is rain/there is time, and memory,
and sometimes sweetness” (p. 42). As the rain enlivens everything, and brings back a sweet memory of his father,
he realizes that “Where there is a son there is a father” (p. 42). The sudden remembrance of his father reduces to
triviality his purpose of presenting himself physically in front of his sick father. The visit loses its significance of
seeing the dying man and re-orients in the revelation of the man’s spirituality. If the initial purpose is to see his
father, the remembrance provides access to the understanding of his father and the spiritual connection between
them as father and son. Furthermore, the evocation of his father transforms the speaker into a new persona, who is
now able to overlook the devastating scene and sees something inspirational, which is ablaze yonder:
Past the choked rhododendrons
behind the perishing gladiolas, there
in the far corner of the yard, you, my rose
lovely for nothing, lonely for no one,
stunning the afternoon
with your single flower ablaze. (Lee, 1986, p. 42)
Because of the remembrance of his father, the simple, routine visit is completed with his letting “the
rain/meditate on the brilliance of one blossom/quivering in the beginning downpour” (p. 42). The “brilliance of
one blossom” symbolizes the spiritual power he associates with his father. The epiphany brings him closer to his
father spiritually, if not physically. Happy, reflective, and content, he leaves without seeing his father. At this
point, seeing is replaced with understanding. What a thorough transmutation of the one who first stands in the
desolate yard, disconcerted, uncertain, troubled, and preoccupied! The awareness of the sustaining power of
spirituality as embodied in the glowing flower enables him to identify completely with his father. Spiritual
communion overrides the necessity of seeing his father. His visit to his then blind father turns out to be a
rediscovery of himself and his father.
Lee’s poetic recuperation of the diasporic history of his family and his desire to know his father in order to
be able to identify with his father indicates that his concept of self is largely influenced by Chinese culture and
philosophy. He seems to have accepted the Confucian philosophy of the relationship between the self and society.

Generally speaking, Chinese people tend to see themselves first as family, kindred, and social members, and
second as discrete individual beings. There is no ambiguity that they so reserve themselves as not to be fantastic
individuals, but their sense of self is more defined in relation to others. Their pursuit of self seldom purports to set
themselves essentially apart from the society as remarkable individuals only. Rather, it is a continuous effort in
becoming more fully accepted into a group, a clan, and, ultimately, into the society that defines how and why they
strive.
Lee told Marshall, “Somehow, an artist has to discover a dialogue that is so essential to his being, to his self,
that it is no longer cultural or canonical, but a dialogue with the truest self. His most naked spirit” (Marshall, 2000,
p. 132). Memory serves as the medium of creating and maintaining such a constructive dialogue, through which
he builds a relationship with the past, hence his reconstruction of his subjectivity. Such a concept of the self
requires that the individual essentially situate his self in a filiative order—a concept that demands incorporation
of family history or national history to negotiate individual subjectivity. Although accepting such an order as
necessary to define his self, Lee’s life in exile disallows him to situate completely the self in relation with any of
the histories of China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, or America, or with any particular place where Lee has
spent some time in his life. The only history available to him is history on a personal level. It is personal history
only that matters and speaks to him. Since he has lived a raveled skein of life first as a refugee in many countries
and later as an immigrant in the United States, the only significant filiations he can incorporate into the
redefinition of his subjectivity to define the meaning of his true self is the turbulent history of his family, the
center or the hero of which is his father.
In all his poetry, Lee tries to understand himself by understanding his father, a figure who appears as a
generator of meaning of his life. In Rain Diary, Lee beautifully writes about his “search” for his father:
I looked for you in your shoes.
I found nothing
and the rain
I tried your shirts, your pants,
called your sweaters mine, ...
I searched the hours, perforated by rain.
I looked in the milk, the salt, cold water,
and found the rain.
I looked in the billowing curtains,
they were haunted with the rain...
Rain knocks at my door
I open. No one
is there, and the rain marching in place...
Perhaps it is my father,
arriving on legs of rain, arriving,
this dream, the rain, my father. (Lee, 1986, p. 42)
His childish but vigorous search ends in the soothing illusion that his father may come to him on the “legs of
the rain”. Although he seems to be the source of Lee’s being, the father is never presented as a fully developed
character in Lee’s poetry. He represents a victim of his times and international politics, a victim who has noble
spirit and lets his hair grow “past his shoulder” (p. 60). Maybe that is the reason Stern sees the father as “an

extraordinary and heroic” and a “mythic figure”, who “is more godlike” (p. 9). In Lee’s eyes, his father is godlike
in terms of tribulations and of the magnitude of his spirit.
Metonymic Cannibalism
Indeed, Lee eulogizes his father as a godlike figure: “My father the Godly, he was the chosen/My father
almighty, full of good fear” (Lee, 1986, p. 42). As we try to understand and embrace God in proper and
manageable names, out of something that, as Confucius warns, improper nomenclatures obstruct communication,
Lee thus asks his dead father:
Could you rise and stand and bear
the weight of all the names I would give you?
Cup of Blood, Old Wrath, Heart O’ Mine, Ancient of Days,
Whorl, World, Word.
O day, come! (Lee, 1986, p. 44)
Giving different names designates his wish and desires to approach his father, who is like “The Old book I
finished reading/I’ve since read again and again”, as well as his inability to completely understand the godlike
man (Lee, 1986, p. 69). The surging desire of knowing the man like waves in the high Atlantic Ocean keeps
charging at him. However, all his means—philosophic meditation, poetic epiphany, and sensibility—to
comprehend the godlike man fail him; he turns to his last recourse—the cannibal:
I eat you to put my faith in grief.
Singed at the edges, dying
from the flame you live by, I
eat you to sink into
my own body. Secret body
of deep liquor,
I eat you
Down to you secret. (Lee, 1986, p. 40)
As the Holy Communion service satisfies people’s wish to have God in themselves and as part of their life,
so is the significance of Lee’s cannibalism revealed here. Although the wish for a total physical possession of his
father entails Lee’s position of subjectivity as a single stable source of his feelings and intellectual power,
indicating that the source is accessible, the source remains mythic and enigmatic anyway. As suggested earlier
that Lee’s disbelief in the value of materialism runs awry with his search for spirituality and subjectivity in the
physical embracing of his father, Lee can only evoke the memory of his father’s dead body. The “secret” is yet to
be solved. He has to continue interrogating: “What are you to me/I’d tear you with my teeth” (Lee, 1986, p. 43).
The fact that his father no longer remains available exacerbates his frustration. What is left of his father is an
“Excellent body of layers tightly/wound around nothing” (Lee, 1986, p. 40). The word “layers” not only denotes
the layers of clothes on his father’s corpse, but also delimits his full understanding of the man, who “exiled from
one republic and daily defeated in another/who was shunned by brothers and stunned by God” (Lee, 1986, p. 41).
As represented in all of his poetry, his father is never a heroic figure but a helpless and passive victim of
geopolitics, who, like a boat adrift in the high seas, has no control of his fate at all, except for his firm belief in
spirituality and final justice. But, how can Lee identify with such a pathetic victim? Why does Stern see the father

as a “heroic figure?” What is there in this political victim that validates Stern’s claim of “heroic” qualities?
The strategy Lee employs is to differentiate his father as a noble human being from his kinsmen without the
need to present his father’s tangible and recognizable heroic qualities. As a poet, Lee reveals them, out of a deep
love and respect for his father, by contrasting his father to his kinsmen and fellow countrymen, who are presented
as a contemptible race, cruel, bloodthirsty, and crazy:
Remember it was I who bled for you, I, born,
hungry among the hungry,
third in the last generation of the old country,
of the family Plum, a brood
distinguished by madness,
tales of chains and wailing. (Lee, 1986, p. 45)
For Lee, not only are family history and the past the impetus to write about, they become what needs to be
incorporated into his poetry, the very element needed to experience the self. Memory as a poetic form and
structure provides access to the experience of his subjectivity and identity. It is through memory, though it fails
him sometimes, that Lee bewares of the relationship between his self and his family, particularly his father,
because memory, in Timothy Yu’s words, has become “a necessary foundation for future action” (p. 447). In The
Room and Everything in It, Lee claims that “of the one thing I learned/of all things my father tried to teach me/the
art of memory” (Lee, 1990, p. 49). Through this form of art, he attempts to understand who he is by constantly
articulating the particular relationship he has with his father until he realizes that he cannot separate his life from
his father’s: “Is this the first half of the century or the last/Is this my father’s life or mine” (Lee, 1986, p. 52). And
“among/the dying things/are you and I” (Lee, 1986, p. 45).
Through the art of memory Lee has constructed an image of his father: a godlike victim of political atrocity
and his times, whose forbearance keeps him through the ungodly parlous times. In The Location of Culture
Bhabha asserts that “the question of identification is never the affirmation of a pre-given identity, never a
self-fulfilling prophecy—it is always the production of an image of identity and the transformation of the subject
in assuming that image” (p. 45). If Lee succeeds in his deification of his father in his poetry, he totally assumes
that image:
[M]y true self or identity is universe or God. There are certain assumptions that I secretly carry around, and I do not
know if other poets share these. I assume that my true nature is God. I assume I am God, in my true nature. (Marshall,
2000, p. 134)
Some postmodern cultural critics would argue that the past is inaccessible and history only exists in texts,
both of which are subject to interpretations. Yet, with Lee, history and the past are not only real on personal and
emotional levels, but also, penetrable through the agenda of memory. As shown in his “Always a Rose”, “history
resembles flowers”, “where/a world of forms convulses” (Lee, 1986, p. 20). Lee proclaims:
I see these flowers, and they seize
my mind, and I
can no more unsee
them than I can undream
this, no more than
the mind can stop

its wandering over the things
of the world, snagged on the world
as it is.
The mind is
a flowering
cut in time,
a rose,
The wandering rose. (Lee, 1986, p. 20)
To Lee, history seems to be something wherein the self can ground itself. History takes different forms, and
therefore, generates different meanings the way we make associations with flowers in the mind. Lee believes that
history, especially the personal and family, provides the foundation for the construction of subjectivity, which
never retains its wholeness, but remains in constant revisable permutation. In this sense, Lee’s poetic articulation
of self is in tune to what Nietzsche and Foucault examined the concept of subjectivity, because they believe that
“there is no final evidence for the existence of the ‘I’ as a stable substance or essence” (Cavallaro, 2001, p. 89).
To Lee and to them, subjectivity can only be approached and addressed through discourses for which
remembrance serves as a structural means, hence Lee asserts that his self is under “ceaseless invention,
incessant/constructions and deconstructions” (Lee, 1990, p. 25).
Father-Son Relationship and Beyond
Chin, Chan, Inada, and Wong editors (1974) of Aiiieeeee! claim that
A constant theme in Asian-American literature […] is the failure of Asian-American manhood to express itself in its
simplistic form: fathers and sons […] The perpetuation of self contempt between father and son is an underlying current
in virtually every Asian-American work. (Chin et al., 1974, pp. xlvi-xlvii)
Chin’s assertion of the awry relationship between Asian American fathers and sons reflects representations
of such a relation in the early Asian American works, but Lee articulates this relationship in a flip-over manner. In
both his collections, Lee’s relation with his father is enviously conducive and constructive. In Rose, memories of
his father and the past have an ability to shape and form his subjectivity. This evolves into an exploration of the
relationship between his subjectivity and his own life as an immigrant in the United States. His second collection
The City in Which I Love You (Lee, 1990) retains almost all the aesthetic features shown in the first; most poems
are lucid, judicious, complex, sometimes obscure, and elastically figurative. They represent a wide range of
associative and symbolic narratives, memory, meditations, descriptions, questionings, and exclamations, wherein
Lee negotiates his subjectivity more as a Chinese American in a wider social context within the framework of a
father-son relationship.
As a refuge, Lee came to America, on his “father’s back/in borrowed clothes”, initiating the process of
“incessant/constructions and deconstructions” of “telling my human/tale, tell it against/the current of that vaster,
that/inhuman telling” (Lee, 1990, p. 27). Through the telling he affirms his subjectivity as a Chinese American.
This affirmation is well captured in the opening and the concluding poems of his second book, Furious Versions
and The Cleaving, respectively. He locates his subjectivity in the diasporic experience of the Chinese immigrants:
America, where in Chicago, Little Chinatown,
who should I see

on the corner of Argyle and Broadway
but Li Bai and Du Fu, those two
poets of the wanderer’s heart. (Lee, 1990, p. 23)
Of all the Chinese American writers, nobody has better recaptured, with as much heart-breaking honesty and
sensibility, the tantalizing tension of the historical and cultural discontinuity Chinese American have experienced.
Nor has anyone ever uttered with such immediacy the “preemptory of self of the present” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 122).
His father and himself are among the wandering hearts: “My father wandered/me beside him, human/erect, unlike
roses” (Lee, 1990, p. 23). The phrase “human erect” is reminiscent of the Homo Sapiens, who embarked on a new
level of life. For Lee, the new life is not rosy at all because:
I grow more fatherless each day
For years now I have come to conclusions
without my father’s help, discovering
on my own what I know, what I don’t know. (Lee, 1990, p. 37)
He lost his father, and needs to rearticulate his subjectivity as a Chinese immigrant. The loss of the father as
an image to identify with is virtually compensated by his poetic envisioning of the two ancient Chinese poets Li
Po and Tu Fu, two wandering poets, through whom Lee captures the shadow of his own self. It is through the
effort to face the reality of the existence of Chinese Americans that prompts Lee to evoke Li Po and Tu Fu to
“meditate on the experience of dispossession and dislocation—psychic and social—which speaks to the
condition of the marginalized, the alienated, those who have to live under the surveillance of a sign of identity and
fantasy that denies their difference” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 122).
One thing Lee knows now is that in America he finds himself having lost a father but found a community
with “my face” (Lee, 1990, p. 77). In The Cleaving, he explores the ethnic physical features as a means to
negotiate his subjectivity. The poem begins with Lee’s identification with a Chinatown butcher, who “gossips
like my grandmother, this man/with my face, and I could stand/amused all afternoon” (1990, p. 77). In the
familiar face not only does Lee envisions himself, but all the diasporas, “Such a sorrowful Chinese face/nomad,
Gobi, Northern/in its boniness” (Lee, 1990, p. 77). All his emotions and sympathy are registered in the simple
exclamation “Such a sorrowful face”, on which is write all the imaginable hardships immigrants have endured.
The butcher serves for Lee as a grand image of most Chinese Americans, who:
could be my brother, but finer
and, except for his left forearm, which is engorged
sinewy from his daily grip and
wield of a two pound tool. (Lee, 1990, p. 78)
As the poem develops, the motif of cultural displacement is rehashed in beautiful verse. To win the battle of
survival, most immigrants have to abandon their own interest and are forced to take low paying jobs and get stuck
with them their entire lives. Most of them aim high and think big but end up low in spite of themselves. The old
butcher, serving as an epitome of Chinese American cultural displacement, demonstrates this space wart like a
floundering whale on the beach:
In his light-handed calligraphy
on receipt and in his

moodiness, he is
a Southerner from a river province
suited for scholarship...
He could be my grandfather. (Lee, 1990, p. 78)
Moreover, Lee’s sympathy and love for the immigrant scholar/butcher are extended to all the minority
people in the United States in the next section of the poem. Here he challenges the Orientalist notion of racial
hierarchy by celebrating the beauty of diversity in physiognomy:
Puffed or sunken
according to the life
dark or light according
to the birth, straight
or humped, whole, manqué, quasi, each pleases, verging
on utter grotesquery
All are beautiful by variety. (Lee, 1990, p. 81)
This Chinese immigrant butcher-scholar transcending the limitations of racial politics bears:
the sorrow of his Shang
dynasty face,
African face with slit eyes. He is
my sister, this beautiful Bedouin, this Shulamite,
keeper of sabbaths, diviner
of holy texts, this dark
dancer, this Jew, this Asian, this one
with the Cambodian face, Vietnamese face, this Chinese
I daily face,
this immigrant,
this man with my own face. (Lee, 1990, pp. 86-87)
These people are his “[b]rothers and sisters by blood and design[…][who] constitute a
many-membered/body of love” (Lee, 1990, p. 81). Noticeably, Lee’s celebration and deference for the
physiognomic heterogeneity is accompanied by his wish to understand all the immigrants by devouring them, just
as he wishes to “eat” his father for the purpose of achieving totality and finality in the understanding of his father:
those bodies prepared
for eating, I would eat,
and the standing deaths
at the counters, in the aisles,
the walking death in the streets,
the death far from home, the death
in a strange land, these Chinatown
deaths, these American deaths. (Lee, 1990, p. 83)
Lee’s “eating [is] a kind of reading” and to “devour the world [is] to utter it” (Lee, 1990, p. 82). Devouring
functions as his way of meeting, reading, comprehending, and mastering the world and the unknown by letting
the world enter him and reemerge in his poetry in a more comprehensible and manageable manner. Spirituality
and subjectivity, as it is, always remain the central concern in Lee’s construction of identity, the core of his

subjectivity. The loss of spirituality due to cultural discontinuity and dislocation constitutes the death of selfhood;
hence he only sees “standing deaths”, “walking deaths”, and “these American deaths”. There is nothing
surprising if we recall his remarks with Marshall about the relationship between the physical and the spiritual:
“The true self is the one that speaks, and it does not give a damn about the one that walks in clothes” (Marshall,
2000, p. 135). Lee’s cannibalism designates his wish to restore life to the clothe hangers. Instead of an ogre,
“eating” is an act of saving. In this sense, it not only transforms his self but also the world of immigrants, with
which he can negotiate his subjectivity in a more comfortably manner and grandeur, because eating serves as a
sign of cultural communion that enacts ethnic and diasporic communities.
Conclusion
As we can see, Lee’s attempts (in his first book) to reconstruct his subjectivity by revision as the result of
the constant remembrance of what has happened to his family in its incessant, forced relocations, are extended
to the celebration of all the ethnic people in the United States in his second book. In the first book, he tries to
understand who he is through interpreting, interacting, and memorizing the past, and even tries to “devour” his
father in the hope of understanding the godlike man. In the second book, as he enlarges the circle of relationships
to include all ethnic people, he tells his “human tale” by writing about the reality of immigration and the
consequences of socioeconomics, which impose marginality for not only Chinese Americans but for all the ethnic
communities. It is through the medium of remembrance, philosophic meditation, poetic epiphany, and
cannibalism that Lee reconstructs his subjectivity. It is through his constant remembering of his father that he
enters the world of (Chinese) American immigrants, and understands himself. By utilizing the art of memory of
the personal and family histories of cultural reconstruction and re-invention in his interrogations of the question
of subjectivity that Lee articulates in his “I” poetry the profundity of the matrix of memory that “revises” him in
the arduous process of “putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the present” (Bhabha, 1994, p.
121). In Rose, Lee’s voice is that of an ethnic orphan, who longs to get in, while in The City in Which I Love
You, he is much surer as an ethnic hero who transcends borders and boundaries and voices his wishes to hold
dialogues with universalism as a fuller, if not “coherent” self. He thenceforth is able to identify with humanity.
References
Bhabha, H. (1994). Remembering Fanon, self, psyche and the colonial condition. In W. Patrick, & C. Laura (Eds.), Colonial
discourses and post-colonial theory. New York: Columbia UP.
Bhabha, H. (1997). Location of culture. New York: Routledge.
Cavallaro, D. (2001). Critical and cultural theory: Thematic variations. London and New Brunswick: The Athlone Press.
Chang, J. (1996). Reading Asian American poetry. MELUS: The Journal of the Society of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the
United States, 21, 81-98.
Chin, F., Chan, J. P., Inada, L. F., & Wong, S. (1974). Aiiieeeee!: An anthology of Asian American writers. Washington, D.C.:
Howard UP.
Lee, L. Y. (1986). Rose. Brockport: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Lee, L. Y. (1990). The city in which I love you. Brockport: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Marshall, T. (2000). To witness the invisible. Kenyon Review, 22, 129-147.
Yu, T. (2000). Form and identity in language poetry and Asian American poetry. Contemporary Literature, 41, 422-461.

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836
October 2014, Vol. 4, No. 10, 767-783

Oral Narrative an Underutilized Tool of Transformation: The
Case of Ateso Folk Tales in Iteso Communities of Uganda and
Kenya*
Simon Peter Ongodia
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

The study explored the various performances of oral narratives in the Teso communities. In-depth interviews
carried out with 68 respondents from 2009 to 2013, in six selected Teso districts in Uganda and Teso and Busia
districts in Kenya, before and after performances, provided the data. In placing value and assessing the
unquantifiable feelings of narrators and audiences, the study chose the methods of qualitative research and
ethno-methodological philosophical analyses. Various levels of perceptions emerged from both the audiences and
performers as they journeyed into both self and society. The study showed that the communities yearned for the
communicative avenues of harnessing resources for solving various issues as they look into the future. Oral
narratives motivated audiences through experiences of self discovery which spurred them to analogies of societal
issues that haunted them. Both value and virtue were experienced at individual and group levels with a cultural
identity and exposure to ethnic ties that bound them together in the struggle for a brighter tomorrow. The study
recommends that a new society can be realized with movement from analogue to digital strategies for
communication.
Keywords: Ateso, Iteso, folklore, narrative, self-discovery, analogue to digital strategies
Introduction
Meaning and structure of oral narratives are imbedded in the lives of people. A parent’s life with a baby is
characterized by narrative of a parent-child communication. A teacher who cannot use narrative in pedagogy
and andragogy would not be employed effectively. Oral narrative implies the use of the mouth to tell a story to
an audience. A politician can only move the hearts of the voters through effective use of narrative. Manifestos,
promises, and vows are invariably told to listening and/or listening audiences. As a university lecturer the
author has experienced the power of oral narrative in the lecture theatre and in tutorial discussions the
effectiveness of which is determined by sender-receiver mutuality and establishment of decoding of meanings.
Oral narrative is the use of word of mouth to convey a torrent of events and issues to a listening audience.
In the study, the oral narratives were folktales of the Iteso. In Uganda, the Iteso numbering about 3.2 million
(9.6% of Uganda’s population according to the 2002 population analysis) live mainly in the Teso sub-region in
*
This study was funded in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Makerere University.
Simon Peter Ongodia, Ph.D. candidate, lecturer, Department of Literature, College of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Makerere University.
DAVID PUBLISHING
D

ORAL NARRATIVE AN UNDERUTILIZED TOOL OF TRANSFORMATION

768
the Districts of Amuria, Bukedea, Kaberamaido, Katakwi, Kumi, Ngora, Pallisa, Serere, Soroti, and Tororo. In
Kenya the Iteso live in the Busia and Teso Districts of Western Kenya numbering about 279,000. The Iteso in
Diaspora are unaccounted for in these estimates.
As most of the narratives reflected the experiences of the Iteso communities where the study was carried
on, it was important to replicate the past of these people. What kind of future is worthy for a people in the
contemporary world? For the study, oral narratives were the major means persons at the small communities
could use to express their thoughts better. The performers used various methods of narratives; to some the
historical narrative was more appealing than the mythological narration. A blend of the two forms worked well
for many performers since audiences showed preference for them. Anecdotes brought in by the audience and
auxiliary performers in Ateso oral narratives helped to illustrate the concerns and simplified issues for the
common person to grasp.
The experiences of the researcher, as a teacher in secondary schools and then as lecturer in universities,
were historical. They helped in the reflection that the life of a knowledge disseminator is characterized by both
oral and written narrative. Teaching and delivering lectures involved lots of oral narration. Preparation for the
teaching and lecturing sessions relied on the written accounts. Whether one used the word or other
communication devices like figures and diagrams, inevitably these tools did the narrative for the learner to
receive any knowledge, new or old. Much as the initial interest was to examine the pneumonic and gestural
strategies used by performers of Ateso oral narratives, the consideration of the power of oral narrative as a
genre took the attention of the research. The investigation led to the empathetic discovery of many forces that
lay and were at interplay between the performers and their audiences. The stories being told were also affected,
they metamorphosised taking in more modern language and expression.
Many philosophers and educationists (Gaarder, 1996; Bruner, 1988, 1990; Egan 1985) and literary
analysts (Ong, 1982) expressed the view that the most powerful device used by human to disseminate
knowledge is narrative. It builds emotive and affective images in the person (Jung, 1968) and opens doors to
meaning and the extensions therein.
Narrative is the expression of ideas that are structured purposively. The account of incidents and
occurrences could be linear in a chronological fashion, circular or cyclic where there is a lot of reliance on
precursor incidents for proper understanding of the present ones, or meditative in a romanticized manner of
fantasy and projection. Narrative is mother to other disciplines because it entails dramatic involvement, in a
time space, where issues affecting humans and their environs are being expressed and analyzed with the
intention of arriving at some solutions, so as to identify the roles stakeholders or players have in the business of
making this world a happy place to live in.
Research Questions
The study was provoked by many questions including the following:
 What is the position of narratives of folktales in the lives of the modern Africans?
 How do philosophical and sociopolitical issues impact on the nature of oral narratives?
 How is oral narrative employed to communicate the plight of the communities?
 How do the performers evaluate the responses they receive from their audiences?
 What appraisal do audiences give the performers of oral narratives in the region?
 What kind of future do the communities aspire for? How do they envisage getting there?


769
 How are the forms of narratives adjusting to the modern methods of problem-solving?
In trying investigating the place narratives of stories of a people holds in the contemporary Africa, the
study appraised the remnant cultural practice of storytelling around a community evening gathering in moonlit
nights. People’s continual search for the truth in conflicts and crises that inflict their living in their societies was
considered paramount in the quest. Human beings essentially social beings devise a way they feel effective in
articulating their troubles. The power of the spoken word and acted non-verbal expression is made use of. The
study was concerned with the effectiveness of this strategy in Africa of today. The key players in the
dissemination of the information are the storytellers and orators. As a communication process, the performers
are conscious of the feedback they generate from their audiences. In the study, their empathetic and
professional points of view were evaluated in relation to successful delivery of the themes. In a reciprocal
manner, the evaluation of performances by audiences had to be looked at to assess the level of impact created
for positive change to be created. A further search into the tomorrow the African people look forwards to
became inevitable. It was not enough to grumble about the lost glorious past in a vibrant today that could pave
way for a better tomorrow.
Narratives are purposively structured and connect to a philosophy of communication. New thought
patterns are provoked in the events that are being performed by characters created or cited if not masked to do
so (Abrams, 1993, p. 123). What characters say and do in the stories give a narrative thought pattern about the
actions and events which lead the audience to discussion, reasoning, describing, and alluding to recent events in
their milieu, in order to attempt to understand their present predicament better (Knapp & Watkins, 1994, p. 22).
[Oral] [n]arrative involves coding and decoding of images which perform a cognitive process of placing the
narrative plot into the introduction or beginning, the middle or the complication of issues, and the denouement
or the finish (K. J. Gergen & M. M. Gergen, 1986, p. 25). The performer will present the events in the order of
importance according to the agenda of narrative. In the words of Bruner (1988), “What gives the story its unity
is the manner in which plight, characters and consciousness interact to yield a structure that has a start, a
development and a sense of ending” (p. 106).
Methodology
Data Collection and Analysis
This study explored the various performances of Ateso oral narratives in the Teso sub region of Uganda
and Kenya. Using ethnographic methods, the study carried out in-depth interviews with 68 respondents
interfaced with before and after 49 performances at the various performance sites and times from 2009 to 2013.
The major stories studied included the following:
(1) Folktales 7
 Okirokuan (Troubled Life)
 Nyagilo na Eisinye (The Greedy Nyagilo)
 Apesur Akany ka Obibi (Ten Girls and the Ogre)
 Obibi ka Apese (Ogre and the Girl)
 Apesur Akany edengete Aimuria (Five Girls picking wild Grapes)
 Otoori ka Oliogom (Kite and Stock)
 Etunganan je ka Aberuke (A Man and His Wife)
(2) Trickster stories 2


770
 Abaliga lo Ngora (Abaliga from Ngora)
 Opoo ka Obuin (Hare and Hyena)
(3) Fables 5
 Turukuku (A Woman and her Adolescent Girl)
 Apesur akany nu araraete Akito (The Five Girls who were collecting Firewood)
 Opowoi, Omenia, Otomei, Orisai ka Okolodong (Hare, Bat, Elephant, Leopard and Tortoise)
 Angurian na Ibaren (The Grumbling of Domestic Animals)
 Amojong kede Epege (The Old Woman and The Piglet)
(4) Mysteries 3
 Epolon ka Aberuke (The old Man and his Wife), the plight of the pumpkins-cum-sisters
 Eipone lo Abunio Atwanare Akwap (How Death came into the World)
 Aicum Akiru (Piercing Rain clouds)
(5) Legends 2
 Malinga lo Ejie (Malinga the Warrior)
 Abaliga lo Epali (The Stubborn Abaliga)
These provided studies of empathetic involvement of the stake holders in comprehending the narratives
and relating their experiences to the problem-solving strategies in the socio-economic and cultural setting.
There were polarized responses to the communication scenarios which were elicited in the process as were
understood by the Keen’s (2006) theory of narrative empathy among other theories of narratology.
Polkinghorne (1988) argues that studies should be free from positivistic research:
I find that our traditional research model, adopted from the natural sciences, is limited when applied to the study of
human beings. I do not believe that the solutions of human problems will come from developing even more sophisticated
and creative applications of the natural science model, but rather by developing additional, complementary approaches that
are especially sensitive to the unique characteristics of human existence. (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. x)
In agreement with Bruner (1990) and Polkinghorne (1988), Minichiello, Aroni, Timewell, and Alexander
(1995) emphasized that in order to understand people, “…we must discover the contents of their minds—their
beliefs, wishes, feelings, desires, fears, intentions” (Minichiello et al., p. 22). According to Bruner (1990) “the
symbolic systems that individuals use in constructing meaning… is deeply entrenched in culture and language.
[So], we must look to people’s stories to infer their intentional states and their interpretations of cultural
experiences” (Bruner, 1990, p. 11). The study believed that the discovery of the richness of Ateso oral
narratives as tools of mediation between culture and the world of vast insatiable needs of the humans would
enhance the efforts to make a better Africa.
In the analysis, the ethnographic approach of listening to individual stories told and retold with varying
modifications helped the research share meanings and concepts with the respondents. It is true to what Bruner
(1990) says, “By listening to these individual stories, one can find shared meanings and shared concepts”
(Bruner, 1990, p. 13). These common grounds established help us to understand the worldviews of African
culture as a force to reckon with.
In analyzing the expressive language of people’s narratives one opts for a qualitative rather than the
quantitative examination. In quantitative approaches, a hypothesis is put forth and variables isolated. They are
then acted upon to determine by measured occurrences and events if the hypothesis is true or not. In qualitative


771
strategy, the model is majorly inductive because it starts with a context and ends with a greater story told. This
is what Reissman (1993, p. 13) refers to as “meta-story” when describing the construction by a researcher as
one built on patterns and themes of the component stories. Lancy (1999) notes that in quantitative research
there “is a clear separation between the issue studied and the methodology used to conduct the study… By
contrast, topic, theory and methodology are usually closely interrelated in qualitative research” (p. 3). The
author chose to take the qualitative approach basing on the arguments above so as to get empathetically
involved in the analyses of the new grand story being told in the Ateso oral narratives. The strategy would help
the study analyze narrative thinking of both audience and performers, eliciting of thoughts, feeling and deeply
held perceptions, assess the linguistic prowess of Ateso oral narratives and draw conclusions for creating a
better Africa.
Data were collected using in-depth interviewing which, according to Minichiello et al. (1995), are a
“conversation with a specific purpose—a conversation between a researcher and informant focusing on the
informant’s perception of self, life and experience, and expressed in his or her own words” (p. 60). This method
helps the study delve into the treasure stores of personal experiences and concepts and the interpretations of
what is going on around the people. The reserved persons can open up in the in-depth interviews and yet this
may not be attained in the quantitative stratified questions and straight jacket inquiries. The author shared some
of his experiences with the informants and that helped in opening them up. Sometimes, it was a reflex action of
doing well to one turn. Most sessions became shared explorations of views and concepts about Ateso oral
narratives. This, as Reissman (1993) says of the purpose of dialogue is to “make meaning together” (p. 55). The
questionnaires distributed to some respondents provided some measurements of tendency and helped in
construction of some conclusions.
The sampling of respondents was based on “information-rich case”, according to Patton (1990) and
Neuman (1997) from varied social setting, ethnic backgrounds and based in the rural settings and Ateso
speaking communities. The author’s selection was theoretically based (Patton, 1990) in that he wanted a
balanced representation of respondents on social, cultural, economic, educational, religious, and gender bases.
On ethical considerations, the author sought permission of local leaders and of parents for juvenile informants.
Although the author had preferred that all information remain anonymous some informants expressed desire to
have their names at least alluded to. Some pseudonyms were maintained especially with of those expressing
“sensitive” demands. Informants were interviewed in quiet locations which they chose and away from prying
eyes and ears. They had the freedom to answer or not to answer any questions. The interviews were taped and
later transcribed. At times, notes were made about the interviews which helped in the interpretation of results
by clarifying the perspectives and reservations of the interviewees.
As far as reliability and validity of results were concerned, the results revealed through data analysis
reliability. In quantitative analysis, reliability refers to accuracy in measurement and the ability of the research
to be replicated. In qualitative methods, instead of repeating measures, the researcher wants to identify a
repetition of concepts, ideas, and thought patterns that can lead to new discoveries (Minichiello et al., 1995).
“When we are measuring people’s views, this is translated as internal and external consistency. Internal
consistency refers to whether the data are plausible given all that is known about a person and an event”
(Neuman, 1997, p. 368). The author interviewed retired teachers and oral performers to help him get internal
consistency. These persons had repeatedly used oral narratives in their lives as teachers or as storytellers. The
author had made some assumptions and they maximized the interpretative powers of each interview process,


772
and according to Minichiello et al. (1995), there was rationality because the author assumed that the
interviewees were familiar with oral narratives, intentionality because the study assumed that oral narratives
were their trades, self-directedness as the researcher assumed that the interviewees presented authentic views
from their personal experiences, truth-telling as the study treated the responses from the informants as truthful
portrayal of their backgrounds and experiences.
Qualitative reliability was guaranteed by striving for external consistency. Opinion leaders in areas of the
research were consulted and interviewed to ascertain the popular views about the oral narratives and performers.
The researcher varied the persons interviewed, in age, sex, location, and occupation. Educational levels of
individuals did not deter the interviews. The study also considered contextual factors in order to achieve
reliability. Observations of several performances created triangulation to ensure that the interview fit into the
overall context (Neuman, 1997, p. 368). The study tried to ascertain that the narratives were in context of the
people and socio-political and economic climatic settings. There was then, “pattern matching”. Minichiello et al.
(1995) suggest that qualitative researchers make a number of cultural assumptions in a pattern matching. In
trying to ascertain reliability, the researcher assumes that there is an overlap among a person’s beliefs, words,
and ideals and his or her culture and that the subject’s particular culture gives meaning to the behavior
exhibited and the actions performed. In the texts and performances of this study, key concepts and catch words
identified the interviewees with their cultural allegiances. The personality and office of the cultural leader of
Iteso Emorimor Papa Iteso was referred to by both performers and members of the audience with ease. The
respondents affirmed that it was the desire of the Iteso to have a unifying personality to help them achieve
development.
In qualitative research, validity is “confidence placed in a researcher’s analysis and data as accurately
representing the social world in the field” (Neuman, 1997, p. 369). The researcher determined validity of the
study by employing, on part time basis, some teachers, one of primary and the other of a secondary school as
research assistants. They were based in the communities that speak Ateso language. They were graduates, one
of them doing a master in translation studies from one Ugandan university and she was quite in touch with
Ateso narratives. These research aids were adequately motivated to participate in the research, an attribute of
qualitative research. Validity was also determined by involvement of other persons who were not teachers or
storytellers to assess and give their input in the performances. All stakeholders, civil leaders, religious
adherents, cultural heads, and politicians were interviewed to see if the research was representative of their
views as well. The study was probing whether the narratives represented what was valid to the communities in
their quest for answers to a number of problems. External validity could be determined when the templates of
the story could be seen to apply to other situations as well. One method of conflict resolution in one narrative
could be applied in another scenario. The research had to take care of all interests represented in the
performances, social, economic, and cultural.
Conclusion
The study came up with a number of findings and made some conclusions with regard to Ateso oral
narratives. The first property of Ateso oral narrative is the commitment which must be impressive to capture the
attention of the audience. K. J. Gergen and M. M. Gergen (1986) describe a dramatic engagement as “[T]he
capacity to create feelings of drama or emotion” (p. 28). For a member of an audience to listen to and watch
then later on participate in an oral narrative, the empathic attachment should have been created by the


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performer and the performance. The mutual interest is established early enough between performer and
audience, and has to be sustained so that the oral narrative takes grip of the audience and the varied facets of
meaning are disseminated. The Teso performer was aware that appealing to some human emotion and
conditions of the area helps in establishing the dramatic attachment. In some communities, the storytelling took
place after cattle had been rustled by some armed persons posing as raiders. When the storyteller alluded to the
incident there was unanimous support for the message being passed on condemning such robbery and arson.
Iteso are agricultural and pastoral people, growing crops and keeping livestock. The Iteso in Uganda have
suffered several setbacks from cattle rustling of their stock by their neighbours, particularly the Karamojong.
That has made the average Etesot (an adult male native of Teso and speaker of Ateso) to divert attention to
other income earning ventures like growing of crops in coping with the crises created by cattle rustling and
torching of homesteads.
It was with one accord that the oral narrative and the audience-performer dramatic engagement brought
the community of Iteso to terms with their situation. Similarly, in the appreciation of the fable about animals
guarding a pool of living water, the performer referred the audience to the drought in the area and the members
of the audience did not need a second reminder that water was precious and should not be adulterated.
In line with Keen’s (2006) theory of narrative empathy, an affective link is created by the Ateso storyteller
to engage the audience up to the end of the plot. Egan (1986) observes:
Stories are largely about affective matters—they are about how people feel. These feelings can either provide the
motives for actions or they can provide the point and result of actions…we can see the importance of human emotions and
intentions in making things meaningful. To present knowledge cut off human emotions and intentions is to reduce its
affective meaning. This affective meaning, also, seems especially important in providing access to knowledge and
engaging us in knowledge. (pp. 29-30)
It was portrayed in Ateso oral narratives studied that performers were aware of the power of engagement.
Many strategies were employed by the storytellers to involve emotionally their audiences even though it was
not plain sailing at the start. The members of the audience were effectively engaged in the narratives whenever
they identified with characters and incidents in the tales. Sense could be established with the movements of the
narratives and establishing links between cause and effect in the plots. With fervent commitment to
understanding the story and its relevance in paving way for a better community, persons could use their
imaginations to propel them to previous events and forecast the probable futures to choose from.
The second property of oral narratives is temporality, a state of existing and having some relationship with
time is another property of oral narratives. Persons should identify with a specific period in time, live in it, not
just exist in it and aim to make a difference to leave it better than they found it. In the dramatic engagement that
the oral narratives transport their audiences, the temporality aspect is important in providing meaning to
incidents and issues. In some Iteso communities where the study was conducted, members took time to relate
the issues to their own circumstances. They shared their views in brainstorming sessions and came up with
plausible solutions. Iteso seemed to look to the research as a possible means through which they and their views
could reach the powers that be to make changes for the better. Issues of corruption cropped up in trickster
stories and some fables and various communities were able to variedly assign roles to some personalities and
pass judgments on them. When members of the audience knew their situation better it was possible to place
meaning in the narratives they received and listened to. Storytelling in the Ateso speaking communities selected
was an involving experience. Atwood (1996) says:


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When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion, a dark roaring, a blindness… like a
boat [being] crushed… all aboard powerless to stop it. It is only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all.
When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else… (pp. 345-346)
True to Atwood’s statement in the Ateso oral narratives, involvement in the story is an intricate process
and experience. The artists call it the “into and out of the illusionary world” engagement. We must strive to get
to grips with what the characters in the story portend, the level of comprehension of their predicaments. Using
the empathetic stance, the audience can place themselves in the positions of the characters and in their time and
visualize the way forward. The strong motivation to have a good conclusion in the story, a better future in the
real life of the members of the audience, links the oral narrative to the communities with relevance. When
moral judgments were passed on immoral characters or actions in the oral narratives, there was the relieving
effect: The members, at least for a time, felt some psychological relief and kept their hopes high for the
actualization of their aspirations. In telling the story as Atwood points out the engagement is like a maze, a
puzzle from which the audiences emerge as informed advocates of the future. The story becomes a catalyst in
the transformative process in communities. Sandlos (1998) says:
The closure of a story or “how the story ends” (e.g., as a tragedy, a comedy of errors, a victory, or a defeat) is a
passage of moral judgment on agents of “eventhood” within the narrative and thus provides a framework for meaning
production that would not otherwise be possible given a series of disconnected events. (p. 2)
The aspirations and fears of the audience as they accepted to be part of the narratives are justified or
erased as the storyteller concludes the narrative. Oral narratives work towards unity and integration of thought
patterns. The narrative strives to establish a common front for the people to use for tackling their problems.
Viewpoints are harmonized and extremists accommodated. Temporality makes oral narratives an excellent
device for memory enhancement and easier identification of the common goal for the common good. Bruner
(1990) argues that stories in a context of meaning are far more memorable than a list of dates.
Conflict resolution is the third property in oral narratives. True to most genres of literature, conflict and
conflict resolution is the menu of the narratives. In folktales, there is a central conflict or complication of life
and a resolution or denouement. This provides the audience with avenues of solving problems in their areas
especially when similar or related issues were well articulated in the oral narratives. The Ateso tales reflected a
variety of conflicts that humanity could be faced with: political, social, cultural, economic, technological,
aesthetic, and psychological to name a few. The performers had to engage the audience into the problem
highlights provide a development of the crises and explore strategies used for grappling with the issue.
According to Egan (1988), explorations to resolve the conflict would require a variety of cognitive skills in
potentially all disciplines. All faculties are required, affective, cognitive, and psychomotor. Narrative plots in
Ateso oral narratives gave models which paralleled human conflicts and dilemmas and gave indicators of
possible solutions.
The fourth property of oral narrative is character where roles in life situations are dressed in personalities
depicting them. MacIntyre (1984) compares human life to narratives where persons have certain roles to play
on stage at given times and learn the complex dynamics of our cultures.
We enter human society… with one or more imputed characters—roles into which we have been drafted and have to
learn what they are in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are apt to be
construed. (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 216)


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He further cautions, “Deprive children of stories and you leave them anxious stutterers in their actions as
well as their words” (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 216). Just as teachers should not deny their learners stories,
communities should not be deprived of oral narratives by socio-cultural endowments. The people will
degenerate into stutterers and desolate beings. As stories are connected to words and actions the drama should
be engaging people from the start on life situation of here and now. Life is presented as fragmented actions and
notions of meanings with the resultant chaos ensuing. Oral narratives in characterization in Ateso helped model
and define characters to be emulated by members of Iteso communities and those to be abhorred. Oral
narratives displayed intolerance in varying degrees and the models portrayed a nurturing of tolerance to be
accommodated in the meaning creation process. Virtues were imparted through tolerance, establishment of trust
and mutual concern for others were dressed in the characters that the oral narratives showed. Skills of survival
and co-existence were interwoven in the oral narratives. The trickster tales from the Ateso stories gave fertile
ground for discussion on the role of trust and tolerance in society.
Another property of oral narratives Ateso stories portrayed was voice, the right to be heard. The
communities the research was carried in did not mince words in expressing their right to be heard. Many
informants were saddened by the apparent denial of the right to be heard. Skepticism was shown because of
disappointments realized from various empty promises of political, cultural, and religious leaderships.
Audiences had to be persuaded to adopt viewpoints of the narrators. It was made possible when the audiences
were made to see the stories as real to them. That is why Connor (1999) argues:
…Understanding that the storyteller—wittingly or unwittingly—selects, highlight, obscures, evades and manipulates
‘the facts’, is also one of the tenets underpinning critical literacy and informed social action. (p. 4)
Historical novelists and playwrights intentionally weave fiction with nonfiction in order to engage the
affective and cognitive imaginations of the audience so as to activate the psychomotor domain of their faculties.
Details are evoked of events of feelings that could have been lost over time. When Ngugi wa Thiong’o refers to
the African struggles in his novels and plays, (for example in A Grain of Wheat (1967) or Petals of Blood
(1977)) the historical fact of the political revolts against foreign rule are freely interwoven with fiction resulting
in the rekindling of the fires of strong desire for a better Africa. More often than not, more truth comes out of a
blend of fiction and nonfiction than a pure factual report of history. After listening to the story told, the
audience members often carried on the discussion by telling related stories of their own to further illustrate the
meaning they got. According to Robinson and Hawpe (1986):
Throughout the construction process, judgments and references are required at two levels: about discreet items of
information and about the adequacy of the unfolding story. Selecting, comparing, inferring, arranging, and revising are
activities, which we regard as cognitive strategies. (p. 116)
When the facts on the ground are blended with feeling of sympathy and empathy, the affective domain
supports the cognitive one. Feelings are internalized and appreciated giving rise to positive thinking for
affirmative action. The communities are able to think rationally and not emotionally as was the prevalent case
in the past, for instance, after the loss of a kin to armed insurgents.
That leads to the sixth property of oral narratives, the perspective of the audience, the various ways in
which each member of the listening and acting party perceive issues with a renewed outlook. Just as storytellers
use various approaches to tell the same story, individual members of the audience, bearing in mind their
background experiences, do understand the story in their own angle of conceptualization. In Ateso oral


776
narratives, the truth in the narrative was judged subjectively and severally. The researcher recalled a simple
experiment of message transmission using the rudimentary teaching aid of a line of 10 individuals spaced at
five meters apart and told to convey a short message in a conveyor-belt system from source A to the neighbor.
By the time the message is said out aloud by the 10th person, the amount of distortion was significant to the
horror of the sender. The audience perspective is a property that oral narrators have to reckon with.
Integrative force is the seventh property of oral narratives. As we mentioned above oral narratives freely
merge fiction with non-fiction sometimes in the same breath of telling. It also integrates other disciplines in the
storytelling. The performance experience vied from social issues like family conflicts to cultural issues like the
cultural institution of Iteso; the Iteso Cultural Union headed by His Highness the Emorimor, Papa Iteso. The
same audience and performers would discuss economic and gender related issues in their communities. Science
and technology often found their way into the oral narratives. In one of the folktales about mysterious girls who
were got from creeping plants, Epolon ka Akeberu (The Old Man and His Wife), it was told that when their
union with humans became sour, one aggrieved sister networked with her other sisters using a mobile phone
and they reassembled and returned to the swamp to their family of creeping plants, abandoning their efforts to
please humans. In the tale an old childless couple had been blessed by nature when they picked some creeping
plants that turned out to be beautiful girls when taken home. The couple married off four of the five “daughters”
to political and cultural leaders. One daughter, who was lame, refused to get married and stayed home, however,
the “mother”, was as ungrateful for their fortune as she was cruel. The lame girl was tortured days on end until
she saw that it was enough. She called her other four sisters using a cell phone and they mournfully returned to
the plant life from which they were got. Through the story told about aspects of humanity, the performer
prepares the audience to comprehend the conflicts around them and seek to possible solutions to rectify the
dismal conditions. Personal responsibility for actions and lack of correct actions became the topic of discussion.
Ideas and facts were integrated in the narratives. In a similar way, in Angurian na Ibaren (The Grumbling of
Cattle) the characters wrote a memorandum to the civic leaders demanding respect for animal rights and urging
humans to desist from artificial insemination.
It is this viewpoint that Polkinghorne (1988), a narrative psychologist explains that, “the narrative scheme
serves as a lens through which the apparently independent and disconnected elements of existence are seen as
parts of a whole” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 36). It follows that any oral narrative provides the opportunity for
members to integrate their experiences and existences of other beings in the bid of subduing the world for the
good of humanity.
The eighth property of oral narrative is cultural mediation. In many narratives that the study examined, the
performers ended the plot with reference to the cultural institution of Iteso. A storyteller extricated the fictional
narrative by saying that the cultural leader of Iteso (who was not mentioned anywhere in the narrative, but
assumed to have eyes and ears everywhere) was concerned about the crises displayed in the narrative. This
appeal for cultural unity was seen by many performers as a tool for harnessing constructive energies for a better
Africa. Bruner (1990) indicates that one of the properties of narrative is its ability to “forge links between the
exceptional and the ordinary” (Bruner, 1990, p. 47). He continues to state that the stories of a culture perpetuate
its morals and traditions, but the conflict and resolution structure of a narrative allow for negotiated meaning
when there is a conflict, when intent must be considered.
The Ateso oral narratives invariably alluded to facets of culture. The story of the creeping plants turned
beautiful girls alludes to the cultural cord of Iteso who identify themselves with the creeping plant, emuria,


777
tough, and resilient to all weather. Narrative “mediates between the canonical world of culture and the more
idiosyncratic world of beliefs, desires and hopes” (Bruner, 1990, p. 52). Oral narratives essentially provide
avenues for moral decision-making and conflict resolution. The performers gear their oral tales to suitable
endings that support the people’s cultural values, ethos, attitudes, feelings, and norms. These values play
significant roles in helping the people make up their minds about certain crises. They prioritize the values
highlighted and base their rationalized conclusions on them. The oral narratives make audiences foresee an
outcome of some set of actions while the stories they share related to the narrative enables them engage
integrated support from one another. The power to identify the nature of the problem, issue, or conflict is given,
cultural values are explained, and the process of value prioritization is set in motion. The Iteso audience was
able to predict possible outcomes of a given series of occurrences and then support a feasible resolution to the
crises in given circumstances.
A renewed perspective is the ninth property of narrative. The process that the beginning of a storytelling
session ignites continues the flame of inquiry into the meaning of life and the crux of conflicts pervading
human communities. People want the truth about their story however gloomy it might be. Social scientists call
this identity a placement of a person to a milieu. In the study, it was not uncommon for Iteso audiences getting
up in arms against adulteration of their folktales. Performers and their auxiliaries were often challenged when
communities thought that their narrative was blatant distortion of facts. Violence was viewed in varying angles
of the characters portrayed in the tales. The experience of oral narrative gave some people opportunities to
journey into the self, own what they can, and identify with some aspects of the past that they know worked well.
Reconciliation is seen as a tool for reconstruction of African societies. In the oral narratives, the irreconcilable
characters are ejected from society and their state of being outcasts is judged as punitive.
The tenth property of oral narrative is reflection when the meaning obtained and the renewed perspective
arrived at empowers the individuals to give better informed meanings to their predicaments. MacIntyre (1984)
suggests that narrative is the pathway to meaning, because our lives are a narrative. The power of narrative is
that it reflects our own life space. This effect is heightened by the overlap of life narratives; the interplay of
generations that gives us clues to interpreting our own events (MacIntyre, 1984, p. 212). In the reflection stage,
the Iteso audiences and performers could see new possibilities of solving what had looked insurmountable tasks.
But this, they concurred, required action and not apathy. Bruner (1990) says:
When we enter human life, it is as if we walk on stage into a play whose enactment is already in process—a play
whose somewhat open plot determines what parts we may play and toward what denouements we may be heading. (p. 34)
In the reflection phase, the oral narrative gives the audience and performers certain viewpoints open to
them. They feel privileged to have enough sense to redesign their destiny using the knowledge obtained from
the storytelling experience. As they each view their lives as personal narratives, they get a better view of self
which helps in undertaking the journey of life further on. The brainstorming sessions that followed some
narratives showed that the participants had come to terms with their realities and were not projecting blame to
other persons or bodies but were determined to harness resources in their reach for a better Africa. This is what
K. J. Gergen and M. M. Gergen (1982) refer to as the healing power of narratives when they argue that
narrative becomes a powerful psychotherapy tool when patients feel empowered to identify their conflict and
look towards possible positive resolutions (K. J. Gergen & M. M. Gergen, 1982, p. 27).


778
Recommendations
The study recommends that a new Africa can be realized with interactions and connections being revived
through oral narratives of the people of Africa. Oral narrative as a genre gives the personal, individual, and
communal concerns a voice, a projection that reflects the perception of the actors in a given scenario. It points
out that there is the concern of all who must play their roles in the circumstances to pave way for the better
future. Oral narratives become the cultural mediator and umpire for the norms of the community. Through oral
narratives communities adopt new attitudes and outlooks to issues that could have been insurmountable for an
individual. The Iteso find that they can forgive one another and reconcile with their hostile neighbors as they
look to the future. The elders and the youth can live in harmony in spite of the previous animosity that might
have existed in the socio-cultural revolutions.
Narrative Language for Development
The study examines the relationship between narrative language and development. Following what the
structuralist, Chomsky (1965, 1968) believed that there was an innate ability of individual to learn and develop
language in his language acquisition device, Bruner (1990) claims that “innate syntactic language” is modified
with social interactions and that “rules can only be learned instrumentally” (p. 70). When an oral narrative is
performed there may be cases of innate readiness for the meanings to be inferred by the ability to form
prelinguistic appreciation of context. Bruner’s (1990) views agree with Polkinghorne who says that “the more
accepted position is that narrative structure although dependent on basic human capacities, are acquired by
abstractions from experiences” (Polkinghorne, 1988, pp. 112-113). The generalizations conceived begin as the
narrative unfolds and is helped by precursor events in the interpreters’ minds. Word meanings get generalized
as members of the audience play with the verbal dexterity and the acquired meaning is shared by the speech
community. Bruner (1990) claims that humans have the will to communicate and “the push to construct
narrative determines the order of priority in which grammatical forms are mastered” (Bruner, 1990, p. 71).
The study about constructing knowledge using narrative was done way back at the times of the
educationist Montessori (1912) who notes that children at a remarkably young age are making sense of their
worlds through language. According to her, “dictorium” is the use of language for intellectual growth. Spoken
language (oral narrative so to say) “develops through the exercise of its mechanisms and is enriched by
perceptions and dictorium that develops with the mind and is enriched by intellectual culture” (Montessori,
1912, 1988, pp. 247-248). This view is true of oral narratives in African folklore. In the arguments about the
power of oral narratives in fostering development, the study notes that communities need to develop
communicative strategies that are in resonance with narratives. Westby (1991) says:
Developmentally, narrative is the first language form that requires the speaker to produce an extended monologue
rather than an interactive dialogue. In relating or listening to a narrative, the speaker and listener act as spectators rather
than participants. As spectators, the speaker and listener reflect on experiences, whereas as participants, they use language
to get things done and make changes in the current situation. (p. 340)
What Westby says is in line with the thesis of the study. Ateso oral narratives can be used effectively by
Iteso to foster development. Africa can solve her problems using actively narrative. Polkinghorne (1988)
contends that:
For human existence, linguistic forms are paramount, for they filter and organize information from the physical and
cultural realms and transform it into the meanings that make up human knowledge and experience. On the basis of this


779
constructed experience, we understand ourselves and the world, and we make decisions and plans regarding how we will
act. (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 158)
Oracy as a Sharpening of Literacy Prospects
In one of the Ateso folktales, Angurian na Ibaren (The Grumbling of Cattle), the storyteller dramatizes
how the characters wrote a letter to the government to express their grievances. That is utilizing literacy as a
tool of expression. Oracy gives rise to literacy, the orate characters prove themselves to be literate. The more
orate our people become the more chances of their becoming well-read and knowledgeable. Goodman (1986)
says:
Language is language only when it is whole. Whole texts, connected discourse in the context of some speech or
literacy event, are really the minimal functional unit, barest whole that makes sense. When [we] look at words, phrases,
sentences, [we] do so always in the context of the whole, real language texts that are part of real language experiences of
people. (pp. 27-28).
Audiences get immersed into narratives that the power of literacy is sharpened. Fox (1997) illustrates the
immersion process in narrative saying that, “when we develop literacy we should be reading aloud daily” (p.
123). She was emphasizing two points: selecting good literature and daily reading. What was being
recommended for a classroom teacher applies in oral narratives where the performer is teacher and the audience
is the students. Oral narratives assist developing the literacy skills. Cambourne (1988) uses the parallel of oral
language to emphasize that making errors is not only normal, it is “absolutely essential to the whole process” of
learning to read and write (Cambourne, 1988, p. 67). In learning to speak we go through a series of successive
approximations. In learning to read and write, we should be allowed to do this as well in a judgment free, safe
and secure environment. The study explored the power of oral narrative in enhancing an understanding of a
given language. This involved getting to grips with the journeys of personalities in the stories, linking them to
individual journeys of members of the audience and their communities in line with their culture. Oral narratives
help enrich the understanding of a culture and way of life of a people.
The researcher interviewed performers and members of the audiences to determine strategies; they felt
plausible in their given environment to have things change for the better. The researcher noted that their
understanding of their predicaments ran deeper than the language they were using could express. Nonetheless,
they opted for the oral narrative medium of expression as relieving for both the participants and the
stakeholders. Storytelling reflects life’s journey by affording members of the audience opportunities to explore
their personal narratives in their social setting. The ability to understand life experiences meaningfully is
enhanced. All human life is a cyclic mirror: we are born, we grow, we learn, we work, we play, we face
conflicts, and have to make choices, we relate with other human beings, and we propagate and die, to let others
continue the cycle. In spite of these repetitive phenomena, each individual has a role to play in the cosmos. Oral
narratives provide imagery for self exploration using metaphors of life. The ability to process the images using
the cognitive and the affective domains help the understanding of the patterns and rhythm of the person,
emotionally, cognitively, and socially.
Oral narratives help in noting the importance of narrative as well as paradigmatic thought patterns through
the provision of allegory, image, and metaphor. Bruner (1988) says, “Narrative thinking, a good story,
convinces us of the likeliness of the events occurring or the character existing. This is in contrast to “the
‘well-informed argument’ of paradigmatic thinking which aims to convince us of truth” (p. 99). This leads to


780
the cause and effect thought patterning, which Robinson and Hawpe (1986) say “are attempts to organize and
give meaning to human experience, to explain and guide problem solving” (p. 114). Listening to the free
conversations of the audience members and performers after performances, the researcher observed that both
the paradigmatic and narrative thought patterns were being used concurrently. Some people used
logico-scientific reasoning to design a structure of plot the narrative should have taken, and immersed
themselves into the action of the story, took on some role(s) and explained what he or she could have done in
the circumstances. The word which is the productive creation of human for expression is related to many
aspects. Ong (1982) comments on oral recitation, “The oral word… never exists in a simply verbal context, as a
written word does. Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential situation which always
engages the body” (p. 67). When literacy is developed the person has to provide more to make the word lucid
and clear to the reader.
Reading the Signs of Time, Traditions, and Festivals
We experience the signs of time through daily and weekly patterns, seasonal patterns and by a realization
of the past, present, and the future we want in Africa. The linear and circular stories in Ateso oral narratives
celebrate traditions, customs, and festivals. Celebrations mark passage of time in which connect to the people’s
past, birthdays, marriage anniversaries, funeral rites and other rites of passage. Traditions and cultural festivals
bring families together to celebrate aspects of their existence. Mock (1999) says, “The sense of belonging
engendered by their participation in family cultural traditions make our active support important… Traditions
and stories can make the present more meaningful, the past more believable, and the future more possible” (p.
34). Hence, the celebration of narratives in Ateso oral folktales help the communities to understand the present
of their existence, believing in the past treasures and norms and to forge ahead for a bright future for people of
Africa. In traditional oral cultures, thought and memory are related to sound. If a story was forgotten by a tribe,
it was lost forever. “For this reason, oral cultures have exploited language to aid memory” (Egan, 1997, p. 58).
Mnemonic patterns include the phrases and sayings that are echoed from one occasion to another. The
repetition of words and ideas, alliterations, and assonances (Ong, 1982; Egan, 2000) help in memory retention.
Ong (1982) points out that in oral cultures, it is important for there to be a lapse of time before a story is retold
since this gives the listener time to formulate personal patterns that would enable him or her to remember the
tale in an internalized version. “Part of this memory process involved identifying ‘standard thematic settings’
(the assembly, the meal, the duel, the hero’s helper, and so on), in proverbs which are constantly heard by
everyone so that they come to mind readily and which themselves are patterned for retention and ready recall”
(Ong, 1982, p. 34). The power of story can be used for communities of oral societies to aid memory as “lore
coded within a story structure… much easier to preserve. They could orient hearers’ emotions to their contents”
(Egan, 1997, p. 62).
When stories are told, the listeners share in the storied experiences of others with whom they feel a
connection which Keen (2006) refers to as “speculation about human empathy’s positive consequences” (p.
207). The speculation and connection influence the choices that contribute to the uniqueness of individuals.
Personal journey choices can also be affected by an awareness of endowments and interests that constitute
individual uniqueness and personal traits. The Focused Group Discussions held in the study revealed that
people were encouraged to explore their personal narratives and discover their own voices and viewpoints to
guide them in the life’s journey. The speculation can be used as integrating force when narrative helps person

Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol.4 Issue 10 2014

Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol.4 Issue 10 2014

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Journal of Literature and Art Studies Vol.4 Issue 10 2014