The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. How does King’s text refute stereotypes about Indian identity?

• What are the stereotypes about Indians that King identifies, and how does his text try to challenge these stereotypes? (topic sentence)
• Explain at least three ways that King’s anecdotes, commentary, and examples create a more complex portrait of Indian identity. Draw your examples from throughout the text.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how this topic relates to the book’s theme of The Struggle Between Image and Reality.

2. What is the rhetorical function of King’s use of repetition in this text?

• How does King use repetition and what purposes does it serve?  (topic sentence)
• Offer examples of at least three different uses of repetition in the text. Provide commentary on the effects of these uses of repetition and tie these effects to King’s purposes in the text.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how King’s use of repetition relates to the book’s theme of The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth.

3. How do King’s reflections about his father illustrate the text’s concern with The Power of Stories?

• What is the main idea that King conveys through his reflections about his father, and how does this support the theme of The Power of Stories? (topic sentence)
• Show how King’s reflections about his father permeate this text, and provide commentary on how these reflections convey meaning to the reader.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how King’s reflections about his father relate to the book’s theme of The Power of Stories.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. King asserts that works by Native writers “use the Native present as a way to resurrect a Native past and to imagine a Native future. To create, in words as it were, a Native universe” (Chapter 4). What does he mean by this, and how does he support this assertion? Does The Truth About Stories conform to this pattern? If yes, how? If not, why not? How does this impact the book’s concern with one or more of the themes of The Power of Stories, The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth, and The Struggle Between Image and Reality? Write an essay that responds to these questions with a cohesive argument supported with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

2. At the end of each chapter, King repeats the idea that the reader is now in possession of a new story and can do with it what they will. What is the tone of this repeated idea as King expresses it? How does repetition contribute to the tone? When King later tells the story about his relationship with the Cardinal family, how does this new information impact the reader’s understanding of his tone in the repeated idea? Are there other anecdotes, commentary, or historical information in the text that impact the reader’s reception of this repeated idea? How does this tone either support or undercut King’s ideas about The Power of Stories? Write an essay that responds to these questions with a cohesive argument supported with evidence drawn from throughout the text.

3. In The Truth About Stories, King blends memoir, history, and literary analysis. What rhetorical effects does this blending produce? What meaning/s does it suggest? How might this blending of forms reflect Native literary traditions, and what rhetorical purpose might be served by centering these traditions? How does this blending of different types of writing help develop the three related themes of The Power of Stories, The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth, and The Struggle Between Image and Reality? Write an essay in which you make a claim about the effects produced by King’s blending of memoir, history, and literary analysis in The Truth About Stories, and assess the impact that this melding of text types has on the book’s development of its central themes. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text.