The Truth about Stories (book review)

Thomas King is a magician with stories. Take the stories he tells about his own life, for instance. They're yours. Do with them what you will. Tell them to others. Read them again, for a second or third time. Forget them. Write a book review on goodreads. But don't say in the years to come that you'd lived your life differently if only you had heard this story.

You've heard it now.

The paragraph above is stolen.I stole it from Thomas King's The Truth about Stories: a Native Narrative . It might be the final paragraph from the book, or a paragraph from somewhere in the beginning, or even the middle of the book. I won't spoil that.

King is a master storyteller. In this book he tells a story about the stories that have been and are still being told about Northern America's Natives. He shows how the different stories that we, as a society, tell ourselves affect the way we as a society live. The book is full of both native stories, anecdotes from real life and historical reflection. Although the lessons learned can be applied virtually limitless, the case study is that of a group of people that, according to most stories told about them, should no longer exist (although they definitely do exist, as King exemplifies) : American Indians. Throughout the book, King shows what stories about a "dying, noble race" do to communities and lawmakers. 

I've been politically active since my early youth, and through my education I've been able to acquire skills to turn ideals into practice.There's another thing I've loved since my early youth: stories. I've been swept away by epic works of fiction and by tiny fairy tales. In the weekends I sometimes perform as a medieval storyteller, speaking of Brynhild and Freydis and other long-gone viking heroines. But slowly, throughout the years, I've started to realise that this second interest is not so different from the first after all: the stories we tell influence the world we create.

Thomas King's The Truth About Stories is a short collection of essays that describe how the stories told about Native Americans in particular formed public policy and individual lives. I'd recommend this book to anyone, and although his examples are far stronger than mine, I've seen the same principles in my study and my work. We're all quick to tell our stories in the frames provided by other stories. The same goes for politicians, when they try to counter extremism from within the same frame. That's why I think it's so very important to tell different stories; show solutions and find different frames.

I am going to read this book again. I am going to need it to soak up it's full meaning. But I can say without hesitation that this is a great book.