The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

“There is a story I know. It’s about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle. I’ve heard this story many times, and each time someone tells the story, it changes. Sometimes the change is simply in the voice of the storyteller. Sometimes the change is in the details. Sometimes in the order of events. Other times it’s the dialogue or the response of the audience. But in all the tellings of all the tellers, the world never leaves the turtle’s back. And the turtle never swims away.”

Every chapter except the Afterwords begins with this same paragraph. This quotation captures one of the book’s central themes: that stories change just by being told. In this sense, King argues that stories live but that some aspect of them, some truth, is constant. Additionally, the repetition of this paragraph reflects the repetition King says is a central element of Native storytelling itself, making this excerpt both a description and an example of one of King’s key ideas.

“The truth about stories is that that’s all we are.”

Each time this idea is mentioned, King follows it up with a quotation about stories from other Native writers. These quotations inform the theme of each chapter, but the overall theme of the work is encapsulated by this repeated quotation. King’s argument is that the stories we tell and the stories we share about the world, its origins, ourselves, our presents, and our pasts inform who we all are as people and who we might become. King’s belief that stories are all we are also implies that changing stories can change the world.