Thomas King's Truth about Stories and Its Impact on Social Workers Assignment

Thomas King's Truth about Stories and Its Impact on Social Workers - Assignment Example I think this is a message that is especially important for social workers to keep in mind as they struggle to help those who are not a part of the dominant culture or socio-economic class. One thing that makes Kings message so effective is the personal tone in which he tells all his stories. He frequently speaks to the reader and is not shy about telling us when he is aiming for a story-telling tone. In the first chapter, he tells two different creation myths, one Christian, and one Native. The tones he uses to tell them are very different, as he points out afterwards. â€Å"In the Native story†, he says, â€Å"I tried to recreate an oral storytelling voice and craft the story in terms of a performance for a general audience† (King, 2003, p.22). However, the Christian version told with a less playful tone, used a â€Å"sober voice† which â€Å"makes for a formal recitation but creates a sense of veracity† (King, 2003, p.23). Kings stories in the book usually use a mix of these two tones, and the result is one which speaks directly to people and seems realistic without being unengaging. Also, the storytelling tone is part of the problem King wishes to speak about, that Native people are never really taken seriously and understood from their own points of view, but lumped into one big category, Native, and viewed as a sort of childish un-advanced race of people. As he says of his Native creation myth, â€Å"the conversation voice tends to highlight the exuberance of the story but diminishes its authority† (King, 2003, p.22-23). This, usually in the guise of focusing on Native performers who had to struggle to figure out whether they were still Native Americans or something else entirely, is a central theme throughout the book, along with the stereotyping that causes this main problem.