Visited by ghosts and shapeshifters, tormented by premonitions, she can''t escape the sense that something terrible is waiting for her. Growing up a tough, wild tomboy, swimming, fighting, and fishing in a remote village where the land slips into the green ocean on the edge of the world, Lisamarie has always been different. This powerful novel reminds us that places, as much as people, have stories to tell.įive hundred miles north of Vancouver is Kitamaat, an Indian reservation in the homeland of the Haisla people. Although postmodernist and indigenist approaches are in many ways opposed, Robinson uses them in conjunction.Robinson''s mastery is confirmed in Monkey Beach, the first full-length work of fiction by a Haisla writer and an unforgettable story set in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. However, Money Beach simultaneously refers to a distinctly Haisla epistemology, and, thus the novel must also be interpreted using an indigenous approach that highlights the relationship between the novels' characters and the land. Robinson creates a narrative of what Vizenor calls survivance by refusing to imbue her characters with identifiable cultural markers, thus stretching what readers might imagine are the borders of Native cultures.
Gerald Vizenor's theories of deconstruction draw attention away from identity questions and instead shed light on ways in which Robinson builds relationships between her characters, examines human potential for violence, and makes use of humour. Moreover, these critics formulate identity questions in language that draws on a dichotomy of civilization and savagery. This project first examines and reviews the current criticism on Monkey Beach and argues that critics have largely evaluated the novel with terms and concepts that emphasize Native identity questions in the text. "Storying Presence: Aboriginal Literature, Critical Strategies, and Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach" is an examination of some of the many issues that have emerged in current discussions of Native literature and an interpretation of how they relate to Eden Robinson's highly successful Monkey Beach (2000).
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