The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Multiple Choice and Long Answer questions create ideal opportunities for whole-book review, unit exam, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. When considered against the context of the book as a whole, which is the best summary of the idea conveyed by King’s repeated cautions about believing him as a narrator?

A) Marginalized peoples have a built-in motivation to twist the truth.

B) Stories can have power over us whether they are true or not.

C) An audience has to take responsibility for knowing something about the storyteller.

D King also functions as a kind of Trickster figure in his role as narrator.

2. Within the context of this book, what can King’s repeated use of the phrase “it’s turtles all the way down” best be understood to mean?

A) Stories are inherently unreliable and should be regarded solely as entertainment.

B) There are an infinite number of ways to tell any given story.

C) Stories rest on other stories, so there is ultimately no way to assess the truth value of their “foundations.”

D) Native storytelling is an ancient practice that deserves recognition as “foundational” to Native life.

3. Which story from his own life is most clearly intended to be the culmination of the motif King introduces with this repeated warning: “Just don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story”?