Kiss of the Fur Queen, The First Novel by Tomson Highway, Canada’s Best-known Native Playwright

Reading Passage Question

Kiss of the Fur Queen, the first novel by Tomson Highway, Canada’s best-known native playwright, is set in the contemporary period between 1950 and the late 1980s, though, like Le Bras Coupe, it, too, is obsessed with history and the native legacy of European colonization. Highway’s story about present-day native identities is suffused with his distinctively native sense of interconnectedness between the present and the past, the living and the dead, as he stated in an interview at the time of the novel’s publication:

“We acknowledge that the spirits of our ancestors are still with us, that they still walk this land, and are a very active part of our lives and our imaginations. We still have that while mainstream culture doesn’t. It’s lost that faith, that magic, that wonder. So I think they kind of envy us.”

Yet, despite Highway’s positive emphasis, this is a story where survival is balanced, if not actually dominated, by damage and loss, as the novel weaves together personal memory and the collective social history of aboriginal people since the coming of the Europeans. Like Assiniwi’s storytelling, Highway’s is rooted in strong family connection, for Kiss of the Fur Queen is a semi autobiographical novel about the lives and careers of two brothers belonging to a native Canadian community, one a pianist who later becomes a playwright, the other a ballet dancer. These two characters bear a striking resemblance to Tomson and his younger brother Rene, who died in the late 1980s and to whom the novel is dedicated. However, unlike Assiniwi in his historical novel, Highway adopts a European narrative genre, that of the Kunstlerroman, to tell his story of these aboriginal artists, reconstructing the inevitably hybridized identities of contemporary First Nations people. This is a novel which, like its protagonists, faces both ways, combining white and native traditions, for overarching the human-centered artist-narrative is the wider dimension of native mythology, which offers an alternative form of historical thinking preserved through oral storytelling and aboriginal legends. It is with the manifestations and effects of such double vision, where different cultural systems of representation are held together in tension, that a detailed analysis of Highway’s novel will be useful.

Source: Where are the Voices Coming From? : Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History – Coral Ann Howells

“Kiss of the Fur Queen, the first novel by Tomson Highway, Canada’s best-known native playwright”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.
This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 7 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

Q1. The author’s reference to Assiniwi (refer the highlighted text) serves primarily to

1. highlight a shortcoming in Highway’s writing style
2. highlight the uniqueness of Assiniwi’s writing style
3. emphasize on the European narrative in Highway’s work
4. introduce the Kunstlerroman genre
5. highlight an alternative form of historical thinking in Highway’s work

Q2. It can be inferred from the passage that

1. Assiniwi is the author of Le Bras Coupe
2. Assiniwi, like Highway, is a native playwright
3. Kunstlerroman is a genre dealing with aboriginal artists
4. Canada’s social history has had heavy influence of Europeans
5. Native Canadian mythology depicts strong family connections

Q3. Which of the following aspects of Kiss of the Fur Queen find a mention in the passage?

1. It is based on family connections.
2. It combines white and native traditions.
3. It represents the social history of aboriginal Canadian people.
4. It was written between 1950 and the late 1980s.
5. Its narrative genre is the same as that of Assiniwi’s historical novel.

1. I and II only
2. I, II, and III only
3. II and III only
4. All except II
5. All

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