Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice
by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996 eISBN: 978-0-299-15143-0 | Paper: 978-0-299-15144-7 | Cloth: 978-0-299-15140-9 Library of Congress Classification PS153.I52C576 1996 Dewey Decimal Classification 810.9897
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
This provocative collection of essays reveals the passionate voice of a Native American feminist intellectual. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a poet and literary scholar, grapples with issues she encountered as a Native American in academia. She asks questions of critical importance to tribal people: who is telling their stories, where does cultural authority lie, and most important, how is it possible to develop an authentic tribal literary voice within the academic community?
In the title essay, “Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner,” Cook-Lynn objects to Stegner’s portrayal of the American West in his fiction, contending that no other author has been more successful in serving the interests of the nation’s fantasy about itself. When Stegner writes that “Western history sort of stopped at 1890,” and when he claims the American West as his native land, Cook-Lynn argues, he negates the whole past, present, and future of the native peoples of the continent. Her other essays include discussion of such Native American writers as Michael Dorris, Ray Young Bear, and N. Scott Momaday; the importance of a tribal voice in academia, the risks to American Indian women in current law practices, the future of Indian Nationalism, and the defense of the land.
Cook-Lynn emphasizes that her essays move beyond the narrowly autobiographical, not just about gender and power, not just focused on multiculturalism and diversity, but are about intellectual and political issues that engage readers and writers in Native American studies. Studying the “Indian,” Cook-Lynn reminds us, is not just an academic exercise but a matter of survival for the lifeways of tribal peoples. Her goal in these essays is to open conversations that can make tribal life and academic life more responsive to one another.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, is professor emerita of English and Native studies at Eastern Washington University. She is a writer of poetry and fiction, a consultant in Native American studies, and a founding editor of the journal Wicazo Sa Review. Her other books include From the River’s Edge, The Power of Horses and Other Stories, Seek the House of Relatives, and Then the Badger Said This.
REVIEWS
“Makes clear the myriad ways that native voices are routinely silenced, ignored, and overwhelmed.”—Kathryn W. Shanley, Cornell University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE:
THOUGHTS ON THE ART OF REVIEWING BOOKS
1.
Wounded Knee, 1973
2.
The Broken Cord
3.
Black Eagle Child
4.
Black Hills, White Justice
PART TWO:
DISPOSSESSION
5.
Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner
6.
A Centennial Minute from Indian Country; or Lessons in Christianizing the Aboriginal Peoples of America from the Example of Bishop William Hobart Hare
PART THREE:
WHO WILL TELL THE STORIES?
7.
The Relationship of a Writer to the Past: Art, a Literary Principle, and the Need to Narrate
8.
The American Indian Fiction Writers: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, the Third World, and First Nation Sovereignty
PART FOUR:
WOMEN'S LIVES
9.
The American Indian Woman in the Ivory Tower
10.
The Big Pipe Case
PART FIVE:
THE LAST WORD
11.
How Scholarship Comes to Be Relevant, or Dumbarton Oaks Is Fifty Years Old
12.
America's Oldest Racism: The Roots of Inequality
13.
End of the Failed Metaphor
Notes
Selected Bibliography
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
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Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice
by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
University of Wisconsin Press, 1996 eISBN: 978-0-299-15143-0 Paper: 978-0-299-15144-7 Cloth: 978-0-299-15140-9
This provocative collection of essays reveals the passionate voice of a Native American feminist intellectual. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a poet and literary scholar, grapples with issues she encountered as a Native American in academia. She asks questions of critical importance to tribal people: who is telling their stories, where does cultural authority lie, and most important, how is it possible to develop an authentic tribal literary voice within the academic community?
In the title essay, “Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner,” Cook-Lynn objects to Stegner’s portrayal of the American West in his fiction, contending that no other author has been more successful in serving the interests of the nation’s fantasy about itself. When Stegner writes that “Western history sort of stopped at 1890,” and when he claims the American West as his native land, Cook-Lynn argues, he negates the whole past, present, and future of the native peoples of the continent. Her other essays include discussion of such Native American writers as Michael Dorris, Ray Young Bear, and N. Scott Momaday; the importance of a tribal voice in academia, the risks to American Indian women in current law practices, the future of Indian Nationalism, and the defense of the land.
Cook-Lynn emphasizes that her essays move beyond the narrowly autobiographical, not just about gender and power, not just focused on multiculturalism and diversity, but are about intellectual and political issues that engage readers and writers in Native American studies. Studying the “Indian,” Cook-Lynn reminds us, is not just an academic exercise but a matter of survival for the lifeways of tribal peoples. Her goal in these essays is to open conversations that can make tribal life and academic life more responsive to one another.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, is professor emerita of English and Native studies at Eastern Washington University. She is a writer of poetry and fiction, a consultant in Native American studies, and a founding editor of the journal Wicazo Sa Review. Her other books include From the River’s Edge, The Power of Horses and Other Stories, Seek the House of Relatives, and Then the Badger Said This.
REVIEWS
“Makes clear the myriad ways that native voices are routinely silenced, ignored, and overwhelmed.”—Kathryn W. Shanley, Cornell University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE:
THOUGHTS ON THE ART OF REVIEWING BOOKS
1.
Wounded Knee, 1973
2.
The Broken Cord
3.
Black Eagle Child
4.
Black Hills, White Justice
PART TWO:
DISPOSSESSION
5.
Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner
6.
A Centennial Minute from Indian Country; or Lessons in Christianizing the Aboriginal Peoples of America from the Example of Bishop William Hobart Hare
PART THREE:
WHO WILL TELL THE STORIES?
7.
The Relationship of a Writer to the Past: Art, a Literary Principle, and the Need to Narrate
8.
The American Indian Fiction Writers: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, the Third World, and First Nation Sovereignty
PART FOUR:
WOMEN'S LIVES
9.
The American Indian Woman in the Ivory Tower
10.
The Big Pipe Case
PART FIVE:
THE LAST WORD
11.
How Scholarship Comes to Be Relevant, or Dumbarton Oaks Is Fifty Years Old
12.
America's Oldest Racism: The Roots of Inequality
13.
End of the Failed Metaphor
Notes
Selected Bibliography
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE