Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice

Abstract

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996, xiv + 158 pages, $45.00 (cloth), $12.95 (paper).Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a Crow Creek Sioux Tribal member and Professor Emeritus of English and Native American Studies at Eastern Washington University, is well-known in academic and Native American circles as a forthright literary critic and proactive political commentator. Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner is an anthology of her more provocative and insightful critical essays from past three decades.Cook-Lynn's essays address a range of Native American Studies concerns -- from Indigenous philosophies, historical and contemporary realities, to literature, theory, criticism and appropriation. In addition to challenging Western paradigms and constructs of Native American experiences, she challenges Indigenous scholars to push beyond existing academic confines. Native American Studies reaches its 30th anniversary in 1998, and Cook-Lynn's work provides an overview of criticisms, pitfalls and challenges facing it. Most importantly, she forcefully distinguishes Native American Studies from conventional disciplines by reminding us why it emerged 29 years ago -- why our subjects, objectives, methods and theoretical developments make us different.One essential and distinct element in Native American Studies derived from Indigenous intellectual knowledge is the reality of race memory connection to land (p. 82). Since relationship between Indigenous peoples and land is inherently spiritual, it is imperative that Native American scholars maintain spiritual and ideological groundings in their own intellectual traditions. Further, since Indigenous intellectual traditions inform discourse, Native American scholars are most valuable and inspirational when proactively engaged in partisan struggles (p. 39).These essential criteria, often called grass-roots intellectualism, are evident in each essay. Cook-Lynn intimately places herself in her texts and grounds her work in best of both worlds -- her tribal tiospaye and her transdisciplinary academic background which is predominantly informed by postcolonial critical thinking of Said, Deloria Jr., Medicine, D'Souza, Momaday, Otriz and others. Politics also informs core of her work, a point criticized by mainstream scholars who perceive it as a lack of objectivity. Native American scholars agree that Eurocentric standards of objectivity serve as rationales which often undermine, minimize and negate our scholarship.Cook-Lynn's field is Native American literatures and she challenges Native American writers to engage their own and each others' work more critically. …