Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn ISBN: 0-299-15144-1 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Elder and knowledge keeper for American Indian studies
Comment: Elizabeth Cook-Lynn with Vine Deloria, Jr., and Beatrice Medicine are among the Northern Plains Elders of the American Indian studies movement in the academy today. This important first collection of Cook-Lynn's essays should (I think will, as well as already does) appeal to Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students and our allies hungry for tribal voices among the chorus of anti-Indian "common sense" in this country's non-Native universities and colleges. Unfortunately, those readers intellectually debilitated by subscribing to the tenants of white supremacy will MIS-read Cook-Lynn's enabling and powerful tribal voice as "racist" or "anti-white person." This is not the case. Rather, what Cook-Lynn offers is a re-centering, a re-valuing, and a re-claiming of knowledge about the land and about Indigenous Peoples from writers like Wallace Stegner. Despite his many talents, Stegner failed to comprehend that the tribal nations of North America have sophisticated intellectual disciplines. Mentally undermined by the hegemony (or "common sense") of raced-white supremacy and colonial self-assurances, Stegner failed to see. Outside of Stegner's limited and limiting vision, indigenous intellectual disciplines are integrated into and constitutive of tribal cultures. They are as responsible as anything for tribal persistence--something certainly see-able. Cook-Lynn understands this; this social fact merits her respect and admiration. Indigenous intellectual disciplines would seem to deserve the respect of others too, but the colonial practice of raced-white supremacy long has been to ignore--or, worse, trivialize--these intellectual disciplines as well as the peoples who are their knowledge keepers. Cook-Lynn meaningfully contributes to the possibility for changing this unfortunate condition. It remains to be seen if a certain variety of reader can suspend the outrageous notion that to focus on the problem of racism and its cousin colonization is itself a racist act. Unfortunately for others dedicated to the idea of addressing the trauma of colonization, countless readers will find joy both in reading Wallace Stegner and witnessing racial injury. For everyone else, there is Elizabeth Cook-Lynn and the political common sense of anti-white supremacy, anti-racism.
Rating: 2
Summary: Why I Can't Read This Book
Comment: Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, while admirable in her passion and energy, should be ignored and left unread for her unbending, close-minded, self-pitying, small, and miserable book Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays. She clearly has no understanding of Stegner's work. She also apparently refuses to try to appreciate the work of anyone with the slightest disagreement with her worldview, which is narrow and mean-spirited at best. She assaults Michael Dorris for speaking lowly of an alcoholic woman who caused the mental retardation of her child by her carelessness. She thinks this is a bad choice on Dorris' part because the woman was a Native American. Does she believe that Native Americans are somehow above criticism? What race can claim such moral perfection and not seem like small-minded racists? Every member of every race is responsible for his/her actions, and if Ms. Cook-Lynn had read more of Stegner's work before she blindly bashed it, she would understand that deeper human truth, which is obvious to any real thinker.
I am annoyed to even have to mention such basic beliefs. There is no reason to believe that a group of people is better than another group, or that only members of that group have a right to write histories about the group. Ms. Cook-Lynn has some ideas about white history that she freely spouts, and I believe in my heart of hearts that it is her right to write alternate interpretations of the past (though she seems to just be rewording long-tired versions of history).
Only by hearing what other groups have to say about us can we grow by seeing ourselves with new perspective. Ms. Cook-Lynn hasn't even read Stegner--she refuses to hear anything but her own shrill, childish voice. I for one look forward to reading critical analyses of society, history, and literature by African Americans, Native Americans, German Americans, Frenchmen, Poles, Australians, etc. This is what led me to read Ms. Cook-Lynn's book. However, I was met with a fierce small-mindedness that enraged rather than enlightened.
Ignore this book. It is not worth the paper it was printed on. So long as these sorts of ideas are propagated, humankind will never end its struggles with racism and hatred.
Rating: 5
Summary: grand collection of essays from a great writer!
Comment: this is such a wonderful book to read, it's truly beyond words!
 |
Title: The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions by David Palumbo-Liu ISBN: 0816625573 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
 |
Title: Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms by Sherene H. Razack ISBN: 0802078982 Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
 |
Title: White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (American Crossroads, 2) by Neil Foley ISBN: 0520207246 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.47 |
 |
Title: To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War by Tera W. Hunter ISBN: 0674893085 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: Playing Indian by Philip Joseph Deloria ISBN: 0300080670 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
