From Publishers Weekly
"The unfortunate truth is that there are few significant works being produced today by the currently popular American Indian fiction writers which examine the meaningfulness of indigenous or tribal sovereignty in the twenty-first century." With that statement, it's evident that Cook-Lynn (Dakota Sioux author of From the River's Edge) doesn't feel a need to ingratiate herself to her compatriots. Politically minded and very outspoken, she criticizes everyone from the U.S. Government (for its racist and oppressive policies) to Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich (for "the sheer commercialism of Crown of Columbus" and especially their stance in The Broken Cord) to Stegner ("There is, perhaps, no American fiction writer who has been more successful in serving the interests of a nation's fantasy about itself than Wallace Stegner"). When not fraught with animosity, her essays are so congested with academic prose that they are very difficult to read. Anyone who doesn't share her view is blasted by her vitriolic pen, and the constant pounding is so relentless that it becomes mind-numbing. As to the book's title: "Stegner's attitude is, without question, the pervasive attitude of white midwesterners whose ancestors marched into a moral void and then created through sheer will the morality that allowed them, much the same way that the contemporary white Dutch South Africans marched into South Africa proclaiming Pretoria, to convince the world that 'this is my country.' " These are essays on important issues that need to be explored, but most readers are likely to find them bitter and overwrought. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Ruth Bayard Smith
Although she tries to extrapolate her often provocative arguments into a broader discussion of multiculturalism and affirmative action, the tone throughout is angry and unyielding.

From Kirkus Reviews
Book reviews dressed up as essays; slipshod polemic dressed up as scholarly discourse. It is not so much that Sioux novelist, poet, and academic Cook-Lynn (From the River's Edge, 1991, etc.) cannot read the work of the late Western historian and novelist Wallace Stegner; it is that she will not (``my reading in the work of Wallace Stegner is minimally undertaken''). She builds this thin collection around a misapprehension of Stegner's thought, namely, that he maintains that American Indian history (and, by implication, American Indian life) ends in 1890, with the closing of the frontier. As a result, Cook-Lynn goes on to assert that Indian history should be written by Indians alone. In some cases she makes good points, as when she dissects Ruth Beebe Hill's allegedly factual account of the Sioux in the spun-from-whole-cloth novel Hanta Yo, but she is hard-pressed to know who the enemy is when Native American writers like N. Scott Momaday opine that Hanta Yo is, after all, a pretty good read. Objecting to Stegner's view of himself as a native Westerner, Cook-Lynn makes the tired argument that only American Indians can claim to be native to the continent. Along the way she dismisses writers like John Updike, ``a white, male member of a prosperous and efficient Euro-American (i.e., white) capitalist democracy,'' and criticizes Michael Dorris, a mixed-blood, for having written negatively of the alcoholic Sioux mother of his adopted, brain-damaged son. Her book abounds with errors--among other things, she attributes the novel Dances with Wolves to Norman Maclean (it was written by Michael Blake). A shoddy piece of work full of self-satisfied platitudes that bespeak an absolutist worldview not open to debate. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Kathryn W. Shanley, Cornell University
"Makes clear the myriad ways that native voices are routinely silenced, ignored, and overwhelmed."-Kathryn W. Shanley, Cornell University

Book Description
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 Cant Read Wallace Stegner, Cook-Lynn objects to Stegners portrayal of the American West in his fiction, contending that no other author has been more successful in serving the interests of the nations 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.

From the Author
"The invasion of North America by European peoples has been portrayed in history and literature as a benign movement directed by God, a movement of moral courage and physical endurance, a victory for all humanity. This portrayal of colonialism and its impact on the unfortunate natives/Indians who possessed the continent for thousands of years before the birth of America seems to go unchallenged in either politics or letters by most mainstream thinkers. It arrives in academia unscathed, to be spoonfed to future generations."-Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

About the Author
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 Rivers Edge, The Power of Horses and Other Stories, Seek the House of Relatives, and Then the Badger Said This.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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?

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

Book reviews dressed up as essays; slipshod polemic dressed up as scholarly discourse.

It is not so much that Sioux novelist, poet, and academic Cook-Lynn (From the River's Edge, 1991, etc.) cannot read the work of the late Western historian and novelist Wallace Stegner; it is that she will not ("my reading in the work of Wallace Stegner is minimally undertaken"). She builds this thin collection around a misapprehension of Stegner's thought, namely, that he maintains that American Indian history (and, by implication, American Indian life) ends in 1890, with the closing of the frontier. As a result, Cook-Lynn goes on to assert that Indian history should be written by Indians alone. In some cases she makes good points, as when she dissects Ruth Beebe Hill's allegedly factual account of the Sioux in the spun-from-whole-cloth novel Hanta Yo, but she is hard-pressed to know who the enemy is when Native American writers like N. Scott Momaday opine that Hanta Yo is, after all, a pretty good read. Objecting to Stegner's view of himself as a native Westerner, Cook-Lynn makes the tired argument that only American Indians can claim to be native to the continent. Along the way she dismisses writers like John Updike, "a white, male member of a prosperous and efficient Euro-American (i.e., white) capitalist democracy," and criticizes Michael Dorris, a mixed-blood, for having written negatively of the alcoholic Sioux mother of his adopted, brain-damaged son. Her book abounds with errors—among other things, she attributes the novel Dances with Wolves to Norman Maclean (it was written by Michael Blake).

A shoddy piece of work full of self-satisfied platitudes that bespeak an absolutist worldview not open to debate.