Please note that I color-coded each "move" or step.

The Agency of A Tribal Voice

  A compilation of essays, "Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays, A Tribal Voice," was published in 1996. Elizabeth Cook- Lynn, the author, helped to found the Wicazo Sa Review, a journal of Native Studies. In the title essay Elizabeth Cook-Lynn responds to the literary works of Wallace Stegner. Exploring the reasoning behind and ramifications of Stegner's writings and popularity, Cook-Lynn suggests literature's role in the formation of ideologies. Contending, "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" (29), she prompts the reader to question how does this shadow of fantasy affect those marginalized groups who don't share the same interest and furthermore, what possible agency can be actualized to suppress the fantasy? In The Theory Toolbox, Nealon and Searls-Giroux suggest that "the ways we respond to the everyday world are bundled up with the ways we respond cultural texts.  The creativity of the response-- the way it works and reworks pre-existing codes—is finally the measure of subjective action. In "Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner" Cook-Lynn provides agency to her own marginalized Sioux Nation. Resisting the implication of Wallace Stegner's writings, Cook-Lynn suggests an alternative history, a redefining of indigenousness and a denunciation of his claimed ignorance.