In Defense of Loose Translations: An Indian Life in an Academic World (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781496208873)

In Defense of Loose Translations is a memoir that bridges the personal and professional experiences of Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. Having spent much of her life illuminating the tragic irony of being an Indian in America, this provocative and often controversial writer narrates the story of her intellectual life in the field of American Indian studies.

Drawing on her experience as a twentieth-century child raised in a Sisseton Santee Dakota family and under the jurisdictional policies that have created significant social isolation in American Indian reservation life, Cook-Lynn tells the story of her unexpectedly privileged and almost comedic "affirmative action" rise to a professorship in a regional western university.

Cook-Lynn explores how different opportunities and setbacks helped her become a leading voice in the emergence of American Indian studies as an academic discipline. She discusses lecturing to professional audiences, activism addressing nonacademic audiences, writing and publishing, tribal-life activities, and teaching in an often hostile and, at times, corrupt milieu.

Cook-Lynn frames her life's work as the inevitable struggle between the indigene and the colonist in a global history. She has been a consistent critic of the colonization of American Indians following the treaty-signing and reservation periods of development. This memoir tells the story of how a thoughtful critic has tried to contribute to the debate about indigenousness in academia.


Author: Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
ISBN-10: 1496208870
ISBN-13: 9781496208873
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2018
Pages: 232
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/15/2018 pg. 64