Becoming Western: Stories of Culture and Identity in the Cowboy State by Liza J. Nicholas

2 0 2 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S u m m e r 2 0 0 7 Becoming Western: Stories of Culture and Identity in the Comboy State. By Liza J. Nicholas. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. 214 pages, $35.00. Reviewed by Sara H um phreys University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada In Becoming Western: Stories of Culture and Identity in the Cowboy State, Liza J. Nicholas examines questions of western identity using a unique perspective. While her study relies on conventional frameworks of historical analysis, she also incorporates cultural materialist and poststructuralist approaches that shed light on the social agents who draw upon myths of the West to construct personal, local, and national identities. Choosing Wyoming as the foundation for her argument , Nicholas guides the reader through the enduring struggle for authentic westernness. Nicholas interrogates “Wyoming’s status in the nation’s narrative” as a place that “represents the western narrative of independence, heroism and ‘true’ Americanness” (146). What sets Nicholas’s book apart from the myriad studies that trace the formation and importance of westemness within the national nanative is her articulation of how social consumers use “the symbols and ideology of the mythic West” for their own ends (xiv). As such, the reader is introduced to a diverse cast of historical characters who are linked through their desire to define westemness and to “become western” in order to possess an authentic and legitimate identity. In each of the book’s five chapters, Nicholas examines the attempts of vari­ ous individuals, such as Caroline Lockhart and Malcolm Wallop, to reproduce discourses of the West in order to further their own agendas. Each chapter is connected by the common goal of these historical figures to gain cultural capital through the performance of “true” westemness. In the first chapter, Nicholas discusses the violent struggle for legitimacy between the Cheyenne Club mem­ bers and the residents of Johnson County in the late nineteenth century. She locates this struggle in a battle between two different narratives of westernness: the eastern establishment image of the West as a mythic space supporting EuroAmerican superiority through the heroic cowboy figure and the image propagated by Wyomingites that promoted the Jeffersonian ideals of progress and civilization. In subsequent chapters, she traces the varied permutations of these models of westernness from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. This text effectively articulates the diverse ways that social consumers reproduce dis­ courses of the West, such as Jack Flagg and Art Holman who refused to behave within the prescribed models of authentic westernness. Unfortunately, Nicholas does not communicate Native perspectives of westernness, which would have added even more depth to a work of such wide-ranging breadth. This criticism aside, Nicholas astutely shows the reader the flexibility and mutability of the West as a master discourse that interpellates individuals and groups into regional and national collectives. Thus, anyone interested in b o o k R e v ie w s 2 0 3 American identity politics should invest in a copy of Becoming Western. In addi­ tion, because Nicholas uses familiar texts, figures, and landmarks to inform her argument, teachers and students alike can use this text as a well-marked map to navigate the complex discourses that comprise Wyoming’s place in the national narrative. Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West. By Carl Abbott. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. 230 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by David Mogen Colorado State University, Fort Collins Though at first glance science fiction and western literature may appear to be utterly disconnected, they are in fact deeply entwined, since much science fic­ tion is conceived as, in Robert Heinlein’s words, “history of the future” (5). As Carl Abbott observes in his introduction to Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West, “every story' about a possible future— whether ten years or ten centuries out— is a projection of some aspect of human history” (1). And historically, as Abbott also observes, “the West has always symbolized the national future,” so that much American...

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