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Oklahoma: Foot-Loose and Fancy-Free
Book by Debo, Angie
- GenresHistory
258 pages, Hardcover
First published February 22, 1982
23 people want to read
About the author
Angie Debo
44 books26 followersBorn in Beattie, Kansas, where her parents, Edward P. and Lina Cooper Debo, were homesteaders, Angle Debo liked to observe that her birth date coincided with the closing of the American frontier. She spent a lifetime examining the historical implications of that settlement for Native American Indians…
Debo was the author of numerous books and essays; salient works in addition to those listed in the text include her MA thesis, "The Historical Background of the American Policy of Isolation," Smith College Studies in History 9 (April-July 1924), pp. 71-165; The Five Civilized Tribes: Report on Social and Economic Conditions (1951); Geronimo: The Man, His Time, His Place (1976); and Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State (1941), edited with John M. Oskison.
References
Fitzpatrick, E. (2004). DEBO, Angie Elbertha. Notable American Women, A Biographical Dictionary: Completing The Twentieth Century (Vol.5), 158.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 14, 2020
After a lapse of many years, I return to Debo's treatment of her home state as a study in the craft of literary nonfiction. Here is Debo, scholar and Oklahoman, talking to her neighbors but also to the larger world, claiming the prerogative of a daughter of the land. I get this. Debo does not disappoint. The work is a little uneven. Sometimes it seems the author is writing about a subject because she feels like she must, rather than because she has the heart for it. The rewards come in those sections where Debo takes up a subject with either relish or anguish.
In some respects Foot-loose and Fancy-free, read from 2020, lays bare the tensions felt by Debo in the post-World War II era. How, for instance, to handle the petroleum industry? Because in her scholarly work, Debo had no fear in laying out the rapacious sins of corporate America in the Indian Territory. Now she pursues an intriguing course. She points to the great things done in such areas as arts and philanthropy by, or on account of, the oil industry. She even finds beauty in its physical manifestations where others might see only despoilment. And yet she is frank about the environmental damage incurred, and grieves therefore.
Matters of race, another case in point. I suspect Debo considered herself, and would have been considered by her friends, progressive in matters of race. Her language in reference to African Americans is often patronizing, however, and she comes darned close to offering an apologia for segregation.
If you are interested either in the history of publishing or in the development of the regional project, then you cannot help but be transported by Debo's homage to the University of Oklahoma Press, her detailing of its origins, her affectionate vignettes of Brandt and Lottinville, her appreciative references to landmark works published.
How does Debo stand up as a crafter of literary nonfiction? I am won by her episodes of brilliance, especially when they are good-hearted episodes. Anyone who knows the story of the relationship between Debo and her mentor, E. E. Dale, knows that it was at times tense. So look at her sketch of Dale on pages 137-40. In her chapter, "We Meet Some Oklahomans," after telling a selection of human-interest stories, Debo transitions to her climatic narrative, thus: "It remained for Edward Everett Dale to become their spokesman." This is perfect. Debo goes on to detail his humble origins, his considerable accomplishments, and his wide relationships. When one of those relations--and I use that word in the native sense--one of his relations bursts into the death song of Satank, you sense that Debo is offering her ultimate tribute. And yet she does Dale the honor, and us readers the courtesy, of intimating that Dale was a such a man of his time and place that it constituted his strength and his limitation--that others would have to take up the pen when he laid it aside, tell the next generation of stories.
Wahido.
In some respects Foot-loose and Fancy-free, read from 2020, lays bare the tensions felt by Debo in the post-World War II era. How, for instance, to handle the petroleum industry? Because in her scholarly work, Debo had no fear in laying out the rapacious sins of corporate America in the Indian Territory. Now she pursues an intriguing course. She points to the great things done in such areas as arts and philanthropy by, or on account of, the oil industry. She even finds beauty in its physical manifestations where others might see only despoilment. And yet she is frank about the environmental damage incurred, and grieves therefore.
Matters of race, another case in point. I suspect Debo considered herself, and would have been considered by her friends, progressive in matters of race. Her language in reference to African Americans is often patronizing, however, and she comes darned close to offering an apologia for segregation.
If you are interested either in the history of publishing or in the development of the regional project, then you cannot help but be transported by Debo's homage to the University of Oklahoma Press, her detailing of its origins, her affectionate vignettes of Brandt and Lottinville, her appreciative references to landmark works published.
How does Debo stand up as a crafter of literary nonfiction? I am won by her episodes of brilliance, especially when they are good-hearted episodes. Anyone who knows the story of the relationship between Debo and her mentor, E. E. Dale, knows that it was at times tense. So look at her sketch of Dale on pages 137-40. In her chapter, "We Meet Some Oklahomans," after telling a selection of human-interest stories, Debo transitions to her climatic narrative, thus: "It remained for Edward Everett Dale to become their spokesman." This is perfect. Debo goes on to detail his humble origins, his considerable accomplishments, and his wide relationships. When one of those relations--and I use that word in the native sense--one of his relations bursts into the death song of Satank, you sense that Debo is offering her ultimate tribute. And yet she does Dale the honor, and us readers the courtesy, of intimating that Dale was a such a man of his time and place that it constituted his strength and his limitation--that others would have to take up the pen when he laid it aside, tell the next generation of stories.
Wahido.
Displaying 1 of 1 review