Voices from the Rust Belt

by Anne Trubek

Overview

“Timely . . . [the collection] paints intimate portraits of neglected places that are often used as political talking points. A good companion piece to J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.”—Booklist

The essays in Voices from the Rust Belt "address segregated schools, rural childhoods, suburban ennui, lead poisoning, opiate addiction, and job loss. They reflect upon happy childhoods, successful community ventures, warm refuges for outsiders, and hidden oases of natural beauty. But mainly they are stories drawn from uniquely personal experiences: A girl has her bike stolen. A social worker in Pittsburgh makes calls on clients. A journalist from Buffalo moves away, and misses home.... A father gives his daughter a bath in the lead-contaminated water of Flint, Michigan" (from the introduction).

Where is America's Rust Belt? It's not quite a geographic region but a linguistic one, first introduced as a concept in 1984 by Walter Mondale. In the modern vernacular, it's closely associated with the "Post-Industrial Midwest," and includes Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, as well as parts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and New York. The region reflects the country's manufacturing center, which, over the past forty years, has been in decline. In the 2016 election, the Rust Belt's economic woes became a political talking point, and helped pave the way for a Donald Trump victory.

But the region is neither monolithic nor easily understood. The truth is much more nuanced. Voices from the Rust Belt pulls together a distinct variety of voices from people who call the region home. Voices that emerge from familiar Rust Belt cities—Detroit, Cleveland, Flint, and Buffalo, among other places—and observe, with grace and sensitivity, the changing economic and cultural realities for generations of Americans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250162977
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.35(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

ANNE TRUBEK is the founder and director of Belt Publishing. She is the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting and A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses, and the co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

“Introduction: Why the Rust Belt Matters (and What It Is)” by Anne Trubek

GROWING UP
“A Girl’s Youngstown” by Jacqueline Marino
“The Kidnapped Children of Detroit” by Marsha Music
“Busing, a White Girl’s Tale” by Amanda Shaffer
“Moundsville” by David Faulk
“North Park, With and Without Hate” by Jeff Z. Klein
“Love and Survival: A Flint Romance” by Layla Meillier

DAY TO DAY IN THE RUST BELT
“A Middle-Aged Student’s Guide to Social Work” by Dave Newman
“Fresh to Death” by Eric Woodyard
“Rust Belt Heroin Chic” by Ben Gwin
“Will Blacks Rise or Be Forgotten in the New Buffalo?” by Henry Louis Taylor Jr.
“Can Detroit Save White People?” by Aaron Foley
“Cleveland’s Little Iraq” by Huda Al-Marashi

GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEARTLAND
“A Night at the Golden Lion Lounge” by John Lloyd Clayton
“Family Bones” by Ryan Schnurr
“The Fauxtopias of Detroit’s Suburbs” by James D. Griffioen
“Pretty Things to Hang on the Wall” by Eric Anderson
“King Coal and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum” by Carolyne Whelan
“Seed or Weed: On the Evolution of Chicago’s Bloomingdale Trail” by Martha Bayne
“This Is a Place” by Kathryn M. Flinn
“That Better Place; or, the Problem with Mobility” by G. M. Donley

LEAVING AND STAYING
“Losing Lakewood” by Sally Errico
“Notes from the Expatriate Underground” by Margaret Sullivan
“Confessions of a Rust Belt Orphan; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Akron” by Jason Segedy
“Bathtime” by Connor Coyne

Contributors
Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

11/13/2017
Trubek, the founder of Belt Publishing, presents 24 essays by current and former residents of the Rust Belt states that explore the region’s postindustrial decline, as well as its resilience. One writer vividly recalls white flight to the suburbs in Detroit in the 1960s, and a present-day Flint, Mich., resident describes the cold dread of bathing a child in contaminated water. In a heartbreaking and urgent take on the opioid crisis, a Pennsylvania writer chronicles his efforts to gain custody of his daughter from her heroin-addicted mother. More than one essayist upbraids urban gentrifiers—the “armies of confused Williamsburg rejects” who elevate rents and push longtime (often older, nonwhite) residents out of their neighborhoods. In a moment of modest celebration, an Ohio resident chooses to elaborate on the state’s gritty reputation with an ode to the dingiest gay bar in Cincinnati. These essays go a long way toward expanding the narrative about the Rust Belt in that they refute stereotypes, explore a vastly varied series of experiences, and provide a valuable history lesson on industrialism. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Stop fantasizing about the “heartland” and its values and start listening to it instead. Here is the true voice of the America we like to imagine as the repository of national virtue. How different from what we expect, and yet how trenchant it is." —Thomas Frank, Bestselling Author of What's the Matter with Kansas?

“Timely . . . [the collection] paints intimate portraits of neglected places that are often used as political talking points. A good companion piece to J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.”—Booklist

"The fresh, directly-told, and timely accounts of Voices from the Rust Belt make it a welcome and engaging addition to the literature of the American urban Midwest. And in the current political context of a Make America Great Again presidency this book, with its diverse, complex vision of the so-called Rust Belt, affords a crucial corrective to the simplistic, clichéd, backward-looking narrative of regional American history and of its values both past and present." —Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago

"The two dozen writers in Voices from the Rust Belt can't possibly cover all of the wrinkles and shades particular to a place whose boundaries aren't even unanimously agreed upon, but it's a good place to start." —Salon

"There has plenty of recent effort to answer the questions of the Rust Belt. This book goes one better: It deepens the questions. Voices from the Rust Belt is a vital, richly textured addition to the national conversation, the truth told from the inside at a time when our region needs it most."
—David Giffels, author of Furnishing Eternity and The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt

“These essays go a long way toward expanding the narrative about the Rust Belt in that they refute stereotypes, explore a vastly varied series of experiences, and provide a valuable history lesson on industrialism.”—Publishers Weekly

“An impressively diverse array of voices, including men, women, gay, straight, black, white, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and others. . .significant.” —Kirkus

From the Publisher

2018-01-23
An assortment of essays by writers who stand on various autobiographical elevations to view America's Rust Belt.Several writers—including editor Trubek (The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, 2016, etc.), the founder and director of Belt Publishing—discuss the origin of the term Rust Belt, tracing it to Walter Mondale in 1984. However, the concern of these essayists is not so much with the term itself as with the social, economic, and personal elements of the Belt. Trubek has assembled an impressively diverse array of voices, including men, women, gay, straight, black, white, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and others. Some are professional writers, journalists, historians, teachers, and editors; some are public officials; some are people who have grown up in such Rust Belt communities as Cleveland, Akron, Buffalo, Detroit, and Flint. Some voices are bitter, even angry. Black historian and urban planner Henry Louis Taylor Jr. discusses Buffalo's "hipster, latte-drinking whites" and a "city being re-created for whites." Other writers are bitter about the disproportionate poverty in cities, poor schools and public services, drug abuse and violence, heartless coal companies, and city governments that allow retailers to abandon buildings. But currents of hope also flow throughout. One writer tells about public gardens and community restoration, and another urges Rust Belt residents to move on—not by forgetting but by crafting new ideas of community and progress. Others try to understand the historical and cultural forces that have created the Belt. The essays vary widely in quality; a glance at the notes on the contributors helps explain why: not everyone here is a "professional" writer. Regardless, it seems almost churlish to complain about the quality of a voice that is telling you something significant, something you really ought to know—and need to understand.Essays that are uneven in quality but unrelenting in their frank, even painful, descriptions and assessments of one of America's most devastated lands.

Kirkus Reviews