Phil Christman

Midwest Futures

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“A combination of history, memoir, reportage, and lit-crit that taught me a lot about a region I’ve reported on. . . . Check it out.” ―James Fallows, The Atlantic
A Commonweal Notable Book of 2020
Finalist, Midwest Independent Book Award
Winner, Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal
What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for the coming challenges of climate change. But it also sits at the epicenter of a massive economic collapse that many of its citizens are still struggling to overcome.
The question of what the Midwest is (and what it will become) is nothing new. As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic new book, ambiguity might be the region’s defining characteristic. Taking a cue from Jefferson’s grid, the famous rectangular survey of the Old Northwest Territory that turned everything from Ohio to Wisconsin into square-mile lots, Christman breaks his exploration of Midwestern identity, past and present, into thirty-six brief, interconnected essays. The result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.
This book is currently unavailable
196 printed pages
Original publication
2020
Publication year
2020
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Impressions

  • b8496509740shared an impression2 years ago

    Kinda my favourite book.
    Omfg
    This was goooood

Quotes

  • b8496509740has quoted2 years ago
    In this deep, clotted, night-black, dirt-black dark, who even knows for sure who they are, who I am? Or who we might yet be?
  • b8496509740has quoted2 years ago
    can also cause you to think of those other selves: that poorer self, that queerer self, that darker self, that privileged self, that self who is kind of racist and watches too much TV but who has lost his mobility working at the refinery and whose body is full of flame retardant, that self who is a wheelchair-bound black lesbian, also full of flame retardant. It can tell you that you must try to care for all those selves as though they were you—as though you were made from the same soil and headed back to it.
  • b8496509740has quoted2 years ago
    Every human is so many other humans—and you feel that in the Midwest, wandering through those squares, among those people who, on paper, could have been you.
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