New Stories from the Midwest: 2012
New Stories from the Midwest: 2012

Author: Jason Lee Brown

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2013-03-22

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0253008255

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“As this fresh anthology proves, there’s a mix of writers and sensibilities that inhabit the literary Midwest as to make the term unpredictable.” —Stuart Dybek, MacArthur Fellow and author of The Coast of Chicago New Stories from the Midwest presents a collection of stories that celebrate an American region too often ignored in discussions about distinctive regional literature. The editors solicited nominations from more than three hundred magazines, literary journals, and small presses and narrowed the selection to nineteen authors. The stories, written by Midwestern writers or focusing on the Midwest, demonstrate that the quality of fiction from and about the heart of the country rivals that of any other region. Guest editor John McNally introduces the anthology, which features short fiction by Charles Baxter, Dan Chaon, Christopher Mohar, Rebecca Makkai, Lee Martin, Anthony Doerr, Roxanne Gay and others.

The Midwest Farmer's Daughter
The Midwest Farmer's Daughter

Author: Zachary Michael Jack

Publisher: Purdue University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1557536198

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From yesterday's gingham girls to today's Farmer Janes, The Midwest Farmer's Daughter unearths the untold history and renewed cultural currency of an American icon at a time when fully 30 percent of new farms in the US are woman-owned. From farm women bloggers, to back-to-the-land homesteaders and seed-savers, to rural graphic novelists and, ultimately, to the seven generations of farm daughters who have animated his own family since before the Civil War, the author travels across the region to shine new documentary light on this seedbed for American virtue, energy, and ingenuity. Packed with many memorable interviews, print artifacts, and historic images, this groundbreaking documentary history describes the centuries-long reiteration and reinterpretation of agrarian daughters in the field, over the airwaves, on the printed page, and in the court of public opinion. Offering a sweeping cultural and social history, it ranges widely and well from Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres to Laura Ingalls Wilder's proto-feminist commentaries for the Missouri Ruralist; from the critical importance of rural girls and young women to time-honored organizations such as the Farm Bureau, 4-H, and FFA to the entrepreneurial role today's female agriculturalists and sustainable farm advocates play in farmers' markets, urban farms, and community-supported agriculture. For all those whose lives have been graced by the enduring strength of this regional and national touchstone, The Midwest Farmer's Daughter offers a one-of-a-kind scholarly examination and contemporary appreciation.

Once Upon a Midwest Sunset
Once Upon a Midwest Sunset

Author: Deann Kruempel

Publisher: Bookstudio

Published: 2021-08-20

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9781952891069

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Isn't it amazing how different people remember different things, whether it be about a long-ago incident or something that happened only yesterday? Once Upon a Midwest Sunset melds memories of a family who grew up in South Dakota in the mid-1900s. The stories will make you laugh, cry and remember. Just short of our post, two bulls were fighting! We watched in horror as their battle brought them closer to us. As a young girl, I just figured they were silly old ladies, having a good time. Looking back ... now I think they just needed to laugh. "Mmmmm, sugar cookies, my favorite!" At that moment I resolved to make even better mud cookies...Then she slurped loudly from the tiny nutshell, her pinky finger lifted daintily. "Some years are like that. In farming. In life. You just have to keep going." Praise for the author's works: ...This has become an author I can honestly say I would purchase any book she wrote. She has a most enlightening way of bringing you along in the story. ---K. A. ...emotional journey...laugh and cry...hope and faith. ---Amy R. If you like Chicken Soup for the Soul books, you will love this one! ---Dottie H.

Heavy
Heavy

Author: Helene A. Shugart

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0190210648

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The current "obesity epidemic" has been at the top of the national and, increasingly, global public agenda for the last decade, the subject of extensive and intensive concern, scrutiny, and corrective efforts from various quarters. In the United States, much of this attention is predicated on the "official" discourse, or story, of obesity-that it is a matter of personal responsibility, specifically to the end of monitoring and ensuring appropriate caloric balance. However, even though it continues to have cultural presumption, that discourse does not resonate with the populace, which may explain why efforts of redress have been notoriously ineffective. In this book, Helene Shugart places obesity in cultural, political, and economic context, arguing that current anxieties regarding obesity reflect the contemporary crisis in neoliberalism, and that the failure of the official discourse of obesity mirrors the failure of neoliberalism more broadly: specifically, to account for authenticity, a powerfully resonant cultural concept today. She chronicles a number of competing discourses of obesity that have arisen in response to the failed official discourse, examining and evaluating each in relation to the idea of authenticity; assessing the practical and behavioral implications of each discourse for both obesity incidence and redress; and establishing the significance of each discourse for negotiating neoliberalism in crisis more broadly.

She Loves Me Not
She Loves Me Not

Author: Ron Hansen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1451617593

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“Beautifully crafted stories from one of our most honored authors” (The New York Times), Ron Hansen’s She Loves Me Not is an acclaimed collection of stunning fiction, three decades in the writing. Ron Hansen has long been celebrated as a master of both the novel and the short form. His stories have been called “extraordinary” (The New York Times Book Review) and “wise and smart” (The Washington Post). In She Loves Me Not, the subjects of Hansen’s scrutiny range from Oscar Wilde to murder to dementia to romance, and display Hansen at his storytelling best: These are “unforgettable stories, each utterly different from the one before….This is writing that slows the breathing” (San Francisco Chronicle). Readers will thrill to Hansen’s masterful attention to the smallest and most telling details, even as he plunges straight into the deepest recesses of desire, love, fury, and loss. Magisterial in its scope and surprising in its variety, She Loves Me Not shows an author at the height of his powers and confirms Hansen’s place as a major American writer. This breathtaking collection “should put him on the short-story map” (USA TODAY). She Loves Me Not contains an excerpt from Hansen’s new novel, The Kid, to be published in fall, 2016.

The Goat Fish and the Lover's Knot
The Goat Fish and the Lover's Knot

Author: Jack Driscoll

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2017-04-03

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 0814342965

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Beautifully-crafted prose from one of Michigan’s most original voices. Elmore Leonard said about Jack Driscoll's stories, "The guy can really write." And in The Goat Fish and the Lover's Knot, he once again demonstrates in every sentence the grace and grit of a true storyteller. The ten stories are mostly set in Michigan's northern lower peninsula, a landscape as gorgeous as it is severe. If at times the situations in these stories appear hopeless, the characters nonetheless, and even against seemingly impossible odds, dare to hope. These fictional individuals are so compassionately rendered that they can hardly help but be, in the hands of this writer, not only redeemed but made universal. The stories are written from multiple points of view and testify to Driscoll's range and understanding of human nature, and to how "the heart in conflict with itself" always defines the larger, more meaningful story. A high school pitching sensation loses his arm in a public school classroom during show and tell. A woman lives all of her ages in one day. A fourteen-year-old boy finds himself alone after midnight in a rowboat in the middle of the lake with his best friend's mother. Driscoll is a prose stylist of the highest order — a voice as original as the stories he tells. Lovers of contemporary storytelling will revel in Driscoll's skill and insight on display in this unique collection.

Difficult Women
Difficult Women

Author: Roxane Gay

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2017-01-03

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0802189644

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The New York Times–bestselling author of Bad Feminist shares a collection of stories about hardscrabble lives, passionate loves and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister’s marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls’ fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Roxanne Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America with her “signature wry wit and piercing psychological depth” (Harper’s Bazaar).

The Fault Lines of Farm Policy
The Fault Lines of Farm Policy

Author: Jonathan Coppess

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Published: 2018-12-01

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 149620512X

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At the intersection of the growing national conversation about our food system and the long-running debate about our government’s role in society is the complex farm bill. American farm policy, built on a political coalition of related interests with competing and conflicting demands, has proven incredibly resilient despite development and growth. In The Fault Lines of Farm Policy Jonathan Coppess analyzes the legislative and political history of the farm bill, including the evolution of congressional politics for farm policy. Disputes among the South, the Great Plains, and the Midwest form the primordial fault line that has defined the debate throughout farm policy’s history. Because these regions formed the original farm coalition and have played the predominant roles throughout, this study concentrates on the three major commodities produced in these regions: cotton, wheat, and corn. Coppess examines policy development by the political and congressional interests representing these commodities, including basic drivers such as coalition building, external and internal pressures on the coalition and its fault lines, and the impact of commodity prices. This exploration of the political fault lines provides perspectives for future policy discussions and more effective policy outcomes.