Bøger udgivet af Belt Publishing

America's first superheroes lived in the Midwest. There was Nanabozho, the Ojibway man-god who conquered the King of Fish, took control of the North Wind, and inspired Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. Paul Bunyan, the larger-than-life North Woods lumberjack, created Minnesota's 10,000 lakes with his giant footsteps. More recently, Pittsburgh steelworker Joe Magerac squeezed out rails between his fingers, and Rosie the Riveter churned out the planes that won the world's most terrible war. In Folktales and Legends of the Middle West, Edward McClelland collects these stories and more. Readers will learn the sea shanties of the Great Lakes sailors and the spirituals of the slaves following the North Star across the Ohio River, and be frightened by tales of the Lake Erie Monster and Wisconsin's dangerous Hodag. A history of the region as told through its folklore, music, and legends, this is a book every Midwestern family should own.

Main-Travelled Roads collects 11 short stories, originally published in 1891, set in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, or what Hamlin Garland called the "Middle Border." Depicting an agrarian life of exploitation, misogyny, and poverty, Garland's radical, realist stories refute romantic conceptions of the rural Midwest. Unrelenting yet strangely hopeful in its view of how things ought to be, this collection is gripping, hard-hitting, and surprisingly beautiful.

Hugh McVey moves from Missouri to the agrarian town of Bidwell, Ohio. He invents a mechanical cabbage planter to ease the burden of famers, but an investor in town exploits his product, which fails to succeed. His next invention, a corn cutter, makes him a millionaire and transforms Bidwell into a center of manufacturing. McVey, perennially lonely and ruminative, meets Clara Butterworth, who attends college at nearby Ohio State and is perennially harassed by her potential matches. Published one year after Winesburg, Ohio, in 1920, Poor White has a modernist style, an realist attention to every day life, and an eerily contemporary resonance.

"The Maumee River Basin is the largest watershed in the Great Lakes region, collecting runoff from more than 6,600 square miles in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan and depositing it in Lake Erie--though as the lake's largest tributary the river's influence is not entirely positive. In this lively, ruminative book, Ryan Schnurr takes us on a journey down the Maumee River, walking and canoeing it from headwaters to mouth. Along the way, he traces the history, ecology, and culture of the river, from the influence of glaciers, through its role in Native American and American history, to its relevance for contemporary environmental issues. Part cultural history, part nature writing, part personal narrative, 'In the Watershed' is a lyrical work of nonfiction in the vein of John McPhee and Ian Frazier with a timely and important warning at the core. 'What is happening in Lake Erie,' Schnurr tells us, 'is a disaster by nearly any measure--ecologically, economically, socially, culturally.' "--Back cove

Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in Cleveland, Ohio, 1975-1985 is the result of almost fifteen years of research on a topic that has been missing from local works on Cleveland history: the community organizing movement that put neighborhood concerns and neighborhood voices front and center in the setting of public policies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Originally published in 2007 by Arambala Press, this important work is being reprinted by Belt Publishing for a new generation of activists, planners, urbanists, and organizers.

A young bear-The Fool-is cast off from its mother in the spring to wander a fragmented suburban forest, to be harried by dogs and traffic, chased through golf courses and farms. An ocean-going trout climbs industrial, sewage-tainted rivers in the Midwest. The river is both sick and healthy, the trout, understood here as The Magician, is both wild and made. What does the Tarot have to tell us about the flora and fauna of the industrial Midwest? Rust Belt Arcana uses this time-tested structure to explain, juxtaposing the characteristics of the cards of the Tarot's Major Arcana to the creatures and plants around us. The idiosyncratic essays that result connect biology and natural history to the human condition; they are stories of abundance and loss, limning the persistent remnant wilderness of the Rust Belt. Exploring this natural history helps us to see beauty in a beleaguered landscape often dismissed as unremarkable, and to define our remarkable place in it.

"Cat and Bird, a 'memoir in animals, ' is anchored around Kyoko Mori's relationship with the six house cats who defined major eras of her life as a writer: Dorian, Oscar, Ernest, Algernon, Miles, and Jackson. Detailing the rhythms of their days together, she weaves a narrative tapestry out of her past: the deep family tragedy that marked her childhood in Japan, her move to the American Midwest as a young adult, her experiences as a bird rehabilitator, her marriage and divorce, and the joys and heartbreaks that come with pet ownership. Through incisive observations and generous prose, Cat and Bird whirls into a moving meditation about grief, the imagination, the solitary life, and the wonders of companionship with creatures both domestic and wild"--Back cover.

Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret. But as it is with all labyrinths, after finding its center, will he come away unscathed, or will he transform into the gripping, fantastical monstrousness that's out to consume him whole? With nods to Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, this surrealist debut memoir takes us into the labyrinth of memory and the monsters lurking there. --

Five case studies exploring mental health issues in low-income neighborhoods

While Grand Rapids, Michigan is known for large-scale events like ArtPrize; major businesses like Meijer, Steelcase, and Amway, and the philanthropic and political contributions of its wealthiest residents, there are hundreds - if not thousands - of grassroots activists working day-in and day-out to make Grand Rapids what it is and making it what it can be. This project seeks to raise the voices of those individuals and grassroots groups. The editors have joined forces to compile articles, poetry, and personal narratives about and by the grassroots activists of Grand Rapids.

From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee--and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet--he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart's explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones's How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon's Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.

"End the filibuster. Abolish the Senate. Make everyone vote. Only if we do this (and then some), says Thomas Geoghegan, might we heal our fractured democracy."--

A varied, handy collection of Rust Belt culinary favorites, updated for today's vegan diet.The Rust Belt Vegan Kitchen is a community cookbook created by professional and home chefs who live and work in the Rust Belt. Recipes collected here represent the diversity of the region, and include vegan versions of: Polish pierogis Detroit coney dogs Hungarian paprikash Slovak kolaches Mexican conchas German sauerkraut balls Cincinnati chili Slovenian fish fry Chitterings, and many more. The cooks and chefs collected here offer stories about their recipes as well as family and culinary traditions. The book also includes resources on how to stock a vegan pantry, guides to useful equipment, and basic how-tos for veganizing staples.Infusing old world recipes with a new level of creativity for a changing audience, The Rust Belt Vegan Kitchen is unpretentious, accessible, and fun.

Essays from six incarcerated men about power, punishment, and redemption

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. The story of Claude Wheeler, a young man dissatisfied with Nebraska farm life as well as his marriage, and desperate for a more cosmopolitan existence. When America joins the Great War, Claude enlists and finds excitement and fulfillment--as well as tragedy--on the battlefield.ttlefield.

A collection of classic and previously unpublished stories from an early, influential female voice in science fiction

Much has been made of the 2016 electoral flip of traditionally Democratic states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio to tip Donald Trump into the presidency. Countless think pieces have explored this newfound exotic constituency of blue voters who swung red. But what about those who remain true blue? Red State Blues speaks to the lived experience of progressives, activists, and ordinary Democrats pushing back against simplistic narratives of the Midwest as "Trump Country." They've been there all along, and as the essays in this collection demonstrate, they're not leaving anytime soon. With contributions by journalist and scholar Sarah Kendzior, Kenyon College president Sean Decatur, Pittsburgh city councilman Dan Gilman, and more.

Chicago is built on a foundation of meat and railroads and steel, on opportunity and exploitation - but its identity long ago stretched past manufacturing. Today, the city continues to lure new residents from around the world, and from across a region rocked by recession and deindustrialization. But the problems that plague the region don't disappear once you pass the Indiana border. In fact, they're often amplified. A city defined by movement that's the anchor of the Midwest, bound to its neighbors by a shared ecosystem and economy, Chicago's complicated - both of the Rust Belt and beyond it. Rust Belt Chicago collects essays, journalism, fiction, and poetry from more than fifty writers who speak both directly and elliptically to the concerns the city shares with the region at large, and the elements that set it apart. With affection and curiosity, frustration, anger, and joy, the writers sing to each other like the bird on the cover. At times the song sings in harmony and at others sounds in notes of strategic dissonance. But taken as a whole, this book sings one song, responding to one cacophonous city.

In the public imagination, Midwestern literature has not evolved far beyond heartland laborers and hardscrabble immigrants of a century past. But as the region has changed, so, in many ways, has its fiction. In this book, the author explores how shifts in work, class, place, race, and culture has been reflected or ignored by novelists and short story writers. From Marilynne Robinson to Leon Forrest, Toni Morrison to Aleksandar Hemon, Bonnie Jo Campbell to Stewart O'Nan this book is a call to rethink the way we conceive Midwestern fiction, and one that is sure to prompt some new must-have additions to every reading list.

Written by residents of Cleveland, this collection of essays and art speaks to the city from an insiders' view and presents a distinct sense of place. The book was prompted by hearing the echoes for a revitalization of Cleveland and aims to find the future through the history of the city. Citizens of Cleveland will connect to the stories, and readers that are not from the area will enjoy the insight into what it means to live there, why the city is loved or hated, and why some obsess over the city. The works are compiled into eight parts: "Concept," "Snapshot," "History," "Growing Up," "Conflict," "Music," "Culture," and "Back Home" and include contributions by: David C. Barnett, Sean Decatur, Mansfield Frazier, David Giffels, Alissa Nutting, Jim Roakakis, Connie Schultz, and many more.

Some works appeared previously in various publications, including Cincinnati magazine, The Huffington post, Satellite magazine, Black warrior review, UrbanCincy.com.

"We are storytellers, by instinct and necessity. We know that we are descended from the best of times--a century ago Akron was the fastest growing city in America--and the worst of times. A generation ago Akron was the first notch in the Rust Belt. And these are stories to tell. We tell them because they have substance: the tales of a great rise and a great fall and a gritty fight back toward grace. And because they are not well known beyond our own borders. That's why the stories in this book are important, because when stories are shared, they give our lives meaning and they give our lives dignity: 'We are here, we are here'"--From the introduction.