Name: The Rockford Anthology
Brand: Rachel León
SKU: 9781540270122
Price: 24.0 USD
Availability: InStock

The Rockford Anthology

9781540270122

$24.00

Screw Capital of the World. Forest City. Home of the Rockford Peaches of A League of Their Own fame. Rockford, Illinois, has many identities, most oriented toward the past. These days, the fastener industry has mostly rusted away, the trees are less plentiful than they once were, and professional women’s baseball is no more. What defines Rockford today?

According to The Rockford Anthology, it’s the people. Those who grew up here, who came by choice or by circumstance, or who decided to leave. People who lost someone or found a voice or built community here.

In this installment of Belt’s City Anthology series, the people of Rockford represent themselves in essays, poetry, and photographs. Here, you’ll meet someone who found the space to start a business after leaving the crowd in Chicago. Academy Award–nominee Bing Liu takes you on a personal tour of his childhood houses and the ghosts that lurk there. A local attorney and activist shares how the city pushed back when ICE wanted to bring a detention center to Rockford. And you’ll learn why New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby, stand-up comedian Ashley Ray-Harris, and an introverted expat living in Taiwan always say they’re from Rockford . . . not Chicago. Whether through stories of growing up or chronicles of fights to make the city better, a sense of Rockford’s present—and future—starts to come into focus.

Cover image for The Rockford Anthology, isbn: 9781540270122

Rust Belt Chicago

9780997774375

$20.00

“A lively grab bag of essays, fiction and poetry that reads at times like a who’s who of contemporary Chicago writers/residents”(Chicago Tribune).

Chicago is a city built on meat, railroads, and steel, on opportunity and exploitation. But its identity has long involved so much more than manufacturing. Today, the city continues to lure new residents from around the world, and from across a region rocked by recession and deindustrialization.

Rust Belt Chicago collects essays, fiction, and poetry from more than fifty writers who speak directly to the concerns the city shares with the Midwest at large, and the elements that set it apart. With contributions from writers like Aleksandar Hemon, Kathleen Rooney, and Zoe Zolbrod, here you’ll find stories about:

Buying Bread on Devon Street
The Cantinas of Pilsen
Bike commutes through the North Side
Adventures on the El.

Writing with affection, frustration, anger, and joy, the writers in this collection capture all the harmony and dissonance that define one cacophonous place.

Cover image for Rust Belt Chicago, isbn: 9780997774375

The St. Louis Anthology

9781948742443

$20.00

“A dazzling portrait of a Midwestern city whose relationships among socio-economics, religion, civil rights, and class are consistently complex” (Kirkus).

St. Louis is a fragmented place. It’s physically dissected by rivers, highways, walls, and fences, but it’s also a place where one’s race, class, religion, and zip code may as well be cards in a rigged poker game, where the losers face a dramatically shorter life expectancy. But despite these many divisions, St. Louis can also be a city of warmth, love, and beauty―especially in its contrasts.

This collection features nearly seventy essays penned by St. Louis writers, journalists, clerics, poets, and activists including Aisha Sultan, Galen Gritts, Vivian Gibson, Maja Sadikovic, Nartana Premachandra, Sophia Benoit, Robert Langellier, Samuel Autman, Umar Lee, and more. Here you’ll learn about:

The rent strike of 1969
Religious life in Pruitt-Igoe public housing
Protest art in Ferguson
Segregation in the Vandeventer neighborhood
A church closing in Kinloch
And much more.

Cover image for The St. Louis Anthology, isbn: 9781948742443

A Detroit Anthology

9780985944148

$20.00

“This anthology of prose, poetry, and essays is written by . . . [a] wide ethnic array of voices that truly shows the facets of Detroit life.” —Ebony Magazine

A unique perspective of the Motor City, this anthology combines stories told by both longtime residents and newcomers from activists to teachers to artists to students. While Detroit has always been rich in stories, too often those stories are told back to the city by outsiders looking in, believing they can explain Detroit back to itself. As editor, Anna Clark writes in the introduction, “These are the stories we tell each other over late nights at the pub and long afternoons on the porch. We share them in coffee shops, at church social hours, in living rooms, and while waiting for the bus. These are stories full of nodding asides and knowing laughs. These are stories addressed to the rhetorical ‘you’—with the ratcheted-up language that comes with it—and these are stories that took real legwork to investigate . . . You will not find ‘positive’ stories about Detroit in this collection, or ‘negative’ ones. But you will find true stories.”

Featuring essays, photographs, art, and poetry by Grace Lee Boggs, John Carlisle, Desiree Cooper, Dream Hampton, Steve Hughes, Jamaal May, Tracie McMillan, Marsha Music, Shaka Senghor, Thomas J. Sugrue, and many others.

“Offers from-the-heart and on-the-ground views of life in America’s Motor City.” —The Boston Globe

“A thrilling success. It gives voice to people who now live or once lived in this fascinating, tortured place, the survivors, good people who know what pain is, people who understand that the city exerts an undying pull on them.” —The Millions

Cover image for A Detroit Anthology, isbn: 9780985944148

The Indianapolis Anthology

9781948742917

$20.00

An anthology of essays & poetry offering a reconsideration of one of America’s most misunderstood cities.

Is Indianapolis just another midwestern city to fly over on the way to bigger and better destinations? Or is it, as locals know, a place where different peoples and ideals converge to create a rich cultural center? The Indianapolis Anthology showcases Naptown’s vibrancy and diversity with pieces from journalists, poets, historians, established community voices, and first-time writers. The Circle City is more than the home of the Indianapolis 500, John Dillinger, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Kurt Vonnegut, Prozac, and Wonder Bread. In these pages, you’ll find:

· lawn chairs in the beds of pick-ups

· Punk rock in Naptown

· suffragists and entrepreneurs

· cement pietàs

· dog bakeries and yoga studios

· red brick bungalows and war memorials

· steakburgers and Mexican seafood; pho and sauerbraten

· and more

In other words, you'll find images from a city that is truly a cross section of today’s America. Edited by Norman “Buzz” Minnick and with contributions from Etheridge Knight, Terrance Hayes, Michael Martone, and Karen Kovacik.

An insiders’ look that will make you see a great midwestern city in a brand-new light.

Cover image for The Indianapolis Anthology, isbn: 9781948742917

A Lovely Place, a Fighting Place, a Charmer

9781953368263

$20.00

A “diverse collection” of essays, stories, and poems about Baltimore that provide “a wide-ranging account of what the city feels like today” (Baltimore Magazine).

To many outsiders, Baltimore--sometimes derisively called “Mobtown” or “Bodymore”—is a city famous for its poverty and violence, twin ills that have been compounded by decades of racial segregation and the loss of manufacturing jobs. But that portrait has only given us a skewed view of a truly unique and diverse American city, the place that produced Babe Ruth, Elijah Cummings, Nancy Pelosi, Edgar Allan Poe, John Waters, Frank Zappa, Billie Holiday, and Thurgood Marshall, among other notables.

In over thirty-five essays, poems, and short stories, the authors take an unfiltered look at the ins and outs of Baltimore's past and present. You’ll hear about the first time an umbrella appeared in the Inner Harbor, nineteenth-century grave robbers, and the city’s history with redlining and blockbusting. But you’ll also get a deeper sense of what life is like in Baltimore today, including stories about urban gardening in Bolton Hill, the slow demise of local journalism, what life was like in the city during COVID, and the legacy of Freddie Gray. As Ron Kipling Williams writes in his essay about the city’s magnetic appeal, “Baltimore has always been a city worth fighting for,” and running through all these pieces is the story of Baltimore’s resilience. Edited by an award-winning author and a former staff writer for The Wire, this anthology offers an unfiltered look at Baltimore, far more nuanced than the stories that are generally told about it.

“Let[s] the people of this city define their home through reflections in prose, poetry, recipes, and even a comic strip . . . speaks to the heart of the city.” —Baltimore Fishbowl

Cover image for A Lovely Place, a Fighting Place, a Charmer, isbn: 9781953368263

Car Bombs to Cookie Tables (Revised)

9781948742672

$26.00

The Youngstown story often is told with a beginning in iron and steel and ending in decay with a subplot driven by violent mobsters and corrupt politicians. Aiming to provide a more well-rounded examination of Youngstown, this collection of essays provides an authentic look at the city through a diverse set of experiences from the perspectives of those who have lived there. Readers will gain a sense of the past, present, and future of the city. Edited by Jacqueline Marino and Will Miller, the book features contributions by Christopher Barzak, Rochelle Hurt, Eric Murphy, Ed O’Neill, Sarah Sepanek, David Skolnick, Sarah Stankorb, C Lee Tressell, Jay Williams, Andrea Wood & 35 others.

Cover image for Car Bombs to Cookie Tables (Revised), isbn: 9781948742672

The Pittsburgh Anthology

9780985944193

$20.00

“Characterizing a place can be an elusive project, but The Pittsburgh Anthology is . . . diverse, surprising, eloquent, playful, scrappy, and tenacious.” —Ploughshares

Pittsburgh is ever-changing—once dusted with soot from the mills, parts of the city now gleam with the polish of new technologies and little remains of what had been there before. The essays and artwork in this anthology aim for the surprising, elusive stories that capture a Pittsburgh that is in transition. Contributors run the gamut from MacArthur-award winning photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier to 15-year-old Nico Chiodi, the book’s youngest contributor who chronicles the doings of the North Side Banjo Club. “Everyone in this book,” writes editor, Eric Boyd, “is talking about the city, the things surrounding it; all of the pieces have been created with experience, intimacy, and personality. This book, I hope, will speak to you, not at you. Because we all know this city is changing. We’re just not exactly sure what that means.”

Included are contributions by Amy Jo Burns, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ben Gwin, Cody McDevitt, David Newman, and many more.

“These voices are varied and quirky, some polished and professional sounding, some a little rough around the edges. But they are uniformly interesting and genuine.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“What editor Eric Boyd has chosen to do is temper all of the Most Livable City rah rah with essays, stories and poems of a grittier, more complex nature.” —Pittsburgh Magazine

“This collection is stimulating for insiders and outsiders alike, a portrait Boyd has designed to be from-the-streets, warts-and-all.” —Bill O’Driscoll, PGH City Paper

Cover image for The Pittsburgh Anthology, isbn: 9780985944193

The Gary Anthology

9781948742757

$20.00

“A strong series of personal essays, historical exploration, nature writing, and photography” exploring the Indiana city (Chicago Review of Books).

Once the second-largest city in Indiana, and home to the world’s largest steel mill, Gary has suffered greatly in the postindustrial global economy. Population numbers now approach pre–Great Depression lows. Large swathes of its land are urban prairie, and a recent survey found a quarter of its built environment is in a dilapidated or dangerous condition. But Gary is also a national center of Black culture and political power. It is home to the Indiana Dunes National Park and globally rare ecosystems. Union, community organizing, and environmental justice struggles there have profoundly shaped social and political life in the United States.

Edited by Samuel A. Love, The Gary Anthology’s contributors include essayists, poets, and journalists, but also graffiti writers, ministers, activists, organizers, and steel workers. Their insights into the city complicate our simplified narratives about violence and urban decay, offering readers the chance to hear from those who are reshaping the city from the bottom up.

A nuanced look of a city that is full of everyday joys and tragedies and a vibrant rebuke to stale notions that Gary is “dead.”

Cover image for The Gary Anthology, isbn: 9781948742757

Right Here, Right Now

9780997774269

$19.99

This anthology of essays, poetry and photography offers an intimate view of this iconic Rust Belt city—“one of the best books about Buffalo ever created” (Buffalo News).

Buffalo, New York, embodies a rich and varied history encompassing power, disappointment, artistic flair, racial injustice, and spicy chicken wings—all with Niagara Falls in its backyard. Told through the eyes of more than sixty-five artists, writers, and residents, Right Here, Right Now offer an unblinking, personal portrait of this often-overlooked city, capturing both its good and bad sides.

Edited by Jody K. Biehl, contributions from Wolf Blitzer, Lauren Belfer, Marv Levy, John Lombardo, Mary Ramsey, Robby Takac, and many more show why so many people love calling Buffalo home. Here, you’ll encounter:

Frederick Law Olmstead’s impact on the city’s early design
The pain and joy of biking through Lake Effect snow
Racism in a gentrifying city and city planning initiatives
The rise and fall of the Buffalo mafia
A trip to a Western New York meat raffle.

Cover image for Right Here, Right Now, isbn: 9780997774269

City of Hustle

9781953368355

$26.00

An anthology of essays and poetry offering a unique take on the South Dakota town residents call “the Best Little City in America”.

In 1992, Money magazine named Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the best place to live in America. This rich anthology offers an inside look at the city through the eyes of both longtime residents and recent transplants. In over forty-five essays, you’ll hear stories about the city’s past, including the region’s legacy of violence against Native Americans and Sioux Falls’s status as a “divorce destination” in the late 1800s. But you’ll also discover the ways the city’s savvy planning and entrepreneurial gumption have helped it navigate twenty-first-century challenges.

You’ll read about:

· the end of George McGovern’s presidential run at a Sioux Falls Holiday Inn

· the vibrant Jewish and Syrian-Muslim communities that helped form the city

· the first sit-down strike in American labor history

· firsthand accounts of how South Sudanese refugees are shaping the city today

· And more

Edited by Patrick Hicks and Jon K. Lauck, City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology gives an insider’s perspective on what’s really going on in so-called “flyover country,” and it shows why that name misses so much of the true richness that makes up life there every day.

Cover image for City of Hustle, isbn: 9781953368355

The Dayton Anthology

9781948742801

$20.00

Stories, poems, and essays that pay homage to the innovative spark and high-flying spirit that help the Midwest’s Gem City survive and thrive.

A part of Belt’s City Anthology Series, The Dayton Anthology offers a portrait of a city recovering from the twin 2019 crises of devastating tornadoes and the mass shooting that took the lives of nine residents in the Oregon District.

In over fifty essays and poems, contributors reflect on these traumas and the longer-term ills of disinvestment and decay that have plagued Dayton and the Miami Valley for years. But they also draw our attention to the resilience of the people who call Dayton home. This is the city that brought the world the Wright brothers’ invention of flight, the cash register, and the hydraulic pump. It also gave us the soaring poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the comedy of Dave Chappelle. Edited by Shannon Shelton Miller and with contributions from Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley and former Ohio Governor Bob Taft.

A delightful tour of a city that never counts itself out, that captures the true diversity of Dayton’s residents.

Cover image for The Dayton Anthology, isbn: 9781948742801

The Milwaukee Anthology

9781948742382

$20.00

A collection of essays, art, stories, and poetry that offer a nuanced portrait of Milwaukee in all its hope and hurt, weirdness and wonder.

The Milwaukee Anthology presents a rich mosaic of one of America’s toughest zip codes. With a diverse range of perspectives, authors and artists share honest first-hand stories about Riverwest, Sherman Park, Hmong New Year’s shows, 7 Mile Fair, the Rolling Mill commemoration, and much more.

Edited by Justin Kern, and with more than fifty contributors including Dasha Kelly, Pardeep Kaleka, and Michael Perry, this collection includes stories about:

Redlining in the city
Painting a community mural in Sherman Park
Reflections after the Oak Creek Sikh Temple Shooting
The city’s upstart microbrewing industry
The rise of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks

Cover image for The Milwaukee Anthology, isbn: 9781948742382

The Louisville Anthology

9781948742702

$20.00

An anthology of essays and poems by natives and transplants offering a refreshing variety of perspectives of the Kentucky city.

What is Louisville’s identity in the twenty-first century? Is it the southernmost midwestern city, the midwestiest southern town, or somewhere in between? Living on the border of two regions creates a hybrid sensibility full of contradictions that can be difficult to articulate beyond “from Louisville, not Kentucky.” In this collection of evocative essays and poems by natives and transplants, The Louisville Anthology offers locals and visitors a closer look at compelling private and public spaces around town. It’s an attempt to articulate what defines Louisville beyond its most recognized cultural exports. Edited by Erin Keene, editor-in-chief at Salon.com, this is a portrait of a city caught between onward and remember-when. Here, readers will encounter stories about:

· Louisville’s early punk scene

· Life as a transplant in Butcherville

· A Trip to Cave Hill Cemetery

· A Trek to find Muhammad Ali’s Louisville

· And more

A perfect book for Louisville natives or for those looking for a more nuanced look at an often-stereotyped region of the country.

Cover image for The Louisville Anthology, isbn: 9781948742702

Grand Rapids Grassroots

9780998018829

$20.00

Part of Belt's City Anthology Series.

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. This collection 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. Edited by Ashley E. Nickels and Dani Vilella, in this collection, readers will find first-hand stories about:

- The lasting effects of discrimination in the city's Southeast community

- Disability advocacy and food justice

- Traversing the city on moped

- The furniture workers strike of 1911.

A complex portrait of an American city in transition and the tireless work of activists to make it a wonderful, just place to live.

Cover image for Grand Rapids Grassroots, isbn: 9780998018829

The Akron Anthology

9780996836739

$19.99

An evocative collection of essays, poetry, photography and more from some of Akron, Ohio’s best authors, artists, and activists.

Between 1910 and 1920, Akron, Ohio, tripled in size, making it the fastest growing city in the United States. Its period of rapid growth coincided with the expansion of the rubber and tire industry, which in turn corresponded with the automobile boom. But since the mid-1970s, industry has abandoned Akron, and the city has lost thirty-one percent of its population. Once-opulent neighborhoods are now swaths of abandoned homes, and the factories that made Akron the Rubber Capital of the World lie dormant.

Edited by Jason Segedy, and bringing together established writers like Rita Dove and David Giffels with the work of emerging voices, The Akron Anthology collects essays, poems, and photographs from the writers, artists, and activists who call Akron home. Here you’ll find stories that include:

The diaries of a doorman
The trials and triumphs of refugees who have relocated to the city
A portrait of Jamie Stillman, world-renowned effects pedal manufacturer
Archie the talking snowman.

Cover image for The Akron Anthology, isbn: 9780996836739

Under Purple Skies

9781948742436

$20.00

“The ultimate (literary) tour guide to the neighborhoods and wild places, history and politics, culture and cuisine, music and myths of the Twin Cities” (Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding).

In recent years, Minneapolis has become one of America’s literary powerhouses. With over fifty poems and essays, Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology collects some of the most exciting work being done in, or about, Minneapolis and the Twin Cities area. The narratives delve into the complexities of Minneapolis life—with threads that stretch back not just to Scandinavia, but across the world.

This volume’s contributors include Marlon James, Shannon Gibney, Kelly Barnhill, James Wright, and many more. Collectively, they have won, or been shortlisted for, the Newbery Award, the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer, the Caldecott Award, the National Book Award, the Minnesota Book Award, among other awards. The wide-ranging stories featured here include:

A tour through Prince’s Minneapolis
The story of the Metrodome’s demolition
A story of a Somali immigrant’s journey to Eden Prairie
Eating Halva on Lake Street

Cover image for Under Purple Skies, isbn: 9781948742436

Happy Anyway

9780996836715

$19.99

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series. These pieces . . . stand as proof of the determination and optimism of a city that just won't quit.

A collection of essays and personal narratives, Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology captures a confounding, contradictory city, proving that Flint is far more than just an industrial town picking itself up after a big company has moved out or the site of a devastating public health crisis. The stories collected here delve into the actual lives taking place within the city―the crime, joblessness, homelessness, and hopelessness, but also the happiness and resilience. They are about who is able to truly lay claim to being from Flint and what it means to finally leave―or to stay, even when bikes, jewelry, or love continually disappear. From both established and new writers, you'll find stories here that include:

- Home ownership in Mott Park during the 2008 housing crisis

- The history and mysteries of Glenwood Cemetery

- What the Flint water crisis means for parents trying to raise young children.

Edited by Scott Atkinson, a former reporter for The Flint Journal, the 24 essays collected here shed new light on a city that has perpetually been defined by outsiders. As Atkinson notes, These are stories from the middle. They are stories of triumph not because anything has been won, but because they are stories of Flint's continued fight.

A candid, unflinching look inside a city whose history tells a truly American story.

Cover for Happy Anyway a Flint anthology showing a sunset cityscape behind a chain link fence with Edited by Scott Atkinson

The Cleveland Anthology (Second edition)

9780985944162

$20.00

A literary snapshot written by the city’s citizens that serves as an intimate reminder “that strength of character abounds in the Cleveland community” (Freshwater Cleveland).

The past few years have been full of stories about Cleveland’s ongoing revitalization and renewal, mostly from people from outside the city. This collection of essays, photographs, and poems offers an insiders’ view, telling the story of the city as it actually exists on the ground. Citizens of Cleveland will connect to the experiences and locales detailed here. Readers from outside the area will gain invaluable insight into what it means to live in here, why the city is loved or hated, and why some people obsess over it.

The collection looks at popular Cleveland attractions like Harvey Pekar and the Cuyahoga River, but also looks at life on the Number 9 bus and the delis of Slavic Village. Through photographs, essays, and poetry, the collection questions the notion of “Rust Belt Chic” and the truth behind that statement. It includes contributions by: David C. Barnett, Sean Decatur, Mansfield Frazier, David Giffels, Alissa Nutting, Jim Roakakis, Connie Schultz, and many more.

A wide-ranging portrait of a city of contradictions, written by those who have lived the story.

“Touching always on the idea of a post-industrial landscape as a form of innate and historical beauty and integrity, this book creates a genuine and intimate look at Cleveland. Those who hail from “rust belt” cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Milwaukee will find a special place in their hearts for this book.” —Riffle NonFiction