“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.
