BiblioVault - Books about Middle West

Farm Boys

Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest

Collected and Edited by William D. Fellows

University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

Homosexuality is often seen as a purely urban experience, far removed from rural and small-town life. Farm Boys undermines that cliche by telling the stories of more than three dozen gay men, ranging in age from 24 to 84, who grew up in farm families in the midwestern United States. Whether painful, funny, or matter-of-fact, these plain-spoken accounts will move and educate any reader, gay or not, from farm or city.

     “When I was fifteen, the milkman who came to get our milk was beautiful. This is when I was really getting horny to do something with another guy. I waited every day for him to come. I couldn’t even talk to him, couldn’t think of anything to say. I just stood there, watching him, wondering if he knew why.”—Henry Bauer, Minnesota

     “When I go back home, I feel a real connection with the land—a tremendous feeling, spiritual in a way. It makes me want to go out into a field and take my shoes off and put my feet right on the dirt, establish a real physical connection with that place. I get homesick a lot, but I don’t know if I could ever go back there and live. It’s not the kind of place that would welcome me if I lived openly, the way that I would like to live. I would be shunned.”—Martin Scherz, Nebraska

     “If there is a checklist to see if your kid is queer, I must have hit every one of them—all sorts of big warning signs. I was always interested in a lot of the traditional queen things—clothes, cooking, academics, music, theater. A farm boy listening to show tunes? My parents must have seen it coming.”—Joe Shulka, Wisconsin

     “My favorite show when I was growing up was ‘The Waltons’. The show’s values comforted me, and I identified with John-Boy, the sensitive son who wanted to be a writer. He belonged there on the mountain with his family, yet he sensed that he was different and that he was often misunderstood. Sometimes I still feel like a misfit, even with gay people.”—Connie Sanders, Illinois

     “Agriculture is my life. I like working with farm people, although they don’t really understand me. When I retire I want the word to get out [that I’m gay] to the people I’ve worked with—the dairy producers, the veterinarians, the feed salesmen, the guys at the co-ops. They’re going to be shocked, but their eyes are going to be opened.”—James Heckman, Indiana

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The Farm Labor Movement in the Midwest

Social Change and Adaptation among Migrant Farmworkers

By W. K. Barger and Ernesto M. Reza

University of Texas Press, 1994

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) was founded by Baldemar Velásquez in 1967 to challenge the poverty and powerlessness that confronted migrant farmworkers in the Midwest. This study documents FLOC's development through its first quarter century and analyzes its effectiveness as a social reform movement.

Barger and Reza describe FLOC's founding as a sister organization of the United Farm Workers (UFW). They devote particular attention to FLOC's eight-year struggle (1978-1986) with the Campbell Soup company that led to three-way contracts for improved working conditions between FLOC, Campbell Soup, and Campbell's tomato and cucumber growers in Ohio and Michigan. This contract significantly changed the structure of agribusiness and instituted key reforms in American farm labor.

The authors also address the processes of social change involved in FLOC actions. Their findings are based on extensive research among farmworkers, growers, and representatives of agribusiness, as well as personal involvement with FLOC leaders and supporters.

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Farmers' Markets of the Heartland

Janine MacLachlan

University of Illinois Press, 2012

A visual feast of the Midwest's homegrown bounty

In this splendidly illustrated book, food writer and self-described farm groupie Janine MacLachlan embarks on a tour of seasonal markets and farmstands throughout the Midwest, sampling local flavors from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. She conducts delicious research as she meets farmers, tastes their food, and explores how their businesses thrive in the face of an industrial food supply. She tells the stories of a pair of farmers growing specialty crops on a few acres of northern Michigan for just a few months out of the year, an Ohio cattle farm that has raised heritage beef since 1820, and a Minnesota farmer who tirelessly champions the Jimmy Nardello sweet Italian frying pepper. Along the way, she savors vibrant red carrots, slurpy peaches, vast quantities of specialty cheeses, and some of the tastiest pie to cross anyone's lips.

Informed by debates about eating local, seasonal crops, organic farming, sanitation, and biodiversity, Farmers' Markets of the Heartland tantalizes with special recipes from farm-friendly chefs and dozens of luscious color photographs that will inspire you to harvest the homegrown flavors in your own neighborhood.

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Fifty Common Birds of the Upper Midwest

Dana Gardner

University of Iowa Press, 2006

No bird is common, if we use “common” to mean ordinary. But birds that are seen more commonly than others can seem less noteworthy than species that are rarely glimpsed. In this gathering of essays and illustrations celebrating fifty of the most common birds of the Upper Midwest, illustrator Dana Gardner and writer Nancy Overcott encourage us to take a closer look at these familiar birds with renewed appreciation for their not-so-ordinary beauty and lifeways.Beginning with the garishly colored male and the more gently colored female wood duck, whose tree cavity nest serves as a launching pad for ducklings in the summer months, and ending on a bright yellow note with the American goldfinch, whose cheerful presence enlivens the midwestern landscape all year long, Overcott combines field observations drawn from her twenty-plus years of living and birding in Minnesota's Big Woods with anecdotes and data from other ornithologists to portray each species' life cycle, its vocalizations and appearance, and its habitat, food, and foraging methods as well as migration patterns and distribution. Infused with a dedication to conserving natural resources, her succinct yet personable prose forms an ideal complement to Gardner's watercolors as this renowned illustrator of avian life worldwide revisits the birds of his childhood. Together art and text ensure that the wild turkey, great blue heron, sharp-shinned hawk, barred owl, pileated woodpecker, house wren, ovenbird, field sparrow, rose-breasted grosbeak, red-winged blackbird, and forty other species of the Upper Midwest are never seen as common again.

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Fifty Uncommon Birds of the Upper Midwest

Dana Gardner

University of Iowa Press, 2007

Although the many common birds of the Upper Midwest are lovely to hear and see, there is no doubt that the uncommon birds attract more attention. In this gorgeously illustrated companion to their Fifty Common Birds of the Upper Midwest, which provided a new appreciation of the not-so-ordinary beauty and life ways of familiar birds, illustrator Dana Gardner and writer Nancy Overcott celebrate the rarer birds of the Upper Midwest.
The authors selected species that are uncommon because of dwindling populations, species that may be common elsewhere but not in the Upper Midwest, species that may be abundant one year and absent the next, and species that are usually present but seldom seen. Beginning with the surf scoter with its multicolored bill and ending with the gregarious evening grosbeak, which resembles a giant goldfinch, they pair watercolors of each species with text that portrays its life cycle, its vocalizations and distribution. Throughout, Overcott's personable text is infused with the pleasures of her twenty-plus years of living and birding in Minnesota's Big Woods and her dedication to preserving natural resources, and Gardner's paintings-each a gorgeous reminder of the rare qualities of these uncommon birds from this renowned illustrator of bird life worldwide-emphasize her call for conservation efforts.
The annotated bibliography includes online information about national and international organizations that focus on birds or that affect birds through conservation, as well as information about a variety of books and journals for beginning to experienced birders.

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Fighting Invisibility

Asian Americans in the Midwest

Monica Mong Trieu

Rutgers University Press, 2023

In Fighting Invisibility, Monica Mong Trieu argues that we must consider the role of physical and symbolic space to fully understand the nuances of Asian American racialization. By doing this, we face questions such as, historically, who has represented Asian America? Who gets to represent Asian America? This book shifts the primary focus to Midwest Asian America to disrupt—and expand beyond—the existing privileged narratives in United States and Asian American history.

Drawing from in-depth interviews, census data, and cultural productions from Asian Americans in Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan, this interdisciplinary research examines how post-1950s Midwest Asian Americans navigate identity and belonging, racism, educational settings, resources within co-ethnic communities, and pan-ethnic cultural community. Their experiences and life narratives are heavily framed by three pervasive themes of spatially defined isolation, invisibility, and racialized visibility.

Fighting Invisibility makes an important contribution to racialization literature, while also highlighting the necessity to further expand the scope of Asian American history-telling and knowledge production.

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Filicineae, Gymnospermae and Other Monocots Excluding Cyperaceae

Ferns, Conifers, and Other Monocots Excluding Sedges

Robert H. Mohlenbrock

Southern Illinois University Press, 2006

The second in a series of four illustrated guides to identifying aquatic and standing water plants in the central Midwest, this convenient reference volume includes descriptions, nomenclature, ecological information, and identification keys to plants in all of the monocot families except sedges—which are covered in the first volume in the series—that are found in Kentucky (except for the Cumberland region), Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.

Monocots covered in this volume include ferns, conifers, grasses, rushes, orchids, duckweeds, irises, sweet flags, arrowheads, aroids, flowering rushes, pipeworts, frog-bits, arrowgrasses, naiads, pickerelweeds, pondweeds, bur reeds, cattails, and yellow-eyed grasses. Robert H. Mohlenbrock includes three types of plants: submergents, those that spend their entire lives with their vegetative parts either completely submerged or at least floating on the water’s surface; emergents, which are typically rooted underwater with their vegetative parts standing out of water; and a third category of plants that live most of their lives out of water, but which may live in water at least three months a year.

With taxa arranged alphabetically, the volume is well organized and easy to use. In addition, basic synonymy, description, distribution, comments, and line drawings show the habits and distinguishing features for each plant. Habitat and nomenclatural notes are also listed, as are the official wetland designations given by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Filicineae, Gymnospermae, and Other Monocots, Excluding Cyperaceae is a useful standard reference for state and federal employees who deal with both aquatic and wetland plants and environmental conservation and mitigation issues. It is furthermore an essential guide for students and instructors in college and university courses focusing on the identification of aquatic and wetland plants.

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Finding Josie

Wendy Bilen

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2008

With a focus squarely on the Midwest, Wendy Bilen pieces together the history of her grandmother, Josie Broadhead, born in 1911 and raised on the North Dakota prairie. Josie married a Wisconsin farmer and moved to a large dairy farm outside La Crosse; along the way she began taking in people in need of a home: ". . . beggars and drunks and children of drunks, mentally ill children and children with mentally ill parents. Brothers and cousins and sisters and in-laws and strangers."

By taking on these challenges that no one else wanted, Josie left an almost mythical legacy. Years after Josie's death, Bilen embarks on a journey to unearth Josie's story and quickly realizes that the search is about her, too. As she discovers her grandmother's complicated nature ("a woman proud and humble, loving and unaffectionate, strict and visionary, joyful and troubled, a woman held together by contradictions like an arch and its capstone"), she learns much about herself and her own choices. And as she breathes life into Josie and her family, friends, and neighbors, the author evokes a powerful sense of place of small towns and farms, of prairie, of Josie's home, all of which feel both fresh and satisfyingly familiar.

Much more than mere memoir or family history, this dual story about Bilen's journey illuminates the surprising ways our lives intersect with our ancestors'. An extraordinary story about a seemingly ordinary woman, Finding Josie will inspire readers to explore their own family history in their own way.

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The Fishing Line

A History of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad

Graydon M. Meints

Michigan State University Press, 2018

With roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad—nicknamed “The Fishing Line” for its connections to attractive Michigan tourist areas—was organized in the mid–nineteenth century to take advantage of the lucrative logging business of the vast forests of the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan and other potential freight traffic. Once built into northern Michigan, it had an important role in developing the region’s tourist industry. Financed and built by officials of the mighty Pennsylvania Railroad system, the GR&I eventually was merged into that company. Using a plethora of newspapers, public documents, and other primary source materials, Meints has crafted an engaging narrative that is easily accessible to the lay reader as well as specialists in railroad and local history. Tracing a thorough corporate history of a fascinating but little-known regional line from its beginning through the early twentieth century, The Fishing Line: A History of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad is a must-read.

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Flight Dreams

A Life in the Midwestern Landscape

Lisa Knopp

University of Iowa Press, 1998

“When I was eleven the world was filled with birds,”writes Lisa Knopp of her girlhood in Burlington, Iowa. Picking up where she left off in her first book, Field of Vision, Knopp knits together sections of her life story through a pattern of images drawn from nature. The most prevalent of these unifying themes are metaphors of flight—birds, wind, moving upward and outward and across the midwestern landscape from Nebraska and Iowa to southern Illinois.

Reminiscent of Thoreau's introspective nature writing and Dillard's taut, personal prose, each chapter in Flight Dreams stands alone as a distinct narrative, yet each is linked by profoundly personal descriptions of dreams, the natural world, defining experiences, and chance encounters with people that later prove to be fateful. Part Eastern meditation, part dream sequence, part historical reconstruction, Flight Dreams testifies to a deep understanding of how the natural world—its visible and invisible elements—guides our destinies.

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Folksongs of Another America

Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946

James P. Leary

University of Wisconsin Press, 2018

Challenging and considerably broadening popular and scholarly definitions of American folk music, Folksongs of Another America recovers the diverse, multilingual traditions of immigrant, Native American, rural, and working-class performers in America's Upper Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s. The book extensively documents 187 tunes and songs in more than twenty-five languages, with full original lyrics and English translations, and biographical notes on the performers. The companion musical tracks and documentary film will be freely available for listening, viewing, or download through a partnership with the University of Wisconsin Libraries' Digital Collections Center.

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Fostering on the Farm

Child Placement in the Rural Midwest

Megan Birk

University of Illinois Press, 2019

From 1870 until after World War I, reformers led an effort to place children from orphanages, asylums, and children's homes with farming families. The farmers received free labor in return for providing room and board. Reformers, meanwhile, believed children learned lessons in family life, citizenry, and work habits that institutions simply could not provide.

Drawing on institution records, correspondence from children and placement families, and state reports, Megan Birk scrutinizes how the farm system developed--and how the children involved may have become some of America's last indentured laborers. Between 1850 and 1900, up to one-third of farm homes contained children from outside the family. Birk reveals how the nostalgia attached to misplaced perceptions about healthy, family-based labor masked the realities of abuse, overwork, and loveless upbringings endemic in the system. She also considers how rural people cared for their own children while being bombarded with dependents from elsewhere. Finally, Birk traces how the ills associated with rural placement eventually forced reformers to transition to a system of paid foster care, adoptions, and family preservation.

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French and Indians in the Heart of North America, 1630-1815

Robert Englebert

Michigan State University Press, 2013

In the past thirty years, the study of French-Indian relations in the center of North America has emerged as an important field for examining the complex relationships that defined a vast geographical area, including the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, the Missouri River Valley, and Upper and Lower Louisiana. For years, no one better represented this emerging area of study than Jacqueline Peterson and Richard White, scholars who identified a world defined by miscegenation between French colonists and the native population, or métissage, and the unique process of cultural accommodation that led to a “middle ground” between French and Algonquians. Building on the research of Peterson, White, and Jay Gitlin, this collection of essays brings together new and established scholars from the United States, Canada, and France, to move beyond the paradigms of the middle ground and métissage. At the same time it seeks to demonstrate the rich variety of encounters that defined French and Indians in the heart of North America from 1630 to 1815. Capturing the complexity and nuance of these relations, the authors examine a number of thematic areas that provide a broader assessment of the historical bridge-building process, including ritual interactions, transatlantic connections, diplomatic relations, and post-New France French-Indian relations.

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From the Jewish Heartland

Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways

Ellen F. Steinberg and Jack H. Prost

University of Illinois Press, 2013

From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways reveals the distinctive flavor of Jewish foods in the Midwest and tracks regional culinary changes through time. Exploring Jewish culinary innovation in America's heartland from the 1800s to today, Ellen F. Steinberg and Jack H. Prost examine recipes from numerous midwestern sources, both kosher and nonkosher, including Jewish homemakers' handwritten manuscripts and notebooks, published journals and newspaper columns, and interviews with Jewish cooks, bakers, and delicatessen owners.

With the influx of hundreds of thousands of Jews during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came new recipes and foodways that transformed the culture of the region. Settling into the cities, towns, and farm communities of Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, Jewish immigrants incorporated local fruits, vegetables, and other comestibles into traditional recipes. Such incomparable gustatory delights include Tzizel bagels and rye breads coated in midwestern cornmeal, baklava studded with locally grown cranberries, dark pumpernickel bread sprinkled with almonds and crunchy Iowa sunflower seeds, tangy ketchup concocted from wild sour grapes, Sephardic borekas (turnovers) made with sweet cherries from Michigan, rich Chicago cheesecakes, native huckleberry pie from St. Paul, and savory gefilte fish from Minnesota northern pike.

Steinberg and Prost also consider the effect of improved preservation and transportation on rural and urban Jewish foodways, as reported in contemporary newspapers, magazines, and published accounts. They give special attention to the impact on these foodways of large-scale immigration, relocation, and Americanization processes during the nineteenth century and the efforts of social and culinary reformers to modify traditional Jewish food preparation and ingredients.

Including dozens of sample recipes, From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways takes readers on a memorable and unique tour of midwestern Jewish cooking and culture.

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From Warm Center to Ragged Edge

The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 1920-1965

Jon K. Lauck

University of Iowa Press, 2017

During the half-century after the Civil War, intellectuals and politicians assumed the Midwest to be the font and heart of American culture. Despite the persistence of strong currents of midwestern regionalism during the 1920s and 1930s, the region went into eclipse during the post–World War II era. In the apt language of Minnesota’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Midwest slid from being the “warm center” of the republic to its “ragged edge.”

This book explains the factors that triggered the demise of the Midwest’s regionalist energies, from anti-midwestern machinations in the literary world and the inability of midwestern writers to break through the cultural politics of the era to the growing dominance of a coastal, urban culture. These developments paved the way for the proliferation of images of the Midwest as flyover country, the Rust Belt, a staid and decaying region. Yet Lauck urges readers to recognize persisting and evolving forms of midwestern identity and to resist the forces that squelch the nation’s interior voices.

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