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61
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
25/100Critics
96/100Scholars
Author:
Jessa Crispin
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Date:
August 16, 2022
For many Americans, Kansas represents a vision of Midwestern life that is good and wholesome and evokes the American ideals of god, home, and country. But for those like Jessa Crispin who have grown up in Kansas, the realities are much harsher. She argues that the Midwestern values we cling to cover up a long history of oppression and control over Native Americans, women, and the economically disadvantaged. Blending personal narrative with social commentary, Crispin meditates on why the American Midwest still enjoys an esteemed position in our country's mythic self-image.
What The Reviewers Say
Continues this attempt to imagine a better world, at least for its author.
Voluble.
A much-needed counternarrative for the fictions of the Midwest that perpetuate and continue to engender an American cultural mythology that conceals harsh realities of colonialism, oppression, and patriarchalism.
A scorching blend of memoir and social critique.
