{"id":5643,"date":"2016-05-11T07:29:31","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T11:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5643"},"modified":"2016-05-11T07:29:31","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T11:29:31","slug":"made-in-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5643","title":{"rendered":"****Made in Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(photo: halfrain, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

This is a review of two books with the same title and of the same re-readable excellence.<\/p>\n

Made in Detroit<\/em>, the memoir by Paul Clemens, is a tale of growing up in the 1970s in one of the Motor City\u2019s last white neighborhoods. It\u2019s fascinating to see the whole \u201cminority status\u201d issue turned on its head, and he comes out of it with decidedly mixed emotions. It’s a struggle, a worthy one, and following his evolving attitudes and understanding of both whites and blacks around him is a thought-provoking journey for readers, as well.<\/p>\n

Clemens\u2019s family is Catholic and he gets a Catholic education as parishes and schools close one by one. Meanwhile, the family\u2019s economic stability is increasingly shaky due to the rapidly declining auto industry. Yet, the Church and his father\u2019s love of cars were two constants in his life. He says his family members weren\u2019t readers. \u201cThere was enough serious content, enough transcendence, in cars and Catholicism; it wasn\u2019t necessary for them to concern themselves with ideas buried away in books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Made in Detroit<\/em>, the book of Marge Piercy poetry, covers an enormous swath of emotional and physical territory. She uses the simplest language to express the deepest thoughts and makes it \u201cpoetic,\u201d without superfluous lily-gilding. I was first drawn to her work by her poem \u201cIn Praise of Joe.\u201d As a dedicated caffeine consumer, we recognized each other across the page. Here are the two lines that snared me forever: \u201cIt is you who make me human every dawn. All my books are written with your ink.\u201d And here\u2019s a bit from the title poem:<\/p>\n

The night I was born the sky burned red
\nover Detroit and sirens sharpened their knives.
\nThe elms made tents of solace over grimy
\nstreets and alley cats purred me to sleep.<\/p>\n

Clemens\u2019s book takes place some decades after the night Piercy was born, yet the burning skies (steel mills then), sirens, and desolate streets were only more so in his youth. Despite all the city\u2019s frustrations and conundrums that Clemens describes so well, despite a college education that could have taken him anywhere, he returned to the city. \u201cAt times, I feel like a failure in several directions simultaneously,\u201d he writes. \u201cThat, with my education and reading, I should be more broad-minded than I am; and that, with the education I received from my father and Sal, I should be angrier about what the broad-minded morons have wrought. . . . Detroit, which drives people to extremes, has left me standing in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clemens\u2019s book makes an interesting counterpoint to Angela Flournoy\u2019s novel, The Turner House<\/em>,<\/a> describing the experience of a closeknit black family in Detroit and Susan Messer\u2019s beautiful Grand River and Joy<\/em><\/a>, about a Jewish businessman\u2019s reluctance to flee to the suburbs around the time of the 1967 riots. Perhaps one family story at a time, it might be possible to assemble a picture sufficient to comprehend this fascinating, catastrophe-ridden American city.
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