{"id":9677,"date":"2022-04-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9677"},"modified":"2022-04-19T19:48:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T23:48:29","slug":"detroit-in-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9677","title":{"rendered":"Detroit in Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Cars, Motown, the long destructive tail of the 1967 riots. The Tigers, the Lions, the Pistons, the Redwings. These pretty much sum up my home town of Detroit for many people. Well, maybe not the Lions. But the city is a lot more complex\u2014and interesting\u2014than these. When I was growing up, Detroit was the country\u2019s fourth-largest city; now it\u2019s the 27th<\/sup>. That massive change\u2014due to white flight, the auto industry’s shift to the nonunionized South, and other difficulties\u2014was accompanied by a lot of pain. The semblance of optimism in the past few years follows an excruciating and stuttering journey. Fiction tells the story of that journey and the families affected by it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turner House<\/em> by Angela Flournoy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Turner family of thirteen children has to decide what to do with the house they grew up in on Detroit\u2019s east side. The relationships among the siblings are complicated, and the city itself is like a character restricting their choices. Their parents moved north from Arkansas after World War II to escape the Jim Crow South, and while they faced prejudice and changing economic circumstances, their children are now almost all firmly middle class. When they come together to celebrate their widowed mother\u2019s birthday\u2014possibly her last\u2014you see family relationships in action, the accommodations, the cheer, the old wounds, and the shared expectations. A lovely book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grand River and Joy<\/em> by Susan Messer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some intersections carry their own weight of associations\u2014Hollywood and Vine or Naomi Hirahara\u2019s Clark and Division\u2014and in this book, Messer delves into the months leading up to the 1967 riots\/rebellion and their aftermath. The violence lasted five days, and the city has needed almost fifty years to recover, the entire lifetimes of a great many of its poorest, most affected, residents. Messer\u2019s story shows the ways lives intersected\u2014black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish, old and young. At a time when tensions and the possibility of danger were rising, tough decisions were needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Song of Solomon<\/em> by Toni Morrison<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many readers assume that Detroit is the unnamed rust-belt city that occupies the first half of Morrison\u2019s classic, which helped gain Morrison her Nobel Prize in literature. A complex coming-of-age story, rich in cultural and folkloric references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elmore Leonard\u2019s Detroit Crime Novels<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the age of nine, Elmore Leonard grew up in Detroit and graduated from the University of Detroit. Called \u201cthe Dickens of Detroit<\/a>\u201d \u00a0Leonard set many of his crime novels there, including City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, 52 Pickup, <\/em>and The Switch<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image: Peter Mol for Pixabay.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cars, Motown, the long destructive tail of the 1967 riots. The Tigers, the Lions, the Pistons, the Redwings. These pretty much sum up my home town of Detroit for many people. Well, maybe not the Lions. But the city is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Home town stories--Detroit in some terrific fiction.\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40],"tags":[1982,140,1983,1984],"class_list":["post-9677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-angela-flournoy","tag-detroit","tag-susan-messer","tag-toni-morrison"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2w5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9680,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9677\/revisions\/9680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}