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Narrating Past and Future: Deindustrialized Landscapes as Resources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2014

Sherry Lee Linkon
Sherry Lee Linkon*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
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Abstract

A growing body of contemporary American literature, “deindustrialization literature,” most of it by writers who grew up after major plant closings, is set in former industrial areas, such as Detroit and Youngstown. These texts focus on the lives and perspectives of those who have inherited the physical, economic, and cultural landscapes of the rust belt. For these writers and their characters, the past is always an important part of the present. The deindustrialized landscape provides not only the setting but also significant plot elements, themes, and symbols through which these writers narrate stories about young adults wrestling with their identities, affiliations, and opportunities during a period of economic decline and social change. These narratives complicate the relationship between past and present through characters' observations of and interactions in the deindustrialized landscape. With a complex, ambivalent perspective, they suggest the possibility of revival for both communities and individuals. A novel and works of creative non-fiction by Youngstown's Christopher Barzak and the short stories of Detroit's Michael Zadoorian illustrate how representations of abandoned mills and decaying commercial and residential sites can reveal the complex and persistent significance of deindustrialization, decades after closings began, while also pointing toward a future that uses the past as a resource.

Type
Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 84: Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory , Fall 2013 , pp. 38 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2013 

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References

NOTES

1. As Russo, John and I argue in Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (Lawrence, KS, 2002)Google Scholar, after the major wave of steel mill closings in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, we can identify several distinct phases in the representations of Youngstown, first as a site of loss, then as a site of failure, and ultimately as a site of corruption.

2. As Rhodes, James and Russo, John note in a forthcoming article, “Shrinking Smart? Urban Redevelopment and Shrinkage in Youngstown, Ohio”(Urban Geography (2013) 34(3):305–326)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, however, this narrative does not adequately describe what is happening in Youngstown. But the accuracy of these images is almost beside the point. Regardless of what is really happening in Detroit and Youngstown, they are defined in public discourse as sites of deindustrialization.

3. See Tim Strangleman's piece in this issue.

4. See Ch. 3 of Steeltown, which examines the difficulty many Youngstown residents felt in simply defining who they and their city were without steelwork.

5. Both of the ads, which ran during the Super Bowl (the most watched and most hyped television advertising event in the US each year), are available on Chrysler's YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/chrysler?feature=watch, which ads new videos regularly.

6. The Chrysler ads, together with similar marketing efforts focused on Braddock, PA, no doubt deserve their own examination, and I plan to include this in the larger project on twenty-first century representations of deindustrialization.

7. See Steeltown, Epilogue.

8. A film based on the novel is due out in 2014 from Hunting Lane Films.

9. Barzak, Christopher, One for Sorrow (New York, 2007), 227Google Scholar.

10. Ibid, 227.

11. Ibid, 227.

12. Ibid, 236.

13. Ibid, 228.

14. Ibid, 232.

15. Ibid, 246.

16. Ibid, 276.

17. Ibid, 277.

18. Ibid, 276.

19. Ibid, 277.

20. Barzak, Christopher, “Map of a Forgotten Valley,” New Haven Review 7 (November, 2010)Google Scholar, online.

21. Barzak, Christopher, “The B&O: Crossroads of Time and Space,” Muse 12 (January 2011), 5Google Scholar.

22. Barzak, “Map,” 18. The line quotes Dr. William Hudnut, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. The story of Hudnut's visit to the mill is told on a Mahoning Valley Historical Society webpage, http://www.mahoninghistory.org/wdyk27-millwork.htm, and is depicted in a poster created by the Bread and Roses project of SEIU/1199, as part of the union's series on labor and art.

23. Ibid, 18.

24. Ibid, 22.

25. Ibid, 21.

26. Ibid, 22.

27. Ibid, 13, 15.

28. Ibid, 14.

29. See Rhodes and Russo.

30. In the mid-1990s, as artists’ fascination with deindustrialized landscapes was still a fairly new phenomenon, Boileau created a website called “The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit” that combined images of decaying and repurposed old buildings with narratives about their history and a very active discussion forum focused on remembering the city's past and advocating for preservation. http://www.detroityes.com/home.htm.

31. Sugrue, Thomas J., “From Motor City to Motor Metropolis: How the Automobile Industry Reshaped Urban America.” Automobile in American Life and Society, online.

32. Woodward Avenue Action Association, http://www.woodwardavenue.org/.

33. Zadoorian, Michael, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit (Detroit, 2009), 193Google Scholar.

34. Ibid, 193–194.

35. Ibid, 196.

36. The Art of Tyree Guyton, http://www.tyreeguyton.com.

37. Ibid, 199.

38. Ibid, 195, italics original.

39. Ibid, 197, 199.

40. Ibid, 48.

41. Ibid, 46.

42. Ibid, 56, italics original.

43. Ibid, 60.

44. Ibid, 169, italics original.

45. Ibid, 170, italics original.

46. Ibid, 179, italics original.

47. Ibid, 177.

48. Ibid, 192.

49. Roediger, David, “‘More Than Two Things’: The State of the Art of Labor History,” in New Working-Class Studies, eds. Russo, John and Linkon, Sherry Lee, (Ithaca, NY, 2005), 32–41 Google Scholar.