Black Midwestern Studies: A Reading List

The Midwest has long been cast as the symbolic heart of American identity—so-called “flyover country” of amber waves of grain and imagined whiteness. Indeed, national anxieties about what “Middle America” thinks are often a proxy for how white Americans in the middle of the country live. Within this framework, the lives of Black Midwesterners and other marginalized communities are routinely elided. Cities such as Milwaukee or Detroit—home to large Black populations—are frequently decried as “horrible” places...