Middle of Somewhere

• Utgivningsdatum: 2026-11-30
• Mått: 152 x 229 x 14 mm
• Vikt: 367 g
• Format: Häftad
• Språk: Engelska
• Antal sidor: 296
• Förlag: University of Tennessee Press
• ISBN: 9798895271063

• Biografier
• Amerikas historia
• Relationer
• Djurböcker

Stephen Black's writing explores landscape, nature, memory, and time. His poems and essays have appeared in The Hopper and About Place. He was born and raised in West Tennessee.

"Stephen Black is the guide you didn't know you needed. He travels his home place of Gibson County, Tennessee, but this story extends beyond Tennessee to reach us all wherever we are. This unique book offers exquisite writing, attention to events, geography, geology, flora and fauna, and histories wild and familial. He weaves in the fantastic, dreams and imaginings connected to the stories, to lift us up to see grounded reality more clearly. Dry, ironic, often self-deprecating humor relieves the very serious subject of the decline of local and global ecosystems. Its lens offers an enlightened local's point of view. And he clarifies proud redneck views and behavior better than anyone I know. He excavates racism equally well with a local's view, not plastered over. We have all heard Davey Crockett stories, most false. Now I see Crockett in context and of that desperate time for settlers without the myths. There are places, such as The Teapot Museum, you might find in tourist guides. Here it becomes a comment on American quirkiness, rooted in people with a short history but the resources to create a museum that has nothing much to do with the land it is on. This book takes us on a mesmerizing journey though the county, the towns, geography and history Mr. Black knows so well as intimate connection, as living map. Through the lives and deaths of Stephen Black's family, we become informed silent witnesses. As he excavates his own fear of infinity and greater fear of the finite, and his seeming out of place boyhood obsession with John Denver, he becomes our extraordinary deeply trusted guide. Critiques of how we destroy the earth by enslavement to machines and money are modulated and nuanced through clear observation and creatively worded insights rooted in the natural world. The experience of reading this book gives us all a path to better learn the language of the land."—Diana Hartel, author of Watershed Redemption: A Journey in Time on Five US Watersheds"The Middle of Somewhere proves that a familiar landscape is never as simple as it seems. Set in one Tennessee county, this memoir walks readers through layers of deep time and lived experience, tracing intertwined histories of geology, human settlement, land use, local lore, and family. With a curious heart and a naturalist's eye, Stephen Black turns an unassuming landscape into a rich, personal geography, and shows how stories of a single 'somewhere' can map universal questions of kinship, memory, and home."—Joanna Brichetto, author of This is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature"Most people would drive through Gibson County, Tennessee, without looking twice. Not Stephen Black. The Middle of Somewhere is about what can emerge from the depths of self when a person returns to a home ground after a long absence. Lyrical and braided, this fascinating narrative coils and weaves as Black embarks on walks about his county, determined not to die a stranger to his own place. He spirals through deep time and living memory, uncovering layer upon layer of personal, local, and natural history. Along the way he discovers that the most overlooked places often carry the deepest mysteries. This beautiful, often humorous, book invites us to see the ground beneath our own feet with new eyes."—Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

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