Imagining home
Subtitle: writing from the Midwest
By: Mark Vinz and Thom Tammaro, editors.
Contributors: Vinz, Mark, 1942-; Tammaro, Thom.
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 212
Subjects: American literature -- Middle West.; Authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- Middle West.; Place (Philosophy) -- Literary collections.; American literature -- 20th century.; Home -- Literary collections.; Middle West -- Literary collections.; Middle West -- Intellectual life.
Description: From Kathleen Norris's thoughts on being a member of a literary culture outside of where "place can stick to us in western South Dakota," to Jon Hassler's remembrances of the houses of his childhood, Imagining Home begins at the real places of the Midwest and finishes with the locales that fill a writer's memories and desires.

Imagining Home centers on the premise that a sense of place is far more than a matter of geographical landscape, comprising instead a complex web of associations, human communities, history, spirituality, and memory. In untangling and reweaving these various strands, the authors consider that although the Upper Midwestern terrain is quite diverse, there is nonetheless a kind of cohesiveness - a lack of large urban centers, a low density of population - that makes the area almost invisible to itself.

These essays offer a chance to look at the way landscape plays a key role in the formation of imagination as well as to come to terms with the paradox of love and disdain for one's home place.