Mid-Americana: Stories from a Changing Midwest

Irene Maun is originally from the Marshall Islands, descended from a Micronesian royal family. Like many Marshallese, she and her family have struggled with chronic illness due to the lasting impacts of U.S. nuclear testing and colonialism in their tiny island home. In the wake of war and weapons testing, US troops and corporations flooded the islands with processed foods. The most popular and iconic of these is Hormel Foods’ SPAM, which has been linked to obesity and other chronic diseases across the region. Irene eventually moved to Dubuque, Iowa, temporarily leaving her small children and accompanying her diabetic husband to secure medical treatment for him in the U.S. She now helps other Pacific Islanders navigate healthcare as a leader at the Pacific Islander Health Project, including many who work at a Hormel meat packing plant in Dubuque. Learn more about the project and support it’s parent organization, Crescent Community Health Center.   COVID hit the Marshallese community especially hard, including Irene and her family. The pandemic spread rapidly among packing plant workers and their families due to existing medical conditions, crowded living arrangements, and unsafe work environments. The pandemic could have been even more devastating without the resources of Crescent and its staff. For years, Irene has also for more federal support, advocating to restore Medicaid coverage for Marshallese in the U.S., a promise made to compensate for nuclear impacts. This lobbying was finally successful in December 2020, as part of COVID-relief legislation.    Read more about the Marshallese community in Dubuque (in English or Marshallese) through some of the story collections online. The Facing Project published a 2017 collection of local stories, including Irene’s: Facing Diversity: Marshallese Stories. In 2020, The Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque gathered stories of diversity in Dubuque, promoting understanding and solidarity in the midst of the pandemic: #AllofUsDubuque.  This episode features a clip from the video performance, “Anointed,” by Marshallese poet, climate activist, and educator Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. The project was supported through a collaboration with filmmaker Dan Lin, Pacific Resources for Learning (PREL), and the Okeanos Foundation. Visit www.kathyjetnilkijiner.com to read more of her poetry and watch more of her videos.

Dominique Serrand is Co-Artistic Director for The Moving Company, a traveling theatre company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born and raised in Paris, Dominique came of age during the protests of 1968, when young people took to the streets to protest capitalism and patriarchy and brought the French government to a standstill. He saw both sides of that struggle, first on assignment with the French Navy in Somalia, and later as a student at the famous Jacques Lecoq School for international theatre.  While studying at Jacques Lecoq, Dominique forged a special bond with classmates from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Together they founded Theatre de la Jeune Lune, or Theatre of the Young Moon. The young drama company moved its base of operations to Minneapolis in 1981 and built a reputation for innovation and excellence over the next three decades, winning a Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre in 2005. During this period, Dominique won many other awards, such as Best Production for The Miser, fellowships with the USA Artist Ford Foundation and the Bush Foundation, and knighthood by the French government with the Order of Arts and Letters.  Theatre de la Jeune Lune closed in 2008. Later that year, Dominique and a few of his partners from Jeune Lune formed The Moving Company, which continues to produce new work in the Twin Cities. See excerpts of Refugia and Speechless.  Listen here to a 1992 interview with Dominique Serrand for Minnesota Portraits, a series produced by Twin Cities PBS.  Watch a 2008 interview for Minnesota Playlist with Dominique Serrand and a 2012 interview for PBS with Dominique and Steven Epp about their vision for The Moving Company.  Archives for Theatre de la Jeune Lune are held by the University of Minnesota Libraries.

At age six, Abdirizak Abdi fled civil war in his native Somalia. He lived in a refugee camp in neighboring Kenya, then in the capital city of Nairobi, and as a teenager moved to the United States. Today, he is the principal of Humboldt High School in St. Paul Minnesota, one of the first Somali-American school leaders in the country. Along the way, Abdi has learned to navigate all sorts of adversity, including Midwest attitudes about difference. In the past few decades, communities large and small across Minnesota and the Midwest have welcomed growing numbers of immigrants and refugees. This has brought economic and cultural vitality, and it has often also triggered a backlash.  In this episode, Abdi shares his story of learning to make sense of these dynamics and learning to be a leader in this polarized context. He reflects on his time in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a place that exemplifies the conflicts over race, religion, and refugee resettlement in the Midwest. He developed deep friendships with native Midwesterners there, challenging their stereotypes of one another. Through this journey, Abdi has come to see America as a place full of possibility, a place not divided by its differences but united in appreciation of its remarkable diversity of cultures. It hasn’t always been easy for him to find his voice and share that vision publicly, but in this episode he reads from a powerful and poetic “Conversation with America” that came to him in the summer of 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.  

Hem Rizal is an M.A. candidate in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was born in Bhutan and migrated to Nepal with his family when he was just a year old. He grew up in the Gold Hap Refugee Camp in Nepal and later settled with his family in Seattle. Hem is a graduate of the University of Washington, where he studied Mathematics, Political Science, and Human Rights. He taught briefly in the Des Moines Public Schools with AmeriCorps and spent four years teaching math on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with the Teach for America program. He has also been actively involved in the Black Lives Matter community in Des Moines. 

John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas is an educator, social worker, and justice advocate currently pursuing a PhD in Educational Leadership at the University of Iowa. He has a distinguished career as a champion of immigrant’s rights in Iowa, and especially creating opportunities for young people. Ye created the state’s first bilingual Spanish-English immersion program in West Liberty, led the Governor’s Commission on Latino Affairs and the state’s Department of Latino Affairs, then served as the Director of Iowa’s 4H Youth Development Program. Drawing from his own life experience, John-Paul helped support other young immigrants and helped build bridges with white Midwesterners in communities struggling with the rapidly changing demographics of the region. As the leader of 4H, John-Paul pushed the organization to grow more diverse and inclusive. He developed programs for young people from Latino and African backgrounds, serving not just farm kids, but also the children of meatpackers, migrant workers, and urban youth. His leadership of 4H became controversial as he championed LGBTQ rights, and especially protections for transgender youth. For more context on this struggle, read this investigative report from the Des Moines Register, which explores his firing from 4H in the context of broader political and cultural polarization in Iowa and the United States.  UPDATE: In the podcast interview, John-Paul was unable to speak freely about his conflict with 4H, due to the ongoing lawsuit he filed in 2018, alleging harassment and discrimination in his termination. Just before the release of this episode, the state of Iowa agreed to a settlement.

Zoe Bouras is a Communications and Development AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) with the Immigration Project in Bloomington, Illinois. She also serves as an adjunct instructor of Political Science at Illinois Wesleyan University.  Zoe emigrated with her mother from northern England to rural Illinois when she was eight years old, and has called Arthur, Illinois, home since then. She has visited more than thirty-one countries, studying in Arequipa, Peru, as an exchange student, and interning for a summer at the Institute of East and West Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.  Fifteen years after her own immigration to the United States, Zoe began her path to American citizenship. She hopes to be naturalized in 2021.

As a kid in the Dominican Republic, Pavel Polanco-Safadit fell in love with piano and spent hours each day perfecting his technique. This passion and skill eventually earned him a college scholarship to study music in the U.S., and he went on to earn a masters and doctorate in music. For years, Pavel taught music at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, where he continues to be a leader in the community as Executive Director of the Richmond’s Amigos Latino Center. In this episode, Pavel talks about his experience immigrating to the Midwest, his passion for Latin jazz, and the power of music as a bridge across cultures. He also shares more about Richmond, a small town with a surprisingly large role in the history of recorded jazz.  To hear more of Pavel’s music, visit the Facebook page for his band, Pavel and Direct Contact, which has videos of recent performances and information about upcoming shows. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the band has live-streamed several virtual performances together with Dominican jazz musicians. He maintains a strong relationship with his native country, returning each year to lead the Music Ed Fest, providing musical opportunities to a new generation of young Dominicans. To learn more about Gennett Records, visit the Starr Gennett Foundation, dedicated to preserving the history of recorded jazz in Richmond, Indiana. For even more detail, check out Rick Kennedy’s book, Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz or listen to this episode of the Everything Sounds Podcast. Middle Tennessee State University professor Charlie Dahan maintains a soundcloud playlist of Gennett recordings and a Gennett Records website with a bibliography and discography. Listen to him talk more about Indiana jazz history in this episode of the MTSU On the record podcast.

Kao Kalia Yang is an author, public speaker, and teacher. She was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand and settled with her family in St. Paul, Minnesota, when she was six years old. After graduating from Carleton College, she moved to New York to complete an M.F.A. at Columbia University. She moved back to the Twin Cities to launch her writing career and has been based there ever since.  Kalia has taught in K-12 schools in a variety of communities, as well as at many colleges and universities. She is the author of two memoirs, The Latehomecomer and The Song Poet, and editor of two anthologies, What God Is Honored Here? (coedited with Shannon Gibney) and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Kalia is also the author of three children's books, A Map into the World, The Shared Room, and The Most Beautiful Thing.  For more information about her writing, teaching, and availability for public speaking engagements, visit her homepage: https://kaokaliayang.com/. 

Liz Garst grew up in Coon Rapids, Iowa, in a family of agricultural pioneers. Her grandfather Roswell helped convert Midwest farmers to technologies like hybrid seed, nitrogen fertilizer, and mechanization. Liz shares childhood memories from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to their farm and how the family legacy inspired her own career in international agriculture and global development. After jobs with the Peace Corps and the World Bank, she came home in the 1980s, at the height of the Farm Crisis. Now she helps manage the family land as Whiterock Conservancy, dedicated to transforming farming again by promoting ecological restoration, outdoor recreation, and sustainable agriculture.   To learn more, read Lauren Soth’s 1955 Des Moines Register editorial, which won the Pulitzer Prize for inviting Khrushchev to Iowa, and check out the paper’s historic photos of his visit with the Garsts.

Bob Leonard is News Director for KNIA/KRLS, where he also hosts the podcast In Depth. He also writes for The New York Times, Salon, and many other national newspapers and magazines. Bob grew up in a house without indoor plumbing, in an unincorporated area called Dogpatch between Des Moines and Johnston, Iowa. He attended the University of Northern Iowa on a wrestling scholarship and later completed a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Washington. As a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, Bob supervised archeological research with the Navajo and Zuni nations and also led students on digs in northern Mexico, where he survived a standoff with the federal police. After the birth of his first child, Bob supplemented his faculty salary by driving a yellow cab in Albuquerque. His experiences as a cab driver inspired his first book, Yellow Cab, and he continues to write poetry, essays, and short stories. Bob’s second book, Deep Midwest, was published in 2019 by Ice Cube Press. Listen to recent episodes of In Depth at KNIA/KRLS or on Apple podcasts. Yellow Cab is available for purchase on Amazon. Deep Midwest is available for purchase on Amazon and at Ice Cube Press.

Adam Hammes grew up in rural Richland, Iowa. He spent much of his 20s traveling the world leading environmental education trips. After this series of adventures, he moved back to Iowa to establish Urban Ambassadors, a Des Moines non-profit that supports community sustainability projects and connections.  Adam is a leader in corporate sustainability. He was the first manager of sustainability for Kum & Go, the founder and Executive Director of the Iowa Sustainable Business Forum, and the author of two books on corporate sustainability: Stress-Free Sustainability: Leverage Your Emotions, Avoid Burnout & Influence Anyone (2010) and Sustainable Business in Iowa (2017).

Shelley Buffalo is a visual artist and Food Sovereignty Coordinator for the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama, Iowa. Shelley was born near the Settlement, and much of her extended family still lives in Tama County. But her own journey has led her away and back more than a dozen times. For Shelley, sources of hope can come from anywhere, like her lifelong identification with punk rock, but the Meskwaki Settlement most recently called her back with its food sovereignty initiative, which restores ancestral foods, like corn and squash, and the traditional recipes that go with them. Shelley hopes to reverse the influence of government commodities on indigenous diets and to revive the stories of resilience that guide the Meskwaki lifeway. We talked about Shelley’s experience of racism in rural Iowa, how her birth experience in a hospital compared with her second birth experience at home, and why her work with food sovereignty may mean more to future generations than to her own. Learn more about the Meskwaki Food Sovereignty Initiative at the official website for the Meskwaki Nation and on Facebook.

Brian Bruening lives in the northeast Iowa community of Elkader, where he is the owner and head chef at Schera’s Algerian American Restaurant, which he established together with his French-Algerian husband, Frederique Boudouani. A native of New Hampton, Iowa, Brian spent several years in Boston, Massachusetts, where he received a BA in English at Boston University and an MFA in poetry at Emerson College. In this episode, he shares what it was like growing up gay in the rural Midwest, and why he and Federique chose to move back, believing small town Iowans could appreciate unfamiliar flavors and cultures. Brian also talks about how poetry has helped him find his public voice in a region that values privacy, reflecting on the article he wrote for the Des Moines Register in response to the 2016 shooting at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Megan McKay is founder and owner of Peace Tree Brewing Company in Knoxville, Iowa. Megan was born and raised in Knoxville. She left home after high school, drawn to greener pastures on the West Coast. After four years in the Bay Area, where she worked as a nanny and part-time auto mechanic, Megan felt Iowa calling her back, and in 2009 she left the family insurance business to start a brewery in her hometown. Megan believed Knoxville could become the kind of place that might have held her as a young person, even the kind of place that could grow and thrive, drawing new residents and entrepreneurs. We talked about the brewery’s experiments with wild yeasts harvested at a local farm, how a business comes of age and remains resilient over time, the story of the Peace Tree her company is named for, and her work as a community leader in Knoxville.  Follow Peace Tree Brewing on their website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Dawn Martinez Oropeza is Executive Director of Al Exito, a mentoring and youth empowerment organization that works with hundreds of middle and high school-aged Latinos across Iowa. She has deep roots in Des Moines, on both the Jewish and Mexican sides of her family. Since childhood, she has navigated blended identities and cultural divides. Dawn shares about her pilgrimage into the private world of César Chávez, as she preserved his legacy and helped establish a national monument in his honor. We talk about her explorations of art, food, and religious practice, a journey that took her to Seattle, Chicago, Miami, California, and back home to the Midwest. 

Mike Draper is the founder and owner of RAYGUN, a Des Moines-based T-shirt store that opened in 2005 and has since grown into a regional powerhouse with locations in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Kansas City, and Chicago. As a kid, Mike heard his Connecticut relatives speak about Iowa to other New Englanders as if it needed defending. He later felt that difference more keenly at an Ivy League university, where his peers saw him as a mystery: a guy from a blank spot on the map. We also talk about the ironies in Midwest history, the strangeness of a region that is not a navigational direction and that serves as a gateway to everywhere else, and the cultural origins of tropes, like modesty, that dominate Midwestern identity.  Browse the RAYGUN collection, “The Mighty Midwest,” and follow the store on Facebook and Twitter. Mike Draper’s book, The Midwest: God’s Gift to Planet Earth, is available on the RAYGUN site and on Amazon.