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An upcoming collection of Flint prose, poetry and photography is still being proofread, but this week is a timely opportunity for an online preview.
So as President Obama landed in the city to meet with and address residents, Belt Publishing posted the introductory chapter of "Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology," coming out June 15.
It's titled "Greetings from the Middle" and is by the paperback's editor, Scott Atkinson, who three days earlier tweeted:
Rereading final proofs of @FlintAnthology and falling in love with each piece all over again. Can't wait to share this with the world.
— Scott Atkinson (@scottythescribe) May 2, 2016
The 184-page paperback comes out in mid-June. A pre-order link is below.
(Cover photo and design by Shane Gramling)
This book, announced just six months ago by the Cleveland publisher behind "A Detroit Anthology (2014), is on a fast track. Atkinson, a former Flint Journal features writer who now freelances nationally, accepted submissions until February. With the title city in the news regularly, the publisher is hustling to harness that attention.
Atkinson picked 23 submissions by 11 women and 10 men, who write about their city's people, neighborhoods; cultures, heritage and atmosphere. "What you will find are a lot of middles, stories about continued attempts at endings," he writes.
In November's invitation for submissions, Belt said:
We want to look beneath the common narrative of deindustrialization and high crime rates. That doesn’t mean we’re looking to ignore those elements, but rather that we’re looking for writers who understand they’re part of Flint’s setting, part of the backdrop, not the whole story.
The Flint anthology will make Flintoids knowingly chuckle or shake their heads (even we can surprise ourselves), and make outsiders understand there’s more to the Flint story than the clichés that have come to define it.
Half a year later, the publisher posts the contents page and says it "captures a confounding, contradictory city, proving that Flint is far more than the common narrative of an industrial town picking itself up after the big company that fed it left, or the site of a devastating public health crisis."
"Happy Anyway" delves into the lives and stories within the city — what it was like to be a child on the east side; how it feels to be a parent today, without clean water; who is able to truly lay claim to being “from Flint;” and what it means to finally leave — or to stay, even when bikes or jewelry or love keep disappearing.
Scott Atkinson: "They are stories of Flint’s continued fight."
Here's part of how Atkinson previews the 184-page collection in his opening chapter:
Stacie Scherman writes about her father, a man protecting what’s left of a warehouse that burned down and the retirement that went up in flames along with it, wondering when, or if, his share of the American dream will ever come. Layla Meillier, our youngest contributor, writes with heartbreaking detail about what it means to grow up in Flint, to wonder what is on the other side of the horizon for her and for the city that has done so much to define her.
These are stories from the middle. They are stories of triumph not because anything has been won, but because they are stories of Flint’s continued fight. They are stories that remind us you cannot ride into the sunset forever, that life goes on, not always easily.
That might still sound romantic. It is not.
There is a steadfastness people like to talk about when talking about the people of Flint. A grittiness. Call it blue-collar if you like. It is a pragmatic mindset, one that is not awaiting some grand arrival, but simply pushing forward. It’s a philosophy borne, perhaps, out of knowing that tomorrow you have to get up and do it all over again — and again and again until you die. It’s an understanding that life is one big middle. And once you’re smart enough to understand that, you realize that even when it’s tough you find what happiness you can.
That is where the title of this book comes from. . . .
Flint happiness is a fought-for happiness, an earned happiness. It’s a happiness that carries an asterisk, a never-ending footnote of stories that demand you understand and respect the history of where everything good in the city came from. And continues to.
Those are the stories you will find here.
Contributors include a playwright, creative writing professors, spoken word presenters, a sportwriter, an author-journalist who moved to San Francisco, a poet in Chicago and a self-described "mommyhood" blogger.
► Pre-order the book: $19.99 and $4 shipping at publisher's site.
► Launch party: June 27 at Soggy Bottom Bar, 613 Martin Luther King Avenue
