Call Me Athena

Call Me Athena
Author: Colby Cedar Smith
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2021-08-17
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1524873977

This enchanting novel in verse captures one young woman’s struggle for independence, equality, and identity as the daughter of Greek and French immigrants in tumultuous 1930s Detroit. Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit is a beautifully written novel in verse loosely based on author Colby Cedar Smith’s paternal grandmother. The story follows Mary as the American-born daughter of Greek and French immigrants living in Detroit in the 1930s, creating a historically accurate portrayal of life as an immigrant during the Great Depression, hunger strikes, and violent riots. Mary lives in a tiny apartment with her immigrant parents, her brothers, and her twin sister, and she questions why her parents ever came to America. She yearns for true love, to own her own business, and to be an independent, modern American woman—much to the chagrin of her parents, who want her to be a “good Greek girl.” Mary’s story is peppered with flashbacks to her parents’ childhoods in Greece and northern France; their stories connect with Mary as they address issues of arranged marriage, learning about independence, and yearning to grow beyond one’s own culture. Though Call Me Athena is written from the perspective of three profoundly different narrators, it has a wide-reaching message: It takes courage to fight for tradition and heritage, as well as freedom, love, and equality.

Italians in Michigan

Italians in Michigan
Author: Russell M. Magnaghi
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2001-09-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

For more than 350 years, Italian immigrants have played important roles in the opening and development of the land that is now Michigan, from their participation in the French fur trade up to the present day. Through an emphasis on the family as the essential institution in ethnic group success, Russell M. Magnaghi celebrates the accomplishments of Michigan's famous and not-so-famous Italian sons and daughters as he documents their struggles and achievements. Through the tenacity and hard work of the immigrants and their descendants, Italians in Michigan have progressed from unskilled laborers to some of the highest positions in business, politics, culture, and education.

We Kept Our Towns Going

We Kept Our Towns Going
Author: Phyllis Michael Wong
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2022-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1628954523

WITH A FOREWORD BY LISA M. FINE, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY—Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is known for its natural beauty and severe winters, as well as the mines and forests where men labored to feed industrial factories elsewhere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But there were factories in the Upper Peninsula, too, and women who worked in them. Phyllis Michael Wong tells the stories of the Gossard Girls, women who sewed corsets and bras at factories in Ishpeming and Gwinn from the early twentieth century to the 1970s. As the Upper Peninsula’s mines became increasingly exhausted and its stands of timber further depleted, the Gossard Girls’ income sustained both their families and the local economy. During this time the workers showed their political and economic strength, including a successful four-month strike in the 1940s that capped an eight-year struggle to unionize. Drawing on dozens of interviews with the surviving workers and their families, this book highlights the daily challenges and joys of these mostly first- and second-generation immigrant women. It also illuminates the way the Gossard Girls navigated shifting ideas of what single and married women could and should do as workers and citizens. From cutting cloth and distributing materials to getting paid and having fun, Wong gives us a rare ground-level view of piecework in a clothing factory from the women on the sewing room floor.

Fun with the Family Michigan

Fun with the Family Michigan
Author: Bill Semion
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2009-09-15
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 076275804X

Here's the inside scoop on all the family-friendly fun to be had in the Wolverine State—places, events, and treats as varied as the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in Novi, Mackinac Island's world-famous fudge, and a 600-ton steam locomotive at the Henry Ford Museum.

Overtime

Overtime
Author: John U. Bacon
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0062886967

NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the “poet laureate of Michigan football," a riveting inside chronicle of the Jim Harbaugh era, and "an unprecedented look at the inner workings" (Sporting News) of a big-time college football program John U. Bacon received rare access to Head Coach Jim Harbaugh’s University of Michigan football team: coaches, players, and staffers, in closed-door meetings, locker rooms, meals, and classes. Overtime captures this storied program at the crossroads, as the sport’s winningest team battles to reclaim its former glory. But what if the price of success today comes at the cost of your soul? Do you pay it, or compete without compromising? In the spirit of HBO’s Hardknocks, Overtime delivers a deeply reported human portrait that follows the Wolverine coaches, players, and staffers. Above all, thisis a human story. In Overtime we not only discover what these public figures are like behind the scenes, we learn what the experience means to them as they go through it – the trials, the triumphs, and the unexpected answers to a central question: Is it worth it? From the “poet laureate of Michigan football” (according to New York Times’s Joe Drape), and one of the keenest observers of college football, Overtime offers a window into a legendary program and the sport itself that only John U. Bacon could deliver.

Michigan

Michigan
Author: Amy Van Zee
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-08
Genre: Michigan
ISBN: 9781602534667

A brief introduction to the geography, cities, land, plants, animals, people, history, culture, and famous people and places of Michigan.

Spit

Spit
Author: Daniel Lassell
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 111
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1628954299

The first-ever poetry book set on a llama farm, Daniel Lassell’s debut collection, Spit, examines the roles we play in the act of belonging. It is a portrait of a boy living on a farm populated with chickens sung to sleep by lullaby, captive wolves next door that attack a child, and a herd of llamas learning to survive despite coyotes and a chaotic family. The collection in part explores the role of the body in health and illness and one’s treatment of the earth and others. A theme of spirituality also weaves throughout the collection as the speaker treks into adulthood, yearning for peace amid the decline of his parents’ marriage. Driven by a “wish to visit / some landless landscape,” the speaker eventually leaves his family’s farm, only to find that return is impossible. After losing the farm and the llama herd to his parents’ divorce, the speaker wrestles with the role of presence as it relates to healing, remarking, “I wish enough, / to have only // these memories I have.” Unflinching at every turn, the collection pushes the boundaries of “home” to arrive upon new meaning, definition, and purpose.

Michigan Quilts

Michigan Quilts
Author: Marsha MacDowell
Publisher: Msu Museum
Total Pages: 198
Release: 1987
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN:

Michigan Quilts celebrates the 150th year of Michigan's statehood by focusing attention on quilt making, quilts, and quilters. Quilts have always represented prized family possessions, important family and community documents, and the strength and breadth of quilting as an art activity in the state.

Detroit's Holy Family Church

Detroit's Holy Family Church
Author: Bonnie Leone
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738552170

The traditions of the Sicilians and Italians have been present in Detroit and Holy Family Church since the early 1900s. The church being the very root of their soul, they have maintained their ancestors' culture and the rituals they brought with them over 100 years ago. Some of these customs date back hundreds of years in their homelands of Cinisi, Terrasini, Trapani, and many other cities. Bonnie Leone was born, raised, and still resides in Detroit. Originally appointed by Gov. John Engler to the position of Wayne County jury commissioner, Leone is a member of several genealogical societies, tracing some of her ancestors as far back as the 1500s. Her strong sense of history, art, and tradition brought her to this church, so that she may help to preserve and protect the traditions of the last 100 years of the Sicilians in Detroit.

Messages of the Governors of Michigan

Messages of the Governors of Michigan
Author: Gleaves Whitney
Publisher:
Total Pages: 752
Release: 2004
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University and Michigan State University Press announce the continuation of a long-dormant series, Messages of the Governors of Michigan. The first four volumes were published between 1925 and 1927 by the Michigan Historical Commission and edited by George Fuller. These six volumes pick up where the series left off and also include all relevant public speeches of the governors as well as their addresses to the Michigan senate.