WRITING THE MIDWEST: HISTORY,LITERATURE, AND REGIONAL IDENTITY

ABSTRACT. In this article I discuss the function of history in constructing regional identity and explore the ways in which the American Midwest differs from other widely recognized regions—New England, the South, and the West—in the kinds of historical figures and narratives that create a regional distinctiveness in the eyes of residents and writers. Whereas other regions tend to locate identity in a limited number of well-known figures and events from the past and to generalize them to the region as a whole, in the Midwest meaning is discerned on a more limited, place-by-place basis, in terms of more strictly local events and personages. This understanding of a particular kind of historically based identity is made especially clear in contemporary nonfiction from the Midwest, which collectively creates a dense mosaic of local meanings in a landscape conventionally seen by outsiders as largely empty of interest and significance.