BGSU scholar Rebecca Kinney dissects the myth of Detroit’s death & resurrection

Rebecca Kinney only realized she should write about her hometown of Detroit when she was living to the West Coast.

Kinney_Beautiful coverRebecca Kinney only realized she should write about her hometown of Detroit when she was living to the West Coast.

Kinney grew up in Royal Oak, just north of the city, hugging Woodward Avenue. She remembers watching the fireworks explode over the Detroit River from the National Bank building downtown. She remembers how far the city seemed though it was just a 20-minute drive from her home. And she remembered being impressed by the change in architecture, the towering, imposing structures in the city compared to the single-family scale of the suburbs.

Living in San Diego and San Francisco, she found everyone had something to say about the place where she grew up. Even if they’d never been to Detroit or even the Rust Belt, they knew, or thought they knew, something about the place. That made Kinney wondered: where did they get these ideas?

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Published in: BG Independent News
By: David Dupont