Mid-Americana: Stories from a Changing Midwest

Mid-Americana explores the history and identity of the Greater Midwest through the lives and stories of individual people. Our second season, Immigration, features eight stories from people who left their native countries to make a new home in the Greater Midwest. We ask our guests what pulled them from their homelands, what challenges they faced while making a home in the Heartland, and how they contribute now to a changing Midwest. Find transcripts, illustrations, and show notes at midamericana.com, where you can also join our email list and suggest ideas for a future episode or season.

Home Is Not a Safe Place: Irene Maun 05/28/2021

Home Is Not a Safe Place: Irene Maun Irene Maun is originally from the Marshall Islands, a Pacific island nation struggling with the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing and facing the devastation of climate change. She now lives in Dubuque, Iowa, where she is nurturing the health and resilience of a growing Midwest Marshallese community. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/19261835

Journey into the New: Dominique Serrand 01/13/2021

Journey into the New: Dominique Serrand Dominique Serrand was born and raised in Paris. While studying at the Jacques Lecoq School for international theatre, 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 to Minneapolis in 1981 and 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. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/17500034

Conversations with America: Abdirizak Abdi 12/16/2020

Conversations with America: Abdirizak Abdi 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. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/17193008

I Reached for Books: Hem Rizal 12/02/2020

I Reached for Books: Hem Rizal Hem Rizal 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 and taught briefly in the Des Moines Public Schools with AmeriCorps before joining the Teach for America program for four years on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He is presently an M.A. candidate in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/16959101

Always in the Gray Areas: John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas 11/18/2020

Always in the Gray Areas: John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas All his life, Guatemalan-American John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas has lived in the gray areas between worlds. This has made him skillful at building bridges between white Midwesterners and immigrants in the Heartland, a calling that has been both risky and rewarding. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/16834145

America Looks Like Scotland!: Zoe Bouras 11/11/2020

America Looks Like Scotland!: Zoe Bouras Zoe Bouras is a Communications and Development AmeriCorps VISTA with the Immigration Project in Bloomington, Illinois. She emigrated with her mother from northern England to rural Illinois when she was eight years old, and has called Arthur, Illinois, home since then. Zoe began her path to American citizenship just last year. She hopes to be naturalized in 2021. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/16696766

Stick to Your Roots: Pavel Polanco-Safadit 10/21/2020

Stick to Your Roots: Pavel Polanco-Safadit As a kid in the Dominican Republic, Pavel Polanco-Safadit pounded away for hours perfecting his technique as a classical pianist. This passion led him to the U.S., and eventually to the Midwest, where he has rediscovered his Latin Jazz roots and the Indiana roots of American Jazz. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/16433951

America Has Its Own Ghosts: Kao Kalia Yang 10/07/2020

America Has Its Own Ghosts: Kao Kalia Yang 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. Kalia has an MFA from Columbia University and has taught in K-12 schools in a variety of communities, as well as at many colleges and universities. For more information about her writing, teaching, and availability for public speaking, visit her homepage: https://kaokaliayang.com/. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/16235978

The Gospel of Seed and Soil: Liz Garst 01/15/2020

The Gospel of Seed and Soil: Liz Garst Liz Garst grew up in Coon Rapids, Iowa, in a family of agricultural pioneers. She 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. 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, where she promotes outdoor recreation and sustainable agriculture. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/12727088

Flip the Sky: Bob Leonard 01/01/2020

Flip the Sky: Bob Leonard 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. As a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, Bob supervised archeological research with the Navajo and Zuni nations. After the birth of his first child, Bob supplemented his faculty salary by driving a cab in Albuquerque. His experiences as a cab driver inspired his first book, Yellow Cab. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/12551105

People Would Call Me Iowa: Adam Hammes 12/18/2019

People Would Call Me Iowa: Adam Hammes 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 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). /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/12443639

Punk Rock, Home Birth, and Indian Corn: Shelley Buffalo 12/04/2019

Punk Rock, Home Birth, and Indian Corn: Shelley Buffalo Shelley Buffalo is a visual artist and Food Sovereignty Coordinator for the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama, Iowa. Shelley was born near the Settlement, but her journey has led her away and back more than a dozen times. We talked about Shelley’s experience of racism in rural Iowa, her lifelong identification with punk rock, how her birth experience in a hospital compared with home birth, and why her work with food sovereignty may mean more to future generations than to her own. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/12252242

Couscous Royale: Brian Bruening 11/20/2019

Couscous Royale: Brian Bruening Brian Bruening lives in Elkader, Iowa, where he is the owner and head chef at Schera’s Algerian American Restaurant, which he established with his French-Algerian husband, Frederique Boudouani. 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. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/12065498

Grain, Water, and Yeast: Megan McKay 11/06/2019

Grain, Water, and Yeast: Megan McKay Megan McKay is founder and owner of Peace Tree Brewing Company in Knoxville, Iowa. We talk about her years away in California, why she came home, and why she thought she could sell craft beer in the sprint car capital of the world. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/11768891

Divided by Difference: Dawn Martinez Oropeza 10/23/2019

Divided by Difference: Dawn Martinez Oropeza 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. 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. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/11697725

Gateway to the Midwest: Mike Draper 10/13/2019

Gateway to the Midwest: Mike Draper 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. We 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. /episode/index/show/midamericana/id/11622599

Mid-Americana: Stories from a Changing Midwest

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