Marick Press | Milltown, Jim Daniels

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Jim Daniels

FROM MILLTOWN TO MALLTOWN

Jim Daniels

With Jane McCafferty and Charlee Brodsky

Paperback
Publication Date: Fall 2010
88 Pages
ISBN10: 1-934851-16-7
ISBN13: 978-1-934851-16-6
USD $16.95 + Shipping

From Milltown to Malltown explores Homestead, one of the most distinctive and ethnically diverse working-class communities in the Pittsburgh region. It examines Homestead’s contemporary transformation from a dying steel town to a place that now hosts an enormous shopping complex replete with the nation’s most popular chain stores. This sprawling center of commerce sits literally on the other side of the railroad tracks from the old Homestead, where more than a third of the people live below the poverty line, where “Mom and Pop” stores, in some cases immigrant businesses that have been around for a century, struggle to stay open in the shadow of the chains. This is a deeply relevant landscape at this time, interesting in its own right, but also emblematic of what’s happening to communities across America.

About the Authors, Jim Daniels with Jane McCafferty and Charlee Brodsky

Jim Daniels is the author of twelve books of poems, including, most recently, Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry. In addition, he has published three collections of short fiction, edited or co-edited four anthologies, and written two produced screenplays. His awards include the Brit¬tingham Prize for Poetry, the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, two fellowships from the National Endow¬ment for the Arts, and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Street, his previous book with Char¬lee Brodsky, wont the Tillie Olsen Prize. He is the Thomas Stockman Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

Jane McCafferty is the author of three books of fiction. Her first book of stories, Director of the World, won the Drue Heinz award. Her second book, One Heart, is a novel published by HarperCollins, as is her third book, a collection of stories entitled Thank You For The Music. She has been awarded an NEA, two pushcart prizes, and six of her stories have been listed in Best American Short Stories. She has been the writer for Charlee Brodsky’s photography shows “Faces” and “Seasons”. McCafferty has also published essays, stories and poems in various journals, and is currently at work on another novel. She is an associate professor of writing at Carnegie Mellon

Charlee Brodsky, a documentary photographer and a professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University, describes her work as dealing with social issues and beauty. Bellevue Liter¬ary Press published her book on mental illness titled I Thought I Could Fly… Portraits of Anguish, Compulsion, and Despair. Her book, Street, with writer Jim Daniels, was awarded the Tillie Olsen Prize by the Working Class Studies Association. “Knowing Stephanie,” a book about a woman’s life with breast cancer featuring her photographs, was selected for the American Association of University Presses’ outstanding books of 2004 exhibition. In addition, Brodsky received a regional Emmy with three others for her work on “Stephanie”, a documentary video.

Video

Reviews

"In Milltown to Malltown, poets Jim Daniels and Jane McCafferty team up with photographer Charlee Brodsky to create work of exponential force in much the same way their subjects: the steel mill era ghosts of Homestead, PA confront the gleaming demons of its mall-ified present. The result is a provocative and haunting portrait of working class America in decline and the scars we bear in the name of progress. Disturbing, elegiac, and at times, wickedly wry, the chemistry between Brodsky¹s bleak, beautifully spare photos and the poets¹ renegade imaginations jolts us in the way art must."
- Dorianne Laux

"PITTSBURGH—A new book of poetry and photography by Carnegie Mellon University professors Jim Daniels, Jane McCafferty and Charlee Brodsky explores the transformation of Homestead, Pa., and its neighboring Steel Valley communities, from the once thriving steel-producing capital of the world to an area divided. "From Milltown to Malltown" combines poems by Daniels and McCafferty with Brodksy's photos to tell the story of the bordering towns of Homestead, West Homestead and Munhall, where on one side of the railroad tracks is a popular commercialized shopping destination, and on the other side communities struggling to survive.

"The key to this project is the work of Charlee Brodsky — she's been photographing Homestead for a long time and really brings the community to life in her pictures," said Daniels, the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English and accomplished poet, author and screenwriter. "As a writer, I'm always looking for tension and contrast, and her photos always seem to pull me in, inspire me to reflect on the emotion they generate."

McCafferty, an associate professor of English, agrees. "Charlee introduced me to how interesting the relationship of words and images can be. Every picture tells not just one story, but an almost infinite number of stories, depending on who's looking," she said.

Homestead, home of Carnegie Steel in the 1800s and U.S. Steel in the 1900s, was the site of the famous strike in 1892 when iron and steel workers fought for better wages. Today, 12 smokestacks from the mill — situated between a movie theater and a restaurant — are some of the few remnants of Homestead's steel industry past.
"Working with writers Jim Daniels and Jane McCafferty is a gift," said Brodsky, professor of photography in the School of Design. "Jim and Jane's poems are an elegy to Homestead. What the three of us want to do in our book is to respectfully represent the town of Homestead as it is now by telling stories that are true to the place. We hope that we have done that."
Famed American poet Dorianne Laux called the book "a provocative and haunting portrait of working class America in decline and the scars we bear in the name of progress."

Published by Marick Press, "From Milltown to Malltown" contains 37 poems and 37 photos. Daniels, McCafferty and Brodsky will be available to discuss their work and sign copies of the book at 4:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 1 at the Carnegie Mellon University Bookstore.

For more information, visit http://www.marickpress.com/index.php?/milltown-jim-daniels or watch a video of Daniels reading select poems from the book at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nh1RjmbYY."
- Steel Valley Matters