Geo-Piety On The Bookshelf
Every Michigan bookstore should have a Michigan authors section. Most stores I've been in seem to have one, so I don’t think I need to propose legislation.
I’m not surprised bookstores1 take this tack, and it’s about more than sales. Michiganders are of two minds: for one, we complain about this place a lot. The roads, the weather, the taxes. But we’re also fiercely parochial: we love the state and the people and things within it and from it.
There’s a term for the latter, as defined by Jim Harrison in True North:
Each village was obsessed with the history of its own immediate area and infinitely less so than in the history of the village a mere thirty miles away. Later in life I learned that human geographers called this “geo-piety,” which also applies to larger units and fidelities like the Michigan State-University of Michigan football games.
If Michigan is worth celebrating2, then so are its authors. That’s about state pride, yes. But even better, it’s about local voices helping us see a familiar place in new ways.