Description
A guided tour of one of the Midwest's most vibrant subcultures, one DIY ramp at a time.
The American Midwest may not have a reputation as the nation's skating mecca, but maybe it should. In Midwest Shreds, Mandy Shunnarah travels around the region for a deep dive into its skating culture, detailing the activity's long, storied history there and the large and diverse skating community that calls the Midwest home today. Here, you'll learn how skating has become a form of mutual aid in Iowa, follow hard-core street skaters as they vie to become King of Cleveland, experience the transcendence of skating in a converted St. Louis cathedral, meet the anarchists who've built their own skate paradise, cinder block by cinder block, in southern Ohio, and encounter skaters from Des Moines, Madison, Chicago, West Lafayette, Detroit, and other corners of the Midwest.
With writing that revels in the crunching scrape of hard wheels, the joy of nailing a trick for the first time, and the grit required to fall and get back up again, Midwest Shreds illuminates a small corner of Midwest life and offers a portrait of the rich cultural history and diversity that makes the region what it is today.
Product Details
| Publisher | Belt Publishing |
| Publish Date | July 16, 2024 |
| Pages | 182 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781953368713 |
| Dimensions | 8.9 X 6.0 X 0.6 inches | 0.7 pounds |
About the Author
Mandy Shunnarah is a Southern-born, Midwest-loving journalist, essayist, poet, and roller-skating enthusiast who calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their work has been featured in the New York Times, Electric Literature, the Rumpus, and more. Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America's Heartland is their first book. Read more on their website, mandyshunnarah.com.
Reviews
In Northeast Ohio, rollerbladers show off their best tricks on a steep handrail to become 'King of Cleveland.' At a Columbus skate park, a group of unicyclists speeds down a ramp. Tucked away in the Appalachian hills, skateboarders flock to a graffiti-covered skatepark of world renown.
Author Mandy Shunnarah of Columbus wheels us to these spots in their new book "Midwest Shreds", which argues the region shapes skate culture as much or more than the West Coast. Some Midwestern states rank the highest for skateparks per capita, including in Ohio where there's a skate park for every 95,000 people.
Shunnarah took a tour of so-called flyover states' popular skate parks and documented the Midwestern skaters who conquered them. They sat down with the Ohio Newsroom to talk about what they found.
Essential reading for fans of skateboarding, rollerskating, and rollerblading.With writing that revels in the crunching scrape of hard wheels, the joy of nailing a trick for the first time, and the grit required to fall and get back up again, "Midwest Shreds" illuminates a small corner of Midwest life and offers a portrait of the rich cultural history and diversity that makes the region what it is today.
Mandy Shunnarah's "Midwest Shreds: Skating through America's Heartland" must be considered essential reading for fans of skateboarding, rollerskating, and rollerblading. An ideal guide to touring of the Midwest in terms of the sports subculture of skating, "Midwest Shreds" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Sports & Travel Guide collections.
-Midwest Book Review
Small Press Bookwatch: August 2024
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
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