Over the past fifty years, we Iowans have destroyed our home, according to Art Cullen. As Cullen writes, “We have fouled our nest over the past half century in a way that was almost unavoidable, given our history of seeking domination — first over the Indigenous people of the Western World, then over their land. Native people for millennia lived with the land in a vital relationship. Europeans set out to transform that relationship brutally, and this destruction has reached a head. We simply cannot go on like this, washing our soil down the river while the planet bakes, ignoring our own immigration story.”
Art Cullen, who won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials about agricultural surface water pollution in Iowa, uses a blunt, tell-it-like-it-is journalistic style that unapologetically tackles the political, economic, and environmental state of Iowa today. How did Iowa get to be a one-party state controlled by Big Agriculture and the meat-packing industry? Why do farmers’ lives, and the success of their farms, revolve around corn, the main cash crop? How are unsustainable farming and butchering practices related to climate change, union-busting, and racism towards immigrants? And most importantly, “Why are so many rural people voting for the guy with the gold toilet?” In “Dear Marty, We Crapped in Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World,” Cullen chronicles the current state of Iowa with cheeky, honest writing that will keep you engaged to the very end. He creates an insightful, accessible call-to-action that is both urgent and optimistic. This is the right book at the right time.
This Final Thursday Reading Series event starts on Thursday, March 26th at 7:00 at the Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It begins with an open mic, followed by Cullen’s featured reading at 7:30. Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event or online at Ice Cube Press.
This presentation is sponsored by the Final Thursday Reading Series, Ice Cube Press, and the Hearst Center for the Arts. It is free and open to the public.