If you visit Google and begin typing “rural America” in the search bar, Google will offer you some suggestions on what you may be looking for: “Rural America dying,” “Decline of Rural America,” “Rural America is the new inner city.” These are popular topics and phrases that people search.

Similarly, a quick google of “New York Times Rural America” will bring a page of headlines such as “Helping Rural America Catch Up,” “The Rural-Urban Divide in America,” or, “Dollar General: The Store for Rural America’s Permanent Recession.”

Open one of these articles, and you may come across lines published in the New York Times such as: “Many towns with a rich history and strong community pride are already dead; their citizens just don’t know it yet” (Rubert Leonard, “Why Rural America Voted for Trump.”) Open any of these articles, and you will probably find numerous examples of lines that characterize the middle of the country as stagnant, as dying, in decline, in crisis.

Are these the words you would use to describe Rural America? Are these the words you would use to describe our community?

I attended a university which, like many others on the east coast, did not have many students from places like Alpena. Often I would be asked: “What is it like being from such a small rural town?” How do you begin to describe the place where you are from? You could be funny: The most traffic we get is a tractor in the middle of the road. Data-driven: We have about 10,000 residents in the city, 30,000 in the county. Geographic: We are four hours north of Detroit, two hours from the interstate. Historic: We were a booming lumber town in the 1800’s and have remained, primarily, an industrial community. You could begin to explain but eventually leave it at: It’s a place you need to visit to understand, a place you need to study to understand. You may say we are stagnant or in crisis, but you wouldn’t just leave it at that.

There is a quote that is often attributed to the American modernist writer William Faulkner: “to understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” I would rephrase that statement to say: to understand our country, you must first understand a place like Alpena. Or, if you want to begin to understand our country, you must first begin to understand a place like Alpena. You must at least acknowledge its complexity, its complexity as more than just a place that is dying, more than just a place that is used as a foil to the city in the urban-rural divide: the diverse, complex, dynamic, cultured city, the stagnant, uniform, provincial country.

No place, whether city or country, is immune from its stereotypes. But to end the conversation at that is to miss the history, the events, and the culture that define and inform each place. In this column, I hope to reopen that conversation, looking at questions of place, of media, of pop culture, and of course, how we come to know the places that we call our own.

How would I describe the place where I grew up and where I now choose to live? One answer would probably remain the same: it’s a place you have to visit to begin to understand.

Outside of the explanations I may give or the stories I may share, a few words do come to mind. Vibrant. Complex. Rich.

Anne Gentry graduated from Brown University with a degree in Comparative Literature and has studied in Italy and South Australia. She is currently Executive Director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority.