Punching Out

November 22, 2010
Detroit native Clemens (Made in Detroit) puts an unusual spin on his study of the decline of American manufacturing in this firsthand account of what happens after a plant closes its doors. In 2006, after nearly a century in business, the Budd Co. stamping plant in Detroit—in its heyday, responsible for stamping body parts for every major American car manufacturer—was shut down. All that's left is to dismantle the million-pound presses and ship them to buyers in Brazil, Mexico, and elsewhere—a feat of labor every bit as demanding as working the lines in their productive years. The author spent a year alongside the workers responsible for disassembling the plant, through a sweltering summer and frigid Detroit winter. Clemens revels in the conversation, mannerisms, and expertise of the "ordinary" working men; he locates their contradictions and the dignity with which they apply themselves in dismantling America's industrial legacy—a job they attack with the diligence and workman's pride their fathers and grandfathers once brought to operating those same machines. Even as Clemens eschews didacticism and romanticism, he composes a stark, moving elegy to a disappearing breed of American worker.

October 1, 2010

Immersion journalism about what happens to an automobile-manufacturing plant after it closes.

Freelance journalist Clemens (Made in Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir, 2005) has seen Detroit thrive and then decline since his birth in 1973. The sites of automobile plants that used to employ thousands of proud workers now sit empty. After the Budd Company auto-parts stamping plant closed in 2006, the author decided to investigate why it closed and what became of the gigantic building afterward. It was no surprise that many of the automobile parts manufactured at the Detroit factory for nearly 100 years would be produced in a Mexican city by cheap labor. However, some of the author's findings were surprising: Heavy machinery from the closed Detroit plant would be trucked to Mexico—plus automobile parts factories in other nations—to perform the same functions as before, while Detroit laborers drew unemployment checks from the state of Michigan and perhaps the U.S. government. When Clemens saw the machinery at work in Aguascalientes, Mexico, he felt the bitter irony of watching the machinery from the Budd plant—which had been located between two Chrysler automotive factories in Detroit—stamping parts in a foreign nation for none other than Chrysler's Dodge Journey line. Throughout the narrative, the author proves to be a keen, tireless observer, and he provides vivid portrayals of the many recurring characters from the dismantling crew, many of them skilled itinerants.

On-the-ground, compelling stories about the decline of an American city and industry due to corporate greed.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2010
Born and raised in Detroit, Clemens has witnessed firsthand the decline and death of manufacturing in that city. So when he pondered writing about the decline of the American working class, he figured a good place to start was the closing of Budd Detroit Automotive Plant, built in 1919 and employing 10,000 workers at its peak. He captures the sights, sounds, emotions, and economics of closing the plant, which made the roofs, doors, and other body parts of cars, trucks, and sports utility vehicles, offering an intimate portrait of what happens to people and a manufacturing town when the doors are closed. Clemens details the nuts and bolts, including how machinery is disassembled and shipped for reassembly in Mexico and elsewhere, as well as the human element of union reps fighting for worker benefits and former workers pondering a grim future. Clemens looks beyond the dire statistics of tens to hundreds of thousands of plant closings each year to portray the individuals involved and the loss of jobs and social bearings in the community.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)