When I think about who I am, a few obvious identity markers pop up: my gender, my race, my age, the stuff that’s quickly visible to others. But the real foundation of who I am sits on something that’s not obvious at first but permeates everything about me: I’m from Wisconsin.
I didn’t grow up with civic pride for Wisconsin. The state was just a background fact of my life. Now I observe people from other backgrounds showing such pride in where they’re from, staunchly defending it from the encroachment of monoculture or imperialism — I wonder what about Wisconsin I’d defend on the world stage.
It’s a tough question to answer in general, but especially in this moment. I’ve spent the past three years living near my hometown in central Wisconsin after nearly two decades of living in other cities and states. I haven’t been happy here. I get sad when I think about what Wisconsin means to me right now. Returning to my rural roots means I’m now surrounded by aging boomers who voted for Trump, who spew outright bigotry about immigrants, who look at me weird because I once dared to leave this place, who desperately want for nothing to change — including their own lot in life, because they don’t believe they deserve better and they don’t know who they are without their struggle.
And, yet, this place is somehow part of me.
I didn’t think of myself as “from Wisconsin” for the first 25 years of my life. I was born and raised in a rural, central-Wisconsin town just south of the Fox Valley, and my extended family all lived in that same town. My mom and dad had met in high school in that town, my mom and stepdad worked at a factory there, my cousins and I attended elementary school there, we celebrated Christmas at my grandparents’ house on the edge of town. In fourth grade, my best friend’s family moved to a different town, and I was crushed because we’d never see each other again. They moved 27 miles away.
Wisconsin culture isn’t legible to most people outside of the state. There are just 6 million of us here, and most of us keep to ourselves and never leave. Wisconsin culture isn’t shipped the way many other states’ cultures are — California and New York are widely exported through entertainment and media. The Southeast and Texas have deep historical significance we study in school. Folks from the South and Northeast are immediately outed by their accents. The Mountain West, even though its miniscule population is often dismissed, shoulders the cowboy mystique that undergirds American individualism. The Southwest is associated with Native nations that influence its signature motifs. Wisconsin isn’t unique among low-population states that most Americans can’t find on a map; it’s not that easy for folks outside of the state to name exactly what makes Wisconsin, Wisconsin.
But my state stands out among other small states in a few things that keep it in the national consciousness: our small-market championship NFL team, our Big-10 university and our enduring political significance.
Green Bay Packers
Growing up, I had no idea Green Bay was a tiny city. The Green Bay Packers loom large everywhere in Wisconsin, of course. But they also have an unusual nationwide following — sitting side-by-side in lists with the Cowboys, Steelers and Patriots, all hailing from way more populated regions.
Growing up, I wore Brett Favre jerseys on Packer game days and celebrated the Super Bowl XXXI win, despite not caring about football one bit and never watching the games. My grandma had an entire spare room decked out in Packers memorabilia, including a framed certificate declaring her ownership of what she referred to as “a piece of Lambeau Field,” which was a few shares of stock in our community-owned team.
University of Wisconsin
Education is one place Wisconsin punches way above its weight. Though we’re a middling No. 21 in the nation for population and No. 26 for income, Wisconsin ranks No. 7 in K-12 education and No. 10 in higher education.
I attended (but didn’t graduate from) the school that everyone else calls the University of Wisconsin, but to those of us in the state, it’s UW-Madison. (Because every college in our public university system is a “University of Wisconsin”; I still can’t make sense of state systems that don’t work this way.) I didn’t choose it because I was seeking a particular quality of education; I chose it because I wanted to live in Madison.
Only after barely getting accepted into the most competitive school in our state did I learn just how prestigious it is — and not only to Wisconsinites. UW-Madison is a public research institution and a NCAA Division 1 school, which means it does a lot more than teach communications to undergrads. Wikipedia says the school claims 20 Nobel laureates and 41 Pulitzer Prize winners and a slew of Fulbright Scholars and MacArthur Fellows. In sports, it competes in the Big Ten Conference, has won 31 national championships and produced dozens of Olympic medalists.
While I was living in Florida, I told a friend with a Ph.D. that I’d gone to UW-Madison and dropped out, and he was aghast. To have the opportunity to attend that school and give it up?! But it didn’t feel that way to me. I chose the UW system because my social class fed me into the public university pipeline, and I chose Madison because the city is the only place in Wisconsin where I feel like I belong.
Madison and Milwaukee
Wisconsin has two sorta real cities: Milwaukee and Madison. Milwaukee is an industrial and economic center, a mini-Chicago a couple hours further up the Lake Michigan shore. (Don’t come for me, Milwaukeeans, for comparing you to Chicago. I’m not wrong.)
A metro area of 1.3 million people, Milwaukee is a city most outsiders know from Wayne’s World and not much else. (Maybe the Bucks, now that they’re good? Even Wisconsinites weren’t Bucks fans when I was young.)
To rural Wisconsinites, Milwaukee is the epitome of a big, scary city that they tend to disown. Actually, its crime rate is pretty typical of comparable cities; but folks who never leave small towns don’t know what that means. They just see a lot of traffic and a lot of non-white faces, and they get scared. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that we live in one of the most segregated states in the nation — 59% of Wisconsin’s Black people live in Milwaukee County, a total of 90% when you include its neighboring counties and Madison. That leaves a lot of land we rural folks can travel without ever seeing a Black face.
Even though I grew up among these folks in the conservative rural center of the state, the place in Wisconsin I most identify as “home” is Madison — the liberal enclave conservatives here refer to as “77 square miles surrounded by reality.” That’s a little rude, but it’s not inaccurate…
Madison is a city, so it produces economic value, of course, but unlike Milwaukee, the city’s main allure isn’t work opportunities. What Madison holds for those of us weirdos raised elsewhere in the state is the possibility of becoming. You go to Madison to attend college, or work in politics or government, or simply to suspend your adolescence well into middle age while you try your hand at being a sound engineer, videographer, muralist, poet or stand-up comedian.
Madison is the place young Wisconsin weirdos go to do all the things our rural communities told us we could never do. To be all the things they never allowed us to be. Like a gay, autistic, atheist, child-free author (hi!).
And the rest
My experience of Wisconsin is specifically rural and working class, which isn’t all the state is. 22% of our population lives in urban and suburban Milwaukee, another 7.5% in and around Madison, and the culture of those cities seeps into the rest of the state — albeit slowly and against great resistance.
But, that leaves more than 70% of Wisconsinites living in small cities and rural areas.
The majority of the Wisconsin experience is existing in places no one has ever heard of and doing things no one will ever acknowledge.
We’re a state you almost never have to drive through or even fly over. Concert tours tend to skip us. Major films rarely shoot here. Our tourist attraction is… the woods. Wisconsin isn’t on many bucket lists.
Those are my roots.
This is why my people are taught to embrace strife. To resist change. To fear difference. There’s an inbred nihilism here, an understanding that nothing we do matters. And yet, a desperate striving to make meaning wherever possible. For most of the people around me, that means clinging to tradition, savoring the tiniest claims to power, elbowing out any influence that questions those traditions or that power.
Wisconsin politics
Compare Wisconsin’s rural-to-city ratio to neighboring Illinois, where 74% of residents live in the Chicago metro area; or Minnesota, where 63% of residents live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
That’s what makes our state a contradictory purple mass in contrast with our seemingly comparable neighbors. Something like 75% of Madisonians and 68% of Milwaukeeans are Democrats, but those blue dots are too small to carry the state like Minneapolis and Chicago carry theirs.
Some combination of geniality and historical union membership convinces rural Wisconsinites to vote for Democrats seemingly at random. We’re not just a purple state on the presidential election map every four years; living in the state is truly a mixed bag politically.
Our legislature has been in the hands of Republicans since the post-2010 gerrymandering sweep, but it’s been stymied by a Democratic governor for the past seven years. Our current U.S. senators are Ron Johnson, an old businessman swept in by the Tea Party movement; and Tammy Baldwin, a Madison liberal, Smith graduate and our country’s first openly gay senator.
Wisconsin is known for both Joe McCarthy, the leader of the 1950s Red Scare; and Bob LaFollete, a socialist governor, U.S. senator and breakout third-party candidate in the 1924 presidential election. We’re the only state in the upper Midwest that hasn’t legalized cannabis. The most recent additions to our state supreme court have been liberal women from Milwaukee and Madison who won by respective margins of 11% and 20%. It surprised no one that both Tammy Baldwin and Donald Trump won the state in 2024.
Beer and cheese
I truly have nothing to say about beer or cheese. But I know this is what Wisconsin means to most people outside of the state.
That’s on us, I guess. Our MLB team is called the Brewers, and our NFL fans wear foam hats that look like cheese.
Being so embedded in this Wisconsinness all my life, I don’t see it as all that notable. I grew up eating dinner at taverns, because that’s where the best Wisconsin food is — especially fish fries, which take over the menu every Friday night. I didn’t realize how much we normalize drinking here until I moved away. I was proud of that culture when I was young; now I’ve been sober for 11 years, and I’m glad I escaped it.
I’m still surprised when people have become full adults and have never seen a cheese curd (neither fried nor squeaky) — but it’s not like our economy runs on cheese shops. (Now that I’m thinking about it, though, I did go to high school down the road from a cheese factory, so…)
Contrary to our simplistic reputation, though, Wisconsin is an oddly diverse state. Some glaciers gracing our region some millennia ago left us a landscape dotted with lakes, mountains, forests, prairie, farmland, rivers, a delightful hand-shaped plot of land bordering two Great Lakes.
And, while we are about as white as we’re perceived (about 80%), Wisconsin is home to strong Native, Asian, Hispanic, Latino and Black populations. I’m really proud that our education standards require both Native American and Asian history, which adds rich texture to the “Wisconsin” identity.
Forward!
When I decided to write about being from Wisconsin, I thought I’d have very little to say. It’s not an identity people often ask about, so I don’t even know what might interest you.
But I feel Wisconsin so deeply.
I’ve worked for weeks on this essay, and even though I’ve pulled a ton out, it’s still the longest in this series so far. Many of the pieces I’ve left out will fit into essays about other parts of my identity — because my Wisconsinness permeates so much of who I am, what I’ve done and how I’ve done it.
It’s tough for me to be proud of my home state right now — but I continue to have hope. Democrats and socialists gained a lot of ground in our legislature two years ago, and they’re poised to take control after this year’s election. Plus, a lot about how we function is already worthy of pride: our education system, environmental conservation and public health care are pretty cool. I’m really proud of the work ethic I learned here. I love our accent (no it’s not the one you’re thinking of).
I’m glad my nieces and nephews get to travel outside of the state, and I hope they chase curiosity and opportunity wherever it takes them when they’re older — but I’m also glad they get to grow up here like I did. Wisconsin breeds smart, scrappy people with a lot of grit, and I’m proud they’ll take that with them.
I guess I found some pride in the end! My feelings about this place are definitely complicated. But it’ll always be my home, no matter where I’m living. And those contradictions are what make Wisconsin what it is, after all.
Your turn!
Where are you from? Do you identify strongly with any one place, or a lot of them? What do you love about your roots? What do you not love about them? What are the myths people believe about where you’re from? What’s something you wish more people knew about where you’re from?