Individual expresses pain, encountering American extremists from the Midwest (5)
I believe the answer is:
iowan
'the midwest' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I don't understand how one could define the other.
'individual expresses pain encountering american extremists' is the wordplay.
'individual expresses pain' becomes 'iow' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'encountering' says to put letters next to each other.
'extremists' means to remove the middle letters (letters on the extreme ends of the word).
'american' with its centre taken out is 'an'.
'iow'+'an'='IOWAN'
'from' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for iowan that I've seen before include "Statesman" , "Midwesterner" , "From Des Moines, say?" , "From one US state" , "US resident" .)