By Jessica Miller
Barbara Kingsolver dedicates her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Demon Copperhead to survivors of the opioid crisis and foster care. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the book is dedicated to me: I am an Appalachian who was put in foster care thanks to, in part, my father's opioid addiction.
Reading the novel, I felt vindicated and relieved that the author voiced all the things I want to explain to people who don't understand where I come from. Transforming Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield and its explorations of institutional poverty in Victorian England into a saga set in the beginning days of Appalachia's opioid epidemic, Kingsolver compassionately shows how exploitative industries—like logging and coal mining, big-box retailers like Walmart, and pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma—have taken advantage of Appalachia for the sake of profit. The resulting opioid epidemic and poverty in the region have led to a child welfare crisis: Kentucky, my home state, had 8,863 youth in care in 2022, up 27 percent from 2012.
In the novel, the main character, Demon, is put into foster care because of his mother's addiction. His foster parents expect him to "pay his way"—either using his foster care stipend as family income or forcing him to work on farms and junkyards. In one house, he suffers from nicotine poisoning when he is forced to harvest tobacco crops. In another, a barely fed Demon is made to sleep on an undersized air mattress in a dirty laundry room. . . . Ultimately, Demon suffers from addiction himself. . . . Kingsolver discusses not only the myriad ways people become addicted to opioids but also what opioids can do to a person—from constipation to prostitution.
Demon laments that "God made us the butt of the joke universe," but this is a situation both Demon and Appalachian people at large contend with through humor of our own. . . . That's also part of the reason, I think, Kingsolver emphasizes the colorful nicknames we rednecks end up calling each other: They're life-affirming. Hotmail Cox, Rat Hole, Cow Pen, and Snotty Nose are some nicknames from my family and friends. Kingsolver similarly bestows goofy nicknames on her characters, such as Fast Forward and Maggot. We may be a gaggle of people largely invisible to the outside world, but our nicknames assert that we are someone to our community, even if we—and our names—don't make much sense to anyone but ourselves.
It was a treat to read . . . because the adequate representation of Appalachian people is hard to come by. Appalachian people are portrayed as being crazy, stupid, and dangerous. Being the "dog of America," as Kingsolver puts it, has real consequences: Appalachian communities have been continually exploited and discriminated against. Once, while I was meeting a board member for one of my scholarships, he told me an unfunny joke about incest in Eastern Kentucky [which has no higher prevalance of reported incest than the rest of the nation]. It was frightening to know that I could have been denied a scholarship I desperately needed just because he has negative views about the Appalachian end of the state.
Dickens didn't write David Copperfield with Victorian England's most underprivileged audience in mind; they probably couldn't afford to buy the novel, even if they were literate and had enough free time to read it. . . . The wisdom of the book isn't meant for me. Many of the realities Kingsolver lays bare are ones I've already lived through. . . . Its power lies in Kingsolver's impressive ability to craft Demon's realistic interior and share it with readers who wouldn't otherwise have his firsthand experience.
My favorite part of the book is when Demon muses, at his biological mother's funeral, that people tend to withhold sympathy from those who are struggling in an attempt to build "a wall to keep out the bad luck." It can be difficult for people to recognize that their socioeconomic comfort is basically just a product of "luck"—the cards they were dealt at birth. Instead of acknowledging that the house always wins and that the game is always rigged, they imagine that they're winning the game of life by their own virtue and skill, or at least that the difference between winners and losers is fundamental and justifiable. Demon Copperhead allows readers to see a side of the wall they otherwise might not. More than that, it urges readers to tear down that wall, to stop "building the wall with [themselves] still on the lucky side." For 550 wild and wonderful pages, Demon's Western Virginian reality is your reality.
 |
| Barbara Kingsolver |
Reading the novel, I felt vindicated and relieved that the author voiced all the things I want to explain to people who don't understand where I come from. Transforming Charles Dickens's novel David Copperfield and its explorations of institutional poverty in Victorian England into a saga set in the beginning days of Appalachia's opioid epidemic, Kingsolver compassionately shows how exploitative industries—like logging and coal mining, big-box retailers like Walmart, and pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma—have taken advantage of Appalachia for the sake of profit. The resulting opioid epidemic and poverty in the region have led to a child welfare crisis: Kentucky, my home state, had 8,863 youth in care in 2022, up 27 percent from 2012.
In the novel, the main character, Demon, is put into foster care because of his mother's addiction. His foster parents expect him to "pay his way"—either using his foster care stipend as family income or forcing him to work on farms and junkyards. In one house, he suffers from nicotine poisoning when he is forced to harvest tobacco crops. In another, a barely fed Demon is made to sleep on an undersized air mattress in a dirty laundry room. . . . Ultimately, Demon suffers from addiction himself. . . . Kingsolver discusses not only the myriad ways people become addicted to opioids but also what opioids can do to a person—from constipation to prostitution.
Demon laments that "God made us the butt of the joke universe," but this is a situation both Demon and Appalachian people at large contend with through humor of our own. . . . That's also part of the reason, I think, Kingsolver emphasizes the colorful nicknames we rednecks end up calling each other: They're life-affirming. Hotmail Cox, Rat Hole, Cow Pen, and Snotty Nose are some nicknames from my family and friends. Kingsolver similarly bestows goofy nicknames on her characters, such as Fast Forward and Maggot. We may be a gaggle of people largely invisible to the outside world, but our nicknames assert that we are someone to our community, even if we—and our names—don't make much sense to anyone but ourselves.
It was a treat to read . . . because the adequate representation of Appalachian people is hard to come by. Appalachian people are portrayed as being crazy, stupid, and dangerous. Being the "dog of America," as Kingsolver puts it, has real consequences: Appalachian communities have been continually exploited and discriminated against. Once, while I was meeting a board member for one of my scholarships, he told me an unfunny joke about incest in Eastern Kentucky [which has no higher prevalance of reported incest than the rest of the nation]. It was frightening to know that I could have been denied a scholarship I desperately needed just because he has negative views about the Appalachian end of the state.
Dickens didn't write David Copperfield with Victorian England's most underprivileged audience in mind; they probably couldn't afford to buy the novel, even if they were literate and had enough free time to read it. . . . The wisdom of the book isn't meant for me. Many of the realities Kingsolver lays bare are ones I've already lived through. . . . Its power lies in Kingsolver's impressive ability to craft Demon's realistic interior and share it with readers who wouldn't otherwise have his firsthand experience.
My favorite part of the book is when Demon muses, at his biological mother's funeral, that people tend to withhold sympathy from those who are struggling in an attempt to build "a wall to keep out the bad luck." It can be difficult for people to recognize that their socioeconomic comfort is basically just a product of "luck"—the cards they were dealt at birth. Instead of acknowledging that the house always wins and that the game is always rigged, they imagine that they're winning the game of life by their own virtue and skill, or at least that the difference between winners and losers is fundamental and justifiable. Demon Copperhead allows readers to see a side of the wall they otherwise might not. More than that, it urges readers to tear down that wall, to stop "building the wall with [themselves] still on the lucky side." For 550 wild and wonderful pages, Demon's Western Virginian reality is your reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment