This is not a popular opinion but as someone who hails from the underrepresented region Kingsolver claims to be an ambassador for, I find her work repulsive.
As you know, a few months ago, Barbara Kingsolver won the Pulitzer Prize—-a supposed superlative for innovation and quality in literature—-for her most recent novel “Demon Copperhead.” In addition to being blatantly patterned on an established book, “Copperhead” also showers its audience with more backwoods backhanding than a CMT reality show.
Despite the fact rampant drug use is a national epidemic from LA to NYC, my area is once again cast as the epicenter of addition with no other substance thrown in, because that’s what the coastal ivory towers want to believe: we’re a gangrenous limb that needs chopped off.
Now entrenched in that circle more than her Appalachian background (which is dubious at best btw,) Barb licked her lips at the thought of volunteering as the redneck whisperer for her upper middle-class friends. The woman can’t even dig back into those Kentucky roots anymore as her embodiment of the titular hilljack and his town sounds like a rural version of Jamie Kennedy doing his Malibu’s Most Wanted schtick…..but it’s supposed to be taken 100% seriously!
This book is as patronizing as Hillbilly Elegy, a book written by a man I’m sure Kingsolver tells herself she despises but when it comes to yellow journalism against flyovers, Fox News and NPR are bedfellows.
While this post sounds like a rant aimed at specifically “Copperhead,” Kingsolver’s other work is just as gross. Her non-fiction book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” was a wealthy woman patting herself on the back for doing “The Poor Challenge.” It served as a prototype for other rich grifters cosplaying as self-sufficient homesteaders such as Pioneer Woman (who is a USC-educated daughter of a surgeon while we’re at it.)
Her most famous work “Poisonwood Bible” was based on her parents’ background as Christian missionaries, people who also feel obligated to speak for those they see as primitive, so bad-faith interventions are in her blood.
I’m from as rural Appalachia as you can get. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. I am a product of those broken ghost towns and virtually non-existent school systems she enlightens Oprah’s Book Club readers about. When I pulled myself up by my bootstraps as we’re so often told to do and wrote my own book based in the same region from an actual insider’s perspective, my voice didn’t have a chance to be treated as “important” as this pretentious out-of-touch nonsense.
by SirJosephGrizzly
2 Comments
“Poisonwood” is an explicit renunciation of domineering, abusive Christian missionaries and the structural failures of a system in which they “have to” “step in” and “save” “backwards” people. Whether Kingsolver succeeds at this is a matter of judgment, but there’s no question that she’s repudiating the Prices’ actions, frequently very heavy-handedly. I’m confused by its inclusion in your post.
What is your book?