If blame, shame and ultimately death are the fruits of the Law, the people of Appalachia have been on the receiving end of a lot of Law-laced contempt from much of the rest of U.S. In Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Demon Copperhead, the main character Demon is startled one day when he realizes exactly how his fellow Americans see him. In one memorable passage, Demon lists off all the insults thrown at them: “Hillbilly, rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.”
Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize winning book is, however, a gracious word to and about her fellow Appalachians and, by extension, to most of rural Americans who she says are either scorned by or invisible to the rest of us. Often when we think or talk about grace, we think of something that is warm, pleasant, happy, even sweet. Not always. Grace has a side to it that is shocking, even violent (see: Flannery O’Connor). So it should come as no surprise that Kingsolver’s grace for her people has another side to it also. She’s angry. Moreover, she recognizes the anger of the invisible people of Appalachia and rural American. In an interview with the Guardian, Kingsolver remarked,
I understand why rural people are so mad they want to blow up the system. That contempt of urban culture for half the country. I feel like I’m an ambassador between these worlds, trying to explain that if you want to have a conversation you don’t start it with the words, “You idiot.”
Kingsolver was raised in the Kentucky part of Appalachia, and now lives in southwestern Virginia — also part of the region that extends from Northern Georgia into Pennsylvania. It wasn’t until Kingsolver left for college (one of the very few from her high school did so ) that she realized that she was “a hillbilly.” Fellow students at her University would ask her to talk because they found here accent and syntax so comical.
This wasn’t good-natured fun. Kingsolver has said that one of the reasons it took her so long to write a novel set in her native Appalachia is that she had “internalized” the region’s shame. When she finally did decide to write about her homeland Kingsolver, Charles Dickens became a special conduit of grace. She found in his classic work, David Copperfield, a way and “a template” for writing about a place and people that she was pretty sure no one would be interested in.
Kingsolver extends grace to her kinfolk, making them vivid, smart and resourceful against all sorts of odds and assaults that have stretched over many generations.
She describes a region that has been an exploited colony within the larger political-economy of America. There have been a succession of extractive enterprises that took wealth from the region but left the land and people damaged. First, it was timber, then coal, then tobacco. And when nothing much was left, the region — where many had chronic health issues from work — became a prime target of Purdue Pharma. The opioid epidemic is the backdrop of Demon Cooperhead. (Meanwhile, the Sackler family, enriched by the Purdue company, is trying hard with the help of lots of high-priced lawyers to avoid any personal responsibility or consequences for their exploitation of the region and its people.)
In a lengthier interview with the New York Times, Kingsolver noted the long history of Americans being urged, by both governmental policy and cultural influences, to think of urban areas as more desirable than rural ones. Cartoons of a “hillbilly” often depict a person with a fishing pole in one hand and a bottle of moonshine in the other. What urbanites tended to see as a yokel was someone who participated in a subsistence economy, of barter and exchange, where people often didn’t pay taxes because they weren’t part of a cash economy. More urban dwellers are more economically productive, cost less per capita in governmental resources, and generate tax income. Beneath the official and unofficial urbanization policies, it’s not difficult to infer that city people are the ones who matter, the people who are real.
Kingsolver also noted that virtually all media and culture is made in and comes from urban America. The people of rural America rarely see themselves in what comes over the TV or in MSM news or movies. From my spot in rural America, northeastern Oregon, I get it. When I turn on OPB, that is, Oregon Public Broadcasting, it is like hearing from another planet.
Demon Copperhead is a hard story with lots of terrible moments. But in the end it is a work of grace, both because her characters experience some grace, but also because of the compassionate gaze of Kingsolver herself. Though many see Appalachia as a backwards, unredeemable flyover zone, Kingsolver seeks redemption. While some may write it off, Kingsolver imputes to their lives a dignity that exceeds paternalism. And if Americans has no time for those without an education or upwardly mobile career prospects, Kingsolver believes “hillbilly” lives have worth — not according to cultural values, but simply because, as Jesus said to many of the outcast and despised that sought him, “You too are a child of God.”
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One response to “Grace for the Hillbilly”
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Great article.
Maybe, I’m missing the point of the article here, but please fix the spelling errors. Sometimes the LAW is useful.