Being Appalachian is different from being Southern. The people in Appalachia live, love, and sometimes thrive in the midst of adverse generational poverty. As a person, I saw it in my own family. As an educator and social services provider for youth aging out of foster care, I fought the dark side of poverty, abuse, and drug addiction and its effect on our children. Life exists here on its own terms, part of the wider world, but not quite interactive with it. Barbara Kingsolver explores it in a blockbuster novel, Demon Copperhead.
Demon Copperhead just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The award is well deserved. It is the first novel about Appalachia to be awarded the prize in sixty-five years. The book is a painful exploration of Appalachia today, exposing much of the dark side of life here now, as well as its beauty. It is the story of a young man from birth through his childhood, reminiscent of the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield, and named to imitate the novel. Many of the characters’ names are intertwined with the Dickens novel, but the life experiences, while somewhat similar in plot, are pure Southern Appalachian. In this case, the novel is set in Kentucky, on the border of Tennessee, a former coal mining community.
The main character is Damon, a young man named after a father that died before his birth. He grows up with a mother that is emotionally needy. She works at Walmart but is taken care of by her own child. Damon is Melungeon. Dark skinned with light green eyes and copper hair, hence his nickname, Demon Copperhead.
Through one tragedy after another, Damon ends up in the horrors of foster care. I can assure those who are not familiar with foster care that his experiences are realistic. It is a system that is broken, more concerned about its own existence than that of the children it is said to serve. Instead, serving itself, never really recognizing its own evil enough to reform for the sake of the kids.
Despite the hardships Damon is faced with, he manages to make his own way through the system. His experience is reflective of the grit I saw in the children in the foster care system. These children seek love but often in unhealthy ways, fearing the stability they so desperately need, viewing life as one temporary placement after another. Many end up homeless, on the streets suffering from emotional issues that the system caused. It is a sick reflection of our society that we choose this for the neediest of children. Barbara Kingsolver tells the truths of this story well through the experiences of Damon.
Damon eventually finds some family. Through that connection, he is placed in a home where he has some positive experiences. He becomes the middle school football star in his community. Like other places in the south, football in Appalachia is THE sport. Its stars are our heroes. Damon feels that kind of stardom for a few years until the worst scourge of Appalachia become part of his life. He begins a relationship with pharmaceutical drugs that ease his physical and emotional pain. That, too, is real in Appalachia. My area has the largest number of overdose deaths in the country. It is increasing every year. Our drugs of choice are fentanyl and opioids. Many are prescribed by the medical community. Again, Kingsolver tells this part of the Appalachian story well.
