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That's gskinnovation.com.

0:34

From New York Times Opinion, this is

0:36

The Ezra Klein Show. So in 2023, the

0:39

Pulitzer Prize for

0:44

fiction was won by

0:48

two novels,

0:58

Trust by Hernan Diaz and

1:00

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

1:03

And Kingsolver, I think, is a literary legend

1:05

in her own time. She wrote The Bean Trees.

1:08

She wrote The Poisonwood Bible.

1:10

She has won all kinds of prizes.

1:12

But I think it's fair to say Demon Copperhead is a kind of

1:14

masterpiece. And it's

1:16

a kind of masterpiece she was trying

1:18

to create. She set out to write,

1:21

as she tells me in this conversation, she

1:23

was setting out to write the great novel of Appalachia.

1:26

And I think she did.

1:28

And this is a novel that is

1:30

following loosely in the structure

1:32

of David Copperfield by Dickens. It's

1:35

a novel set a little bit back in time,

1:37

I think, that so much of our thinking now about

1:40

this is political and places that go for Trump and

1:42

places that don't go for Trump. But the novel is set

1:44

in the 90s and in the 2000s, so a little

1:47

bit before some of the current

1:49

economic and political cleavages

1:51

attain, at least the form we know

1:53

them in. And it's a beautiful book.

1:56

It's a wrenching book. It's a book that I routinely

1:58

had to stop reading.

2:00

because I was so fused with

2:02

the character, and so fused

2:04

with the story...

2:07

that when I could see something bad coming, I just

2:09

couldn't handle it before bed. I just couldn't go through

2:11

that with the main character. So, I mean,

2:13

that, I think, is about as much as you can say for fiction,

2:16

when it almost feels more real than the life you're living. So,

2:19

I was grateful she was willing to come on the show and talk

2:21

a bit about her life, how she came to writing the novel,

2:23

the sort of experiences she brought to it, and

2:25

the kind of argument she's trying to

2:27

have through it. As

2:30

always, my email is rickleinshow at nytimes.com.

2:37

Barbara Kingsolver, welcome to the show.

2:39

Thank you for having me. So, you've said

2:42

that you're Appalachian through and through. What

2:44

does that mean to you? I'm

2:46

Appalachian. And it's

2:48

a funny thing. It's a marker. Appalachian

2:51

means you say, I live in Appalachia.

2:54

It's a region that's a little hard to pin

2:56

down on a map because it includes

2:59

parts of a lot of states, starting

3:02

from North Georgia, Eastern

3:04

Tennessee, Western North Carolina

3:06

and Virginia, up into the coal

3:08

country of Kentucky and West Virginia, and

3:11

then up into sort of the ridge country of Pennsylvania.

3:14

So, that sounds complicated, but to

3:16

us, it is a whole

3:19

place. We're more connected

3:21

with each other, culturally

3:23

and geographically, than we are with the

3:25

far ends of our own state. It's

3:28

a place and it's a mindset. We are connected

3:31

by our mountains, our

3:33

economies, and the fact

3:35

that for a couple of centuries, we

3:38

have been treated almost like an

3:40

internal colony of the

3:42

U.S. We have suffered the

3:45

exploitation of extractive

3:47

industries, managed by

3:50

and profited from outside companies

3:53

that come in and take what they can and leave

3:55

a mess. So, it started out

3:57

with the timber industry, then it went to the

3:59

coal industry,

3:59

was coal and then

4:02

it was tobacco. And now the

4:04

latest car in this coal train

4:06

of exploitations has been

4:08

the opioid epidemic, which was

4:11

again, quite deliberately

4:13

perpetrated on us as

4:15

a vulnerable population.

4:18

We're gonna come back very much to the opioid epidemic.

4:20

But before we do, I wanna talk a bit about

4:23

just your geographic history because you grew

4:25

up in Kentucky, but then moved to the Congo. Tell

4:28

me a bit about the various places you've lived

4:30

and why and what it was like coming

4:32

back then later in life.

4:35

Okay, I grew up in the

4:37

Eastern part of Kentucky, sort of the foothills

4:39

of Appalachia. And that

4:42

was really my home for

4:44

my whole sort of schooling years

4:46

up until I was 18 and left. Because

4:49

of sort of a very unusual history,

4:52

my dad was a

4:55

physician who was dedicated to

4:57

serving, well, he was from poverty. He was the first

4:59

person in his family to go to

5:01

get higher education. And he was determined

5:04

after he became a doctor to serve

5:07

people who really needed a doctor.

5:10

And so for most of that time, that meant the

5:13

rural parts of Kentucky, where he'd grown

5:15

up, one of the more economically

5:17

sort of depressed parts of the US. But

5:20

from time to time, he would get invitations from

5:22

his colleagues to go to places where people needed

5:25

a physician even more. And so that

5:27

took us to the Congo, to

5:29

rural Congo for about a year of my life.

5:32

I call it the what I did instead of second

5:34

grade. And a few other

5:37

places, once a stint in the Caribbean.

5:39

So those were kind of

5:41

adventures in my childhood,

5:44

but we always came back to Kentucky.

5:46

So I still consider

5:48

myself a Kentuckian, but I

5:50

was the one among my classmates who

5:53

had lived on another continent.

5:55

I mean, most of my classmates never

5:57

left the county. So it did sort

5:59

of... of distinguish me. I was

6:02

a person who had seen the world.

6:04

And maybe because of that, I

6:06

had a sense of the world and then I wanted

6:08

to see it on my own terms. So when

6:11

I was 18, I went to

6:13

college in the exotic faraway

6:16

land of Indiana. And I

6:18

was lucky to do it. Very

6:20

few of us in

6:23

Nicholas County High School ever went

6:25

to college. That was a really rare thing.

6:27

Nobody in my school was telling me you

6:30

need to take these things called SATs.

6:32

Nobody was advising me. I just kind of clogged

6:35

my way into a scholarship and

6:37

I got to Indiana, DePaul

6:40

University, and to my amazement

6:43

there, I discovered I was

6:45

a hillbilly. I never

6:48

thought of myself as a backward, coming

6:50

from a backward place, but oh

6:52

my goodness, I needed only to cross

6:55

the river into Indiana to discover what

6:58

ignorant backward folk we were

7:00

from Kentucky. And people laughed

7:02

at my accent. Actually, I was a

7:04

curiosity on campus. People

7:07

I didn't know would come over to me in the

7:09

dining hall and say,

7:11

say this.

7:12

Say this, well, what's this? They wanted

7:14

to hear me say syrup and

7:17

mayonnaise and these other words that they

7:19

thought were hilariously charming.

7:21

And so I set about slowly,

7:24

not

7:24

even that intentionally,

7:26

altering my persona in the world,

7:29

erasing my Kentuckian

7:33

affect just so that people would

7:35

hear my words instead of making

7:37

fun of them. And so now I've

7:40

tried to become this imaginary

7:42

cosmopolitan person. I mean,

7:45

I always wrote. I just didn't think that I could

7:47

be a writer, but that was an important

7:49

and really dark phase

7:52

of my own writing. I tried to write

7:54

from that place of this imaginary

7:57

cosmopolitan Barbara, and

7:59

it was just the most

9:59

like the desert wanted me there.

10:03

I missed towering green trees

10:05

and mossy creeks and the

10:08

sound of crickets at night and birds in the morning.

10:10

It just was, it never felt right.

10:13

And I ached to come home, whatever

10:16

home was. Then after grad school,

10:18

I began working as a freelance writer

10:20

and I was working as a journalist. And so I learned

10:22

a lot about the territory. And

10:24

I was trying to write a

10:26

southwestern novel.

10:29

And then I had

10:31

this epiphany. Someone actually

10:33

gave me

10:34

Bobby Ann Mason's short story

10:36

collection, Shiloh and Other Stories, which

10:39

was a very big book that year in the

10:42

world. She's from Kentucky. That

10:44

book broke out that year with a

10:46

lot of praise from the American

10:48

literati.

10:50

And I read it and I was amazed because it

10:52

was people who talked like me and

10:54

who worked at Walmart.

10:57

There were cashiers and they did shift work. They

10:59

were working class Kentuckians. And

11:02

the scales fell from my eyes. I understood

11:05

that I had been holding my

11:07

light under a bushel, that my own

11:09

voice could be something

11:12

that people might want to hear. And so then

11:14

I did a deep dive back into these Kentucky

11:17

writers I had known but needed to reread

11:19

with new respect, Wendell Berry,

11:21

Robert Penn Warren, poets, James

11:24

Still, Harriet Arnow. And

11:27

it's not exactly

11:29

a recovery. It's more like a reacquaintance

11:33

with an embracing of my own

11:36

Kentucky voice. And

11:38

I found this voice and

11:41

I named her Taylor Greer and I

11:44

put her in charge of telling this Arizona

11:46

novel. She was a character who came from Kentucky,

11:49

moved to Arizona. She did not have my life.

11:51

It's not autobiographical. But I knew her

11:54

voice and her story and her mannerisms

11:57

and everything. And I put her in Tucson.

11:59

Arizona and she told the story and

12:02

that was the Bean Trees. It was the first fiction I wrote

12:04

that was successful because I had decided

12:07

to own

12:09

myself, my Appalachian background.

12:12

This book has a lot of that dynamic

12:14

to it and one thing that is threaded

12:16

through it is Demon, the narrator,

12:19

balancing the

12:21

pride he feels in the place he comes from and the

12:24

shame he feels or the shame he has been told to feel

12:27

in the place he comes from. And you've

12:29

talked in interviews about having internalized

12:32

the shame of your upbringing

12:34

of where you come from. What is

12:36

that shame?

12:38

Well, this place where I live

12:40

just over the mountains from Kentucky in

12:42

southwestern Virginia is a perfect home. We

12:45

live on a farm and it's just exactly

12:48

where I want to be among people I want to be

12:50

to be with and to claim as

12:53

my own and as my neighbors. So

12:55

here I am as an Appalachian

12:58

writer and it was finally

13:00

with Demon Copperhead that I could tell the

13:02

most

13:04

Appalachian story I've ever told.

13:06

I really, I know this

13:09

probably sounds ridiculous, but

13:11

I wanted to write

13:12

the great Appalachian novel. I

13:15

wanted this novel to hold the entire

13:17

story, the whole background of

13:20

why,

13:21

why it is we are, who

13:23

we are,

13:24

all of the things that people look down

13:26

on, sort of

13:27

how they are not our fault, how they

13:30

were perpetrated against us as

13:33

sort of an economic program

13:35

exploiting us and also

13:38

all of the good stuff that

13:40

we are people made of community, that

13:42

we are the most resourceful Americans

13:45

you're probably going to find anywhere. So

13:47

what is that shame that I had internalized?

13:50

Well, look, it wasn't just in college, it

13:52

was everywhere. Just about every

13:54

time you speak with someone who is

13:56

from outside of

13:57

your region, they make some remarks.

14:00

like, ah, you seem really educated

14:03

for a Kentuckian. Or

14:05

more crudely, ha ha, you're wearing shoes.

14:08

I'm not kidding. Or more subtly,

14:10

are

14:11

there any people there you want to be friends

14:14

with in MAGA country? How

14:17

many people, well-meaning people, have asked

14:19

me, how could I live there in the

14:21

middle of nowhere?

14:24

People, this is my everywhere.

14:26

This is my everything. I live

14:29

on a farm that grows food where water

14:31

comes out of the mountain among

14:34

trees that make oxygen.

14:36

City folks are depending on us for

14:38

a lot of things that they routinely

14:41

discount or

14:44

make fun of. It's been a very

14:46

long program in the

14:48

development of the world that

14:52

economies and governments have urged

14:55

people into the cities, away

14:57

from the countryside, try

15:00

to get land-based

15:02

people

15:03

into the cities because

15:05

there are a lot of reasons, but it boils

15:07

down to this. People in the

15:09

money economy can be taxed.

15:12

People in a land economy

15:15

produce a lot of what they consume

15:17

on the spot. So if you're growing your own

15:19

food and eating it,

15:21

there's no way to pull taxes out of that.

15:24

So I know this sounds really simplified,

15:27

but it is the bottom line. And

15:29

I can point you to points in history

15:32

where this has become overtly

15:34

an issue. The Whiskey Rebellion,

15:36

George Washington marched the whole army

15:39

into Appalachia because

15:42

people were making whiskey and the government

15:44

wanted to tax it. Well, there's no money changing

15:46

hands, so you can't. And

15:48

that was the reason for a war. It

15:51

feels like

15:53

an impossibly simple thing, but if you

15:55

look at all the ways that rural people

15:58

are stigmatized,

15:59

it comes down to their self-sufficiency

16:03

that's being mocked. If you look

16:05

at the cartoon, Hillbilly,

16:08

he's got a fish and pole,

16:10

that's

16:11

food self-sufficiency. He's got

16:13

the jug with the XXX on

16:16

it, that is alcohol

16:18

self-sufficiency, and he's got

16:20

a straw hat on, that's because he's

16:22

a farmer. It's all about what he's

16:25

making and consuming himself. It's

16:27

so insidious, people don't realize

16:29

it, but this long, long-term brainwashing

16:33

has resulted in a widespread notion

16:35

that city people have got

16:37

it. City people are the, you know, sort of the

16:40

advanced form

16:41

of humans, and rural people

16:43

are this sort of, having this provisional

16:45

existence, they just haven't made it

16:48

yet into the real

16:50

life.

16:51

And so, everybody looks down on the

16:53

country people, and the country people sort of absorb

16:56

that. You can't help but

16:58

absorb it. So when I set out

17:01

to write my great Appalachian novel,

17:04

I was paralyzed with self-doubt,

17:06

because, I mean, my starting point was that I

17:08

wanted to write about the opioid epidemic,

17:10

which has become a huge assault

17:12

on our culture, our families, our communities.

17:15

It's devastated so many of the good

17:17

things about this region that

17:20

we value and that we love. And

17:22

so, I wanted to write about these

17:25

kids who've been damaged,

17:27

and this place that's been

17:30

damaged, and it seemed like a really hopelessly

17:33

sad story. Plus, it's about people that

17:35

I didn't feel the outer world

17:38

cared about. And so, I just really, I spent

17:40

a couple of years walking around

17:43

and around this story, trying to figure out how

17:45

to break into that house, because I

17:47

really felt sure nobody wants to read it.

17:50

I think there's so much power in that, and it's something

17:52

I was thinking about a lot during the book. And

17:55

let me try to see if I can hold two things in tension

17:57

here, because everything you say is true.

17:59

I think your point about the

18:01

ways in which people

18:04

from rulers are visually stereotyped,

18:06

having a lot due to self-sufficiency is true. And

18:09

this is something that

18:11

I'll be honest, sometimes

18:13

I think greats on us city dwellers. So

18:15

I come from a people who over

18:17

and over again were driven out of land. I

18:20

come from Jews driven by pogroms

18:22

again and again off of land where they could have been

18:25

self-sufficient and into cities,

18:28

into one city and then into another city and then into

18:30

another city. Part of my family comes

18:32

to America by way of Brazil, another family

18:34

comes by way of Eastern Europe. And

18:38

there has always been this tension,

18:40

I think broadly, particularly

18:42

afflicts Jews, the

18:44

sort of rootless cosmopolitan

18:46

stereotype. But then there's also

18:49

this side

18:51

thread in

18:52

America. I won't speak for it in other

18:54

countries of, oh, the city

18:56

dwellers aren't real Americans. They're not

18:58

on the land. What they do isn't real work. I

19:01

remember George W. Bush winning the election in 2004. Oh,

19:04

Democrats have lost the heartland.

19:06

There's a part of this country that is its real heart. And

19:08

the other parts, they're

19:10

not real. You're not a real American.

19:12

You're something else. I think all the

19:14

contempt you talk about is real. And

19:17

yet it also does in this strange way go

19:19

the other way. And maybe that is a kind

19:22

of cliche, a kind of pat

19:25

on the back where your economy is

19:27

destroyed. But, oh, you're a real American.

19:30

But there is something I always think about when I hear this, that it has

19:32

never felt to me that the contempt actually only goes one

19:34

way. As a Jewish urbanite,

19:37

I have definitely often felt that it is very

19:39

easy for

19:40

people in all parts of American politics,

19:42

but I've mostly heard it on the right, to talk

19:44

about cities and talk about people like

19:46

me and with my history as if they

19:49

are completely alien to this place.

19:52

You're absolutely right. It's a dialectic,

19:54

it's an antagonism. It's like there's

19:56

no point in asking who started this

19:59

because it's

19:59

a really, really old antagonism.

20:03

And I was just kind of talking about a

20:05

larger framework of development

20:08

that has

20:09

really tried to get people off of the

20:11

land. But here we are

20:13

in the middle of it with a lot

20:16

of rock throwing in both directions. And it's

20:18

become

20:19

devastating for American politics

20:22

because rural people who

20:24

are less frequently called

20:26

Heartland as called flyover country,

20:29

it's a sort of a self defense saying, well,

20:32

they hate us, we hate them back. And

20:35

let's talk about kind of who

20:38

gets seen and who gets to tell

20:40

the story in the US. I think that's probably

20:43

what's most critical right now is that all

20:45

of our entertainment, our

20:48

news media,

20:49

it's all made in cities.

20:52

And I think this has left rural people

20:54

feeling so unseen

20:56

and their

20:58

problems so trivialized

21:00

or ignored that they've

21:03

gotten vulnerable to a damaged

21:05

extent so that they're ready to vote for

21:07

the person who comes along and says, look,

21:10

I see you and I'm gonna blow up the

21:12

system. Okay, not the

21:14

right answer, not the right guy, but

21:16

I understand why so many

21:18

people for the first time felt like for the

21:20

first time in many election cycles,

21:23

somebody was paying attention. And now we've

21:25

got a mess

21:26

because that sort of validated

21:29

this urban notion that those

21:31

people are, they're voting against their own interests,

21:34

they're not well educated, so they can't make good choices,

21:36

so we don't really need to listen to them, so we

21:38

just hate them. So

21:40

it's worse than it's ever been in my life, this

21:43

urban, rural, antipathy

21:46

to the point where conversations are

21:48

really difficult to have because we

21:50

will only take information from people

21:52

we trust, that's just human, that's

21:55

the animal we are. We

21:57

only listen to people that we feel

21:59

like are...

21:59

are on our side and going

22:02

to look out for us. So if you

22:04

open a conversation with you,

22:06

Bonehead,

22:08

then that conversation is

22:10

over. And those are the only conversations

22:13

that are happening now in a political

22:15

arena, and it's scary. So this

22:17

is something I feel like I

22:19

can do in my small way as

22:22

an Appalachian who has also

22:25

been lucky enough to have a higher

22:27

education, and I can read a lot of

22:29

stuff, and I've lived in a lot of parts of the world, and

22:31

I can come back to my home and see what's good

22:34

about it and what's challenging

22:36

about it. And I can try

22:38

to

22:39

talk across this divide. I

22:41

mean, Demon Copperhead is my

22:43

attempt to speak to people.

22:46

Well, it's doing two things. I mean,

22:48

I want it to be a window and a mirror,

22:50

as they say books can be.

22:53

I wanted it to be a mirror for my

22:55

people to feel seen, and that's been

22:58

an amazing experience to hear

23:00

from kids in the foster care system,

23:02

from teachers, from so many people

23:05

in Demon's Walk of Life saying,

23:07

I never knew that anybody else

23:09

could see how hard this is. But

23:11

at the same time, to let

23:13

people from elsewhere understand

23:16

the complexity

23:19

of our lives here, the nuance

23:21

of Appalachian culture, the value

23:24

of our communities, the whole ecosystems

23:27

of characters that we are, the

23:29

bad and the good, and the

23:31

ways that we

23:33

take care of ourselves. I wanted

23:35

this book to be a conversation

23:38

about that divide. And it is

23:40

being read mostly

23:42

by people who are not from here.

23:45

So I'm sitting here in the epicenter of

23:48

urban journalism at the New York Times. Yeah,

23:51

well, yeah, exactly, exactly. Which

23:54

has gotten much worse over time.

23:56

I mean, it used to be that you had much more

23:58

geographic. dispersion of the

24:00

papers people read, not so much the TV they consumed,

24:03

but local radio stations were

24:05

stronger, newspapers were more regional

24:08

or more local, and that is

24:10

not gone, but is even weakened

24:12

from when I was a kid.

24:13

Oh, it's so nearly gone.

24:16

It's really, it's really scary to me. Even

24:18

in a place like California, where you still have the LA

24:20

Times and the Chronicle and others, I mean, the

24:22

New York Times is the biggest paper in California.

24:25

It's based in New York. And

24:27

I was thinking about this for a bunch of different reasons,

24:29

but one of the things that

24:32

even if

24:34

you think, and I do think this, that then some

24:37

of the quality of journals some people get is better. You

24:40

can get amazing national and international journals,

24:42

which was much harder to get when I was growing up. But

24:44

what even a great international paper

24:47

can't do

24:48

is create a sense of local identity and pride.

24:50

When you are growing up

24:52

somewhere that is not New York and you read the New York

24:54

Times, there is a function

24:56

that regional media, that local media play,

24:58

that is not being played for you, that I

25:01

would be very different if I hadn't had when I was growing

25:03

up.

25:04

Well, and identity aside,

25:06

just the information. Yes, just the information,

25:09

of course. And about maybe 2% of

25:12

what we see and read about

25:15

is about us. So it's

25:17

a void that's, you know, how

25:20

do we address that? It's really

25:22

profoundly debilitating

25:25

not to see yourself anywhere.

25:27

And we're aware of this in other, in terms

25:29

of other, we've made huge strides just,

25:32

you know, in the last decade in terms of identity

25:34

politics. Yes, we understand people

25:36

with disabilities need to see themselves

25:39

in ads and in shows,

25:41

in film. We understand that

25:44

people of color need to see themselves

25:46

to feel validated. Okay,

25:49

rural people need to see ourselves too. Farmers

25:52

need to see ourselves

25:52

too, and we're not. And so I hope

25:56

it's understandable that we're ready.

25:59

really mad that we're really

26:02

tired of being overlooked. And

26:04

the economic aid that goes to

26:07

farmers really goes to factories,

26:09

industrial farms that are producing soybeans

26:12

and corn that are going into

26:15

fast food, and that's not helping

26:18

people. Another unique quality

26:20

of Appalachia is that we're one of the last

26:23

strongholds of small family

26:25

farms because of our topography.

26:28

Because in the mountains, there's no flat land. A

26:31

farm might have like a half of acre of

26:33

one acre that's flat, and all the rest is

26:35

too steep to plow. So we don't

26:38

have the giant combines.

26:40

We don't have the giant

26:42

wheat fields and tractors

26:44

that look like they came out of Star Wars. If

26:46

we ever see farming on TV, it's that,

26:49

and that's not real people. To us,

26:51

that's not farming.

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Hey, it's Ben Froomen, Editor in Chief of Wirecutter.

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We put together the ultimate guide to

27:40

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27:42

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slash moving.

28:41

I want to move us into the universe of the book and there's a particular

28:43

character who I think

28:45

bridges a bunch of the conversations we're having here, which

28:47

is Tommy. So can you

28:49

tell me a bit about Tommy?

28:52

The ghost in the room here is Charles Dickens

28:54

because I owe him everything

28:57

with respect to this book. Charles

29:00

Dickens is the key I finally found

29:03

to the door of that house of this novel. When

29:05

I decided to write this as

29:07

a modern day David Copperfield,

29:11

he gave me, I guess, the chutzpah

29:14

to tell the story because

29:16

people really liked his version of it and I

29:19

thought that could surely help. He

29:21

gave me a Crackerjack plot and

29:23

all these amazing characters and he

29:26

gave me Tommy, who was called Tommy

29:28

in David Copperfield. And I will

29:30

say here, as the disclaimer I always make,

29:33

you do not have to read David Copperfield

29:35

before or after you read Demon

29:37

Copperhead. It's not necessary at all.

29:39

There's not a test? There's

29:41

no test, no. But I took David

29:44

Copperfield as my template and I just laid

29:46

my book right over it because

29:48

it worked so well. And then of course I had

29:50

to use some

29:52

of the characters in other ways. And Tommy,

29:55

he was called Tommy

29:57

Trattles in

29:59

David Copperfield.

29:59

He's called Tommy Waddles. Everybody

30:02

has a nickname here. So Tommy,

30:04

his

30:05

demon's best friend in his

30:07

first foster home, which is a

30:10

horrible foster home, is this

30:12

farmer who uses foster kids as

30:15

enslaved labor on his farm, basically. He

30:17

uses the money that he gets

30:20

for being a foster home

30:22

to pay off his farm taxes,

30:24

and he uses the kids for free labor, and he's really

30:26

pretty horrible, and he doesn't feed them enough, and that's

30:29

really sad. But these boys bond,

30:31

and Tommy's a sweet,

30:33

sad character who makes the

30:35

best of everything, but he knows he's never ever going

30:38

to have a real foster home. Nobody wants, he

30:40

says, nobody wants the fat kids. He's really

30:42

big for his age, but he's

30:44

a reader. Demon is fascinated

30:46

by the fact that Tommy brings home armloads of

30:49

books from his school library, and he stashes

30:51

them under the

30:52

bed, and at night he

30:54

tells Demon the plots of all

30:56

the magic treehouses

30:58

he's ever read and all the, you know, he reads the boxcar

31:01

kids. So even though Demon

31:03

is not himself a reader, he's introduced

31:05

to, I guess, Tommy is the first intellectual

31:08

he's ever known, and as they grow

31:11

up in their own hard scrabble

31:13

ways, they reconnect.

31:15

That's a

31:16

Dickensian thing, the great Dickensian

31:19

coincidence, as they run into each other a few

31:22

years later in the pharmacy where

31:24

Demon's picking up his illicit

31:27

drugs, he runs into Tommy who's now working at a newspaper.

31:30

He's a janitor, but he's found a job, and

31:32

he works his way actually into

31:34

the newspaper business, and he puts his

31:38

education to good use, being

31:40

a copywriter for ads in the

31:44

local little newspaper, which was, you know, it's sad because

31:46

those local little newspapers

31:49

hardly exist anymore, but I worked on one when

31:51

I was in high school, so I know how that all

31:54

works, how you lay stuff out on

31:56

the table with wax. You cut them

31:58

out and you lay the columns out.

31:59

And that was really fun to write about.

32:02

The whole place smells like hot wax. And

32:04

they form a partnership, actually, Demon

32:07

and Tommy, that becomes Demon's

32:10

extraordinary

32:11

way out of his situation

32:13

or a part of it. One thing

32:15

he used Tommy to do really effectively, I thought,

32:18

is talk about how even

32:20

what might seem like sympathetic coverage

32:23

of Appalachia reads within.

32:26

So he gets very upset, for instance, over a headline

32:28

that just says, rural dropout rates

32:31

on the rise.

32:32

Which seems like a pretty neutral headline.

32:34

So what does he hate about it?

32:37

What he hates about it is that's all

32:39

anybody ever hears about us

32:42

is the bad stuff. And yeah, this is Tommy's

32:44

education like me and like all

32:46

of the kids in this book have no idea how

32:49

we are seen by outsiders. We're just

32:51

people. These kids have never thought

32:54

about being Appalachian. And

32:56

now that Tommy's working in a newspaper and

32:59

he's seeing the headlines that come in over

33:01

the AP thing and he's

33:04

working for this Little Town

33:06

newspaper in Pennington Gap, they're

33:08

looking desperately for some

33:10

syndicated stories that have relevance

33:14

to the local area. You

33:16

know, he's attending to this and he's seeing what's

33:18

coming through.

33:20

He's dismayed that the only

33:22

thing that outsiders ever seem interested

33:25

in noticing is how poor

33:27

the place is. The dropout

33:29

rates, the poverty rates, the unemployment rates.

33:32

What about the good stuff? They're living

33:34

all the good stuff too. You know,

33:36

all the memos that look after every kid in

33:39

the neighborhood, the fact that you know who

33:41

your neighbors are all the time and

33:44

they're always gonna be there for you. Unless

33:46

they're not, but that's important too. Demon tries

33:48

to explain this in

33:50

Demon Psychology. This

33:52

is what he knows. He says, look, everybody needs somebody

33:55

to punch when they get mad because this is, you know, all

33:58

he's ever known. So, this is what he's doing.

33:59

Stepdad punches

34:01

his wife or the girlfriend.

34:04

The girlfriend punches the kid. The

34:07

kid has to go kick the dog. Everybody

34:09

needs somebody to look down on.

34:12

When Damon explains

34:14

all this to Tommy about how everybody

34:16

has to look down on somebody and then has

34:18

these conversations with Tommy about how

34:21

much condescension, how they're seen

34:23

by the rest of the world, he says, well, we're

34:25

the dog of America. Now

34:28

that Tommy's become aware of this, he

34:30

sees it everywhere. He sees the TV

34:32

has a festival of stupid

34:35

hillbilly movies, deliverance,

34:38

whatever, hillbilly chainsaw massacre or whatever

34:40

it is. Now that his eyes are open, he's seeing

34:42

it everywhere and he gets really upset

34:45

about it because he's got this e-mail

34:47

girlfriend from Eastern Pennsylvania

34:49

and he's afraid to meet her

34:51

because he says, she's going to

34:53

think I'm a stupid hillbilly and

34:56

her whole family is going to think we're stupid

34:58

hillbillies. So this becomes Tommy's

35:00

quest to figure out how this happened

35:02

and why. So that

35:04

becomes, this is a way for the

35:07

reader to follow Tommy on this

35:09

quest to understand how this happened. So

35:11

Tommy as the nearest thing we

35:13

have in this book to an intellectual, he

35:16

reads some social history and he figures it out.

35:18

So it allows the

35:20

reader of this novel, and this is just a tiny

35:22

part of the book, but there is a moment where the

35:25

reader gets to learn about

35:27

land-based economies and money-based

35:30

economies. Demon

35:32

in his short stints of living

35:34

in cities, visiting or living

35:36

when he's in rehab, he lives in Knoxville

35:39

and he lives this and he gives

35:41

you the story in Demon's Peak. So

35:44

he says, there's country poor and

35:46

there's city poor. When you're in

35:48

the country, at least you have food. He

35:50

says in the city, where are people even

35:53

going to raise their tomatoes in Knoxville?

35:55

He feels the desperation of people

35:57

who have

35:57

no access to.

36:00

the fundamental needs like apples

36:02

and tomatoes. He has a job in the

36:05

produce section of Walmart.

36:08

When the artificial rain comes on

36:10

every 15 minutes to keep the produce wet, he

36:12

says, this is the closest thing people are ever gonna

36:15

see to rain on a real vegetable.

36:17

And he feels sad for them.

36:19

As you mentioned, Demon and Tommy meet in foster

36:22

care and foster care makes up a

36:24

lot of the first half-ish

36:27

of the book. And

36:29

it's really, I mean, it's somebody with young

36:31

kids and it's hard to read. And

36:34

something you're focusing on there is the way in

36:36

which the opioid epidemic hasn't

36:39

just harmed those who have been

36:41

killed or have ended

36:44

up in rehab or struggling with addiction, but

36:46

how many children have simply lost parents? Can

36:49

you talk a bit about what you found when you were researching

36:51

that or seeing it around you and how you began

36:53

to think about the scale of

36:56

what it has done to children now?

36:59

Yeah, that was my point

37:01

of entry into this novel. That's

37:04

what I really wanted to write about, the

37:06

orphans. It's a whole

37:09

generation of kids. The counties

37:11

around where I live have enormous,

37:14

I can't give you exact statistics. I've

37:16

heard anything from 15 to 35% of kids in

37:21

some of these counties who are being raised

37:24

by someone other than their parents because

37:26

their parents are addicted

37:28

or incarcerated

37:29

or dead. We have

37:31

a generation of orphans coming

37:33

up through our schools. Some of

37:35

them have gone into foster care, but the

37:37

system is so incredibly overloaded,

37:40

which you learn about in

37:42

the novel. There's so many more kids

37:44

in need than there are social

37:47

networks to catch them. But the

37:49

caseworkers are so overloaded

37:52

and so pathetically underpaid,

37:55

they make less than school teachers. They don't make

37:57

enough really to live, these

37:59

caseworkers.

37:59

The turnover is really

38:02

rapid. The files get lost.

38:05

These kids are just lost. I didn't

38:07

even know until I did more research

38:09

into this. That's where we are. This

38:11

is something that I

38:13

think the world needs to know about this

38:15

country. Voters need to know about. We

38:18

need to know how this

38:20

epidemic has left a generation

38:23

of innocence that nobody's taking decent

38:25

care of.

38:27

The story of the big players in the opioid

38:29

epidemic, Purdue Pharma, the

38:32

attorneys and the DEA

38:34

and all of that, big story has

38:36

broken and it's been told

38:38

beautifully by a handful of

38:40

journalists, have done a great job of cracking

38:43

and telling us that story. Beth

38:45

Macy among them with her fantastic book Dopesick.

38:49

So

38:50

that was my point of entry in this

38:53

novel. The story I wanted to tell

38:55

was not about the big guys,

38:58

but about the little people. These

39:00

kids have been left

39:03

behind. Our burdened public

39:05

school systems are being asked to

39:07

raise these kids. Our public schools

39:10

are the point of delivery for pretty much all

39:12

the social services that these kids

39:14

may get. They get most of their food

39:17

from free school lunches. A

39:18

lot of them are not getting fed at home. They

39:21

get their mental health care through

39:23

the school system. It's not the public school

39:25

that delivers it, but county mental health

39:28

agencies deliver the care,

39:31

the counseling they do is in the schools

39:33

because they can't

39:34

expect families to take kids to

39:36

counseling. So

39:39

this is a burden on our public school

39:41

system and on our libraries and on

39:43

everything that we have here that nobody

39:46

outside of this region is

39:48

even aware of. So

39:51

we need resources, not just

39:54

for treating addiction, which

39:56

is an immense need, but

39:59

that's only...

39:59

one part of the damage,

40:02

a bigger part of the damage is what

40:05

we do for these kids. And

40:07

so

40:09

that's the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to

40:11

just tell the story of the orphans. And

40:14

that's why Dickens came calling and

40:17

told me,

40:18

orphan stories can work.

40:21

Let me give you an idea.

40:23

You had a passage here that I found extraordinarily

40:26

moving. I mean, this is how demon becomes

40:28

an orphan, but also how he has to think about

40:30

and over his life has to process

40:33

his mother and her relationship to him

40:36

and what her death meant in

40:38

terms of her care for

40:39

him. So do you

40:41

mind reading the passage on page 109,

40:44

beginning with I had roads to travel?

40:47

Sure. And this is at his mother's

40:49

funeral, his mother overdosed on

40:52

his birthday, and he

40:54

couldn't help but feel

40:56

pretty furious at his mom for this abandonment.

41:00

And now he's looking back because this

41:03

narration, this first person narration is

41:05

told from the, it's a retrospective from

41:07

later in his life, his, the advanced

41:09

age of maybe 25 or something. So

41:12

he says here, he kind of steps

41:14

slightly outside of the funeral scene and

41:16

says, I had roads to travel

41:19

before I would know it's not that simple.

41:22

The dope versus the person you love

41:24

that a craving can ratchet

41:26

itself up and up inside

41:29

a body and mind. At the

41:31

same time that body strength for tolerating

41:33

its favorite drug goes down

41:35

and down that the longer

41:38

you've gone hurting between fixes,

41:40

the higher the odds that you'll reach too hard

41:43

for the stars next time.

41:45

That big first rush of relief

41:48

could be your last

41:50

in the long run. That's

41:52

how I've come to picture mom at the

41:54

end reaching as hard as

41:56

her little body would stretch trying

41:58

to touch the blue sky.

41:59

reaching for some peace

42:03

and getting it.

42:04

If the grown-up version of me could

42:06

have one chance at walking backward into

42:08

this story, part of me wishes

42:10

I could sit down on the back pew with

42:13

that pissed-off kid in his overly

42:15

tight church clothes and dark hawk

42:18

attitude and tell him,

42:20

you think you're giant, but

42:22

you are such a small speck in

42:24

the screwed-up world. This is

42:26

not about you.

42:28

You have an interesting way

42:30

of putting his mother in context in this

42:33

part of the book, and you talk about her as the

42:36

unknown soldier. You talk about the way in

42:38

which nobody cries over someone's

42:41

bad personal decision. Not nobody, but

42:43

society does not cry over one

42:45

person's weakness.

42:47

But then when there are a mountain of bodies,

42:49

then a story is called for,

42:51

then a narrative takes hold, then it's not their fault.

42:54

It becomes a societal force pressing

42:56

down on them, and people who fall at the

42:58

beginning,

42:59

they don't get that grace, not

43:02

publicly, and even at that time not in their

43:04

own families, because it's in their

43:06

own families where these narratives have to take hold.

43:09

I'd like to just hear you talk a bit more about that, about how

43:11

you thought about the respect we do or don't give

43:14

to people who end up addicted

43:16

to or dying from medications

43:19

that they were given to get hold by people

43:21

with

43:23

medical degrees or people

43:26

who were there, the nurse in the doctor's

43:28

clinic, that this was safe and somebody had checked

43:30

this out for them.

43:31

Exactly. That's the crime that

43:34

this drug was so addicting,

43:37

and the doctors who prescribed

43:39

it were told otherwise. And

43:42

this region was singled out as particularly

43:44

vulnerable, partly because healthcare

43:46

delivery in rural places stretched

43:49

so thin that there's very

43:51

little opportunity for follow-up. They

43:54

often see people on the one sick

43:56

day that that person has in

43:58

a year from work.

43:59

So it's of necessity, it's prescription

44:02

pad doctoring. And

44:05

Purdue saw this as an opportunity, because

44:07

there's so many people here with work injuries,

44:10

old mining injuries, disability.

44:12

And so they just thought, aha, we

44:14

can make a killing here. And they literally

44:17

did. And to research this book, I

44:19

spent time, I sat down with

44:21

a lot of people who had been through this whole journey

44:24

to learn about the inside

44:27

of addiction in ways that, and

44:29

just the logistics, like here's the pill, how

44:31

does it get into your veins? A lot of the

44:33

specifics that I fortunately don't know from

44:36

firsthand experience. So I listened to a

44:38

lot of stories, and I shed

44:40

a lot of tears with people who told me their stories

44:42

of how they became addicted. And most of

44:45

them started with a

44:47

legal prescription from a doctor

44:49

they trusted, a

44:50

doctor who was going on the best advice, who

44:53

said, you have to stay ahead of the pain. You

44:55

set your clock, you take this on whatever

44:57

timetable you're supposed to take it, don't miss a pill,

45:00

take this painkiller.

45:02

And by the end of their 30-day script,

45:04

they were addicted. And so

45:07

this was done to them. Nobody

45:09

wants to be addicted. But what I found

45:11

and what I thought so much about in

45:13

the course of writing this novel, I

45:16

realized that was another of the

45:18

prejudices I knew I was going to be up

45:20

against, because people have such firm ideas

45:23

of addiction as a moral failing, as

45:26

a failure of willpower, a failure

45:28

of virtue. And that's been done

45:30

to us. That's a brainwashing. The

45:33

so-called war on drugs, which I think

45:35

hit its 50th anniversary this year,

45:37

has been a

45:39

whole lot of brainwashing

45:41

on how the answer to this problem is just

45:44

say no. The answer to this

45:46

problem is incarceration. We

45:49

have been trained, culturally trained,

45:51

to think of addiction in this way as

45:53

a personal failing that needs to

45:55

be punished.

45:57

Incarceration does not.

46:00

cure addiction any more than it cures

46:02

cancer.

46:03

Addiction is a disease. It's

46:06

a disease of the brain, of dopamine

46:08

and neurons in the brain that have been

46:11

damaged and rewired so that if

46:13

you don't keep getting this

46:16

drug, you get so sick that

46:18

you feel like you're going to die, you wish you're

46:20

going to die, and you might die. It's impossible

46:22

to describe how terrible

46:25

this disease is, not just the dope sickness

46:27

of it, but the fact that your entire life

46:30

has to become just a really difficult,

46:33

hardworking

46:33

process of every morning, getting

46:36

your means, getting your fix, getting

46:38

through another day that nobody

46:41

wants to live like that. So one

46:43

of my hopes with this novel is that by

46:46

portraying this process of

46:48

addiction from the inside,

46:51

people might have more compassion

46:53

for it as a disease and

46:56

think of people with

46:58

addiction as diseased. I

47:00

mean, even in our own families, you know, we

47:02

see this,

47:03

nobody would tell their daughter

47:05

with cancer, okay, I'm

47:08

going to kick you out. I'm going to

47:10

wait till you hit bottom and then you can have chemo.

47:14

That's how we treat the disease of addiction.

47:16

And it's incredibly

47:18

inhumane and

47:20

effective treatment will only

47:23

happen after we switch

47:25

over from, you know, putting this in the hands of

47:27

the police and the prisons, to

47:30

medical workers who can meet addicted

47:33

people where they live and offer them

47:35

the first steps of clean

47:38

needles and fentanyl test

47:40

strips so that they won't die

47:42

in the weeks that it will take for them

47:45

logistically, physically, emotionally

47:47

to get to the beginnings of treatment.

47:49

There's still a lot of people who

47:52

have a sort of, I guess, a moral objection

47:55

to harm reduction centers that just give

47:57

people the basics of clean needles and fentanyl.

47:59

test strips to keep them alive. It's

48:02

as if people feel that addicted people deserve

48:04

to die. Imagine if we

48:06

looked at any other disease that way.

48:09

One thing that I think you describe really well here is

48:11

that the desire, the

48:13

market, the demand for OxyContin and

48:17

for other kind of similar drugs in the period

48:21

was also an outcome of

48:23

the kind of work we have people do and the

48:25

kind of lives we have them live. You describe OxyContin

48:27

then as quote, God's gift for

48:30

the laid off deep hole man with his back and neck

48:32

bones grinding like bags of gravel for

48:34

the bent over lady pulling double shifts at Dollar

48:36

General with her shot knees and ADHD

48:38

grandkids to raise by herself. And

48:42

there is something, I mean, all

48:44

addictions are a kind of horror, but

48:46

there's a literalness that

48:49

is often a little bit obscured with

48:51

other drugs. I mean, this was a drug

48:53

people got on to treat real pain and

48:55

pain they often had to go through because they were

48:57

trying to make a living and being

48:59

made to do repetitive tasks that the human body

49:02

is not built for. And there

49:04

is just a, both a horror

49:06

to that, but so much of this book, both in

49:08

the foreground at times, but in the background a lot of times

49:11

is about the economics of the area. And one of the

49:13

economics of the area is the kind of work people have

49:15

to do.

49:16

Exactly, it was so predatory.

49:19

It was so intentional. And

49:21

we know this now that Purdue

49:23

Pharma looked at metrics. They looked

49:26

all over the country to see where, and

49:29

identified, as I understand it, three regions.

49:32

It was a combination of mining

49:35

and a lot of physically taxing labor that left

49:37

a lot of people with disability and pain. They're

49:41

using people's pain for profit.

49:44

So that was part one, was to find

49:46

these areas where a lot of people

49:48

have live in pain and have

49:50

work injuries that they've carried

49:53

for in many cases, decades. And

49:55

the other thing is, as I mentioned before, this

49:57

very stretched thin healthcare

49:59

delivery.

49:59

system. I think that one

50:02

of many things that people in cities

50:05

don't understand is how hard it

50:07

is for us to get to see doctors

50:10

in the country. The county where I live for

50:12

many years did not have, it's a big

50:14

county too, we did not have one

50:17

physician here who could deliver a baby, not

50:19

one. We had to go to Tennessee. One

50:21

of the characters in this novel, Dory,

50:24

ends up having to quit school

50:26

when her father is sick, her mother

50:28

is dead, and her father

50:29

is gravely ill, and she

50:32

has to drive to get

50:34

him to heart-lung specialists and the different

50:36

doctors he has to see, you know, almost every

50:38

week. She has to drive to another state.

50:41

That's the case. I have driven with my kids

50:44

to see specialists. Many times I've driven

50:46

to doctors who lived four

50:49

or five hours away in the nearest

50:51

city. This is something that's just

50:53

that we live with here. There are not enough

50:56

physicians to meet our needs,

50:58

and so you have to wait

50:59

a long time to get into one, and that

51:02

doctor doesn't have the

51:04

chance to follow you up. He's

51:06

got one chance to help your,

51:09

in this case, terrible pain, and

51:11

he's got this drug. I mean, they knew

51:13

this was going to work. They knew that they would

51:15

be able to pump into these counties,

51:17

in many cases, more than one or two pills

51:20

for every

51:21

man, woman, and child in the county.

51:23

I mean, the flow of these drugs into

51:25

these counties, in the very short time, the

51:28

relatively few years that it was allowed,

51:30

sort of before the whistle blew, is

51:33

phenomenal. And once that addiction

51:35

has begun, it doesn't go away

51:37

after the drug is reformulated. The

51:40

next step is heroin.

52:03

One thing the book really emphasizes

52:06

is both the

52:08

protections and I would also say the predations

52:10

of community.

52:12

Something that is there in Lee County

52:14

in the world of the book, I think also in many ways in

52:16

real life, is a

52:19

knowingness. Over and over again,

52:21

a demon runs into people

52:23

from his past or finds that there is a

52:26

connection to somebody from his past. It's like, well,

52:28

that's Lee County for you. Everybody's connected to everybody. And

52:31

there's both these moments of incredible grace in

52:33

that, in the story you tell about him. And

52:36

then also,

52:37

I feel like this interesting

52:38

dark side of it where he's preyed

52:41

upon by people in his community over and over again

52:43

or allowed to fall through the cracks over and over again,

52:45

that the community is not able to be that protective

52:48

and at times it's even the source of

52:51

the danger. So I'm curious

52:54

how you thought about that because it's clearly something

52:56

that you love about the place. I mean, it comes

52:58

through. But also something that you didn't

53:00

allow that to be an easy answer and many of the worst

53:02

things done to him are done to him not by a far

53:06

away economic forest, but somebody living right down the

53:08

street.

53:09

I think that's so much of

53:11

the damage that happens

53:14

is because of the way that community

53:16

where he lives has become damaged

53:19

and unraveled by the drug epidemic.

53:22

Just to back up and talk more generally about

53:24

community, something

53:27

sort of a mantra for me

53:29

in my teenage years growing up in a real little

53:31

town was the great thing about

53:34

community is everybody knows your business.

53:37

And the thing that

53:38

sucks about community is

53:40

everybody knows your business. So

53:43

if you're a teenager trying to do something

53:45

that your parents don't know about, it's not going to happen.

53:48

They're going to know. You're going to have a flat

53:50

tire and the guy that pulls up to help you is

53:53

going to tell your dad within minutes. If

53:55

you make an enemy, you're going to

53:57

run into him again. It's a funny thing. And

53:59

that's really.

53:59

Appalachian, we are people made

54:02

of community for better and for

54:04

worse, but mostly I'm going

54:06

to say for better. You are

54:08

your people. And when you meet

54:10

somebody new for the first time and you sit

54:13

down with them,

54:14

the first conversation is always the same.

54:17

I would title that conversation Who Are

54:19

Your People?

54:20

You sit down and you talk about like

54:22

who are you and what do you want to be? And then you

54:24

just keep talking until you find out that

54:27

like your papa is related

54:30

to their second cousin or

54:33

they worked together at one time or

54:35

you find that point of connection and

54:38

then you relax and then you have whatever

54:40

other conversation you're going to have. But that's just

54:42

how it is. We don't even think

54:45

about it. We are just all

54:47

aware of how we're related to each

54:49

other. And for the most part, that's

54:52

a rare and beautiful thing. I think

54:54

especially in the United States of America,

54:56

which has become since World War II,

54:59

so mobile that it's very common for

55:01

people to live in communities

55:03

where they're not related to anybody. We

55:06

know everybody. We live among our people

55:08

and families function. When a family

55:11

member gets taken out, there's

55:13

a larger family to absorb up

55:15

to a point. It really works

55:17

well. It's sort of our own

55:20

another level of our self-sufficiency.

55:23

When somebody dies, everybody brings food.

55:26

You know your neighbors. You look everybody

55:29

in the eye. When you drive down

55:32

the road, there's this way of waving

55:34

that people put one finger up from the steering

55:36

wheel. It's like everybody waves at everybody.

55:39

And this comes through in the novel

55:41

when Demon goes to the city

55:44

and he feels

55:45

like an alien. He feels invisible because

55:47

nobody looks him in the eye. Nobody waves

55:50

to him. Nobody looks at anybody. And

55:53

his friend there, who's the city guy says, well, they're saving

55:55

their juice. You got to save your

55:57

juice. You can't just give it away to everybody.

55:59

because you have to save it for your own people. And if

56:02

you gave it away to everybody, you saw it, you'd be done

56:04

with your juice by nine o'clock in the morning. And

56:06

so,

56:08

Demon ponders this and he realizes

56:10

we in Appalachia are the juice economy.

56:13

I mean, we give ourselves

56:15

to everybody. We, you know, ladies get together

56:18

on front porches and they make quilts to give

56:21

to the girls in high school that are pregnant.

56:23

That's a real thing. You know, ladies get together

56:25

and make sack dinners to give to

56:28

the kids at school that are gonna

56:30

go home for the weekend and not have any dinner. It

56:33

is how I think we have

56:35

adapted to these centuries of

56:39

exploitation from the outside, just

56:41

taking care of ourselves. And that's

56:43

Mrs. Peggett in the novel who looks after

56:46

Demon and knows more than

56:48

he realizes about his situation.

56:51

But it can only get you so far

56:53

when you have something like,

56:56

you know, on the level of this addiction

56:58

crisis, cutting through whole generations

57:01

of families, taking out so many

57:03

people and also putting so many people in a

57:05

position that they have to steal

57:07

to live.

57:08

It's the most tragic part

57:11

of the whole story, I think is what it has done

57:13

to communities.

57:14

You talked about, and you mentioned earlier, feeling

57:16

like a bit of an ambassador between worlds here.

57:19

And this book in particular being a way

57:22

of explaining

57:24

where you come from and where you live to

57:26

people who are in a very different world, who are picking

57:28

up the latest Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction at

57:31

the bookstore.

57:32

If you were doing the ambassador

57:35

dome in the other way, in the other direction,

57:38

trying to communicate what's beautiful about cities,

57:42

about some of these other parts

57:44

of America, to the people you live with or to the

57:46

people you're describing in this book, what

57:49

would you emphasize in the way that you emphasize community

57:52

going in the current direction?

57:55

I would talk about the value

57:57

of the community.

58:00

of the richness and the privilege

58:03

of living among many

58:05

people who are very, very different from

58:07

you,

58:08

who aren't related to you, who

58:11

come from a different country. I mean,

58:13

I just think about for years and years

58:16

until she died, when I ever came

58:18

to New York City, I stayed

58:20

with my agent, Frances Golden, in her

58:23

apartment on East 11th Street. And

58:25

I just think about that

58:27

part of New York City,

58:29

the Lower East Side, and how I would just walk

58:32

down the street and hear people speaking different

58:34

languages and pass, you know, the Italian

58:36

place and the Polish place.

58:39

All of the world is there

58:41

and how much you can absorb from people

58:43

who are not like you, who are

58:46

white

58:47

and not white, people of color,

58:49

people of so many colors, people of so

58:51

many orientations, people who are gay

58:54

and straight and trans and acceptance

58:58

and comfort with difference comes

59:00

with proximity. And that's

59:03

something that's

59:04

hard for us here because just as

59:06

a product of history of the

59:09

settlement of this region and the fact that there

59:11

was really no good reason after

59:13

it was settled mainly by the Scots-Irish, there

59:15

was no good reason. There were no employment

59:18

opportunities or other reasons for people

59:20

from outside from other countries,

59:22

people who are not white, to

59:25

come here. So here we are, there's

59:27

a whole lot more diversity in Appalachia

59:30

than outsiders may think. We aren't

59:33

a dull monoculture,

59:34

but it's

59:36

also possible to go to school, and

59:39

as usual, to go to school with

59:41

people who are mostly

59:43

like you, mostly your race

59:45

and your class and your cast. And

59:47

so one good thing

59:50

about what kids get and what,

59:52

well, and adults get from television

59:55

is exposure to people who are

59:57

different, but that's not the same as having

59:59

a family.

59:59

friend who's different from you. And so

1:00:02

that's something that I wish we had more

1:00:04

of here. I think it's a lovely place to end.

1:00:06

So always our final question on the show. What are three books

1:00:08

that have influenced you that you would recommend to the audience?

1:00:12

I would choose two

1:00:14

books

1:00:15

that are Appalachian about my place. One

1:00:17

of them is

1:00:19

by Arwen Donahue.

1:00:21

The full title is Landings, A

1:00:23

Crooked Creek Farm Year. And

1:00:25

it's, I love this book. It's a graphic

1:00:27

memoir. It's not like most books

1:00:29

you're going to see. She's an artist. So

1:00:32

this book is a memoir of her year on

1:00:34

her farm, which is in the county where I grew

1:00:37

up. And every page is,

1:00:39

on the left-hand side, a pen and ink watercolor

1:00:42

drawing of a scene of a day of

1:00:44

a life in her farm. And it's paired with really

1:00:47

lovely prose that just describes

1:00:50

their year on their small farm,

1:00:53

growing vegetables for a farmer's market.

1:00:56

And I said earlier that it's

1:00:58

really rare to see descriptions

1:01:00

of farming that are not

1:01:03

either condescending or romanticized.

1:01:05

This is neither. This is real. It's just a real

1:01:08

look at what life is like for

1:01:10

a family that's very attached

1:01:11

to a piece of land and making their living

1:01:13

from it.

1:01:14

I recommend Beth Macy's

1:01:17

follow-up to Dopesick, which is called Raising

1:01:19

Lazarus. It's a great piece of

1:01:21

journalism on where we are now with

1:01:24

this epidemic and what can be done, what's

1:01:26

being done, and what we need to do more of. And

1:01:28

then the third

1:01:30

is a novel I just read that knocked

1:01:32

my socks off, and

1:01:34

it's nothing to do with where I live.

1:01:37

It's actually set entirely in the ocean.

1:01:40

It's called Pod by

1:01:42

Laleen Paul. And it is

1:01:45

set entirely in the ocean. It's not

1:01:47

science fiction. It's realistic. It's

1:01:49

set in the here and now. And none

1:01:52

of the characters are human.

1:01:54

I'll just tell you that. And it's fascinating.

1:02:00

Barbara Kingsolver, thank you very much. You're welcome,

1:02:02

thanks for your interest. This

1:02:14

episode of The Essek Rancho is produced by Annie Galvin,

1:02:16

fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair,

1:02:19

and Mary-Marj Locker. Mixing

1:02:21

by Sonia Herrera, our senior editor is Roshae

1:02:23

Karma. The show's production team also includes Emma

1:02:25

Fagau, Jeff Geld, Rylan Hu, and

1:02:27

Kristin Lin. Original music is by

1:02:29

Isaac Jones, Audience Strategy by Kristina

1:02:32

Samuluski and Shannon Busta. The

1:02:34

executive producer of New York Times opinion audio is

1:02:36

Annie Rose Strasser.