Finished: March 30, 2025
Why I read this
It has been a bit since I’ve made progress on the slowly, but steadily, growing list of Pulitzer Prize winners. Oddly enough it seems like there’s another one every year… So really there was not much of a reason for why I chose to read this other than its high recommendation from other people who have read it. I’ve been trying to go into books more blindly lately. I find that the summaries always seem to spoil the book some. I’m sure just the two paragraph opener of this book would have told any potential readers about hardships to come or future difficulties, and boom, you can already predict all the worst to come for the protagonist. It’s a bit of a shame really. You can’t choose a book based on its plot because then you’ll already have an idea of what is going to happen.
I will also admit that in choosing it from the stack of book’s I’ve got on hand the interesting cover art had some impact on my decision. It’s funny how something so arbitrary as “looking better” can make you prefer one book over another.
What I learned
Taking a deep dive into the poor and uneducated rural community from the eyes of an underprivileged youth is never a fun experience. Virginian Appalachia, being not so far from home and not so different I’m sure from North Carolina Appalachia (even though somehow the author managed to not mention the Carolina’s a single time in the book!) was easy to understand and connect with. I was never someone who grew up in the country, but I spend a fair amount of time in the mountains growing up and many of the scenes and descriptions felt familiar. On the other hand, I was lucky to not know much of what it might mean to be poor in one of these regions. I had a few friends from Boy Scout camp that were from the region (and even in 2015 smoked at age 14) but as a teenager I did not understand quite how different the life in these smalls towns could be from that of a place like Cary NC.
Now, while reading of the challenges our protagonist, Demon, has overcome so far in the first half of this book, I couldn’t help but connect him and the people I’ve met who have lived these types of lives, to the current state of DEI programs and affirmative action. Sure this is not the main topic of the book, but it’s what jumped out to me. Kingsolver’s commentary on education in rural America confirms the declining state of the American education system as a whole, and specifically as it impacts those not fortunate enough to be born with parents who can afford private education. The cases of the students she showed in this book confirm that DEI is not just about race, and that it’s meant to support all of our least privileged. While the American government seems dead-set on dismantling these programs, Demon Copperhead makes me wonder if these politicians and oligarchs really understand the basic reasoning behind these initiatives. I see it online with right wing youth groups that show clips (of course always the worst clips where some college freshman who is just figuring out the world and does not understand how to control their emotions is put against a 35 year old man who has been debating for a decade and profits on their inability to make a solid argument on the fly, I’m looking at you Turning Point America) of people saying that merit is all that should count, not race, ethnicity, or gender. Yet that is exactly what a DEI program is trying to correct for. It’s probably true that many of these programs have strayed from the ideal functioning, but at a minimum the E in DEI, meaning Equity, is exactly about merit. If we take the example of grades for college exams, it requires significantly more merit to be of the least fortunate, like Demon in our book here, and achieve the same things (or even achieve less) than it does for a wealthier, more fortunate student. If in my life I achieved high grades, participated in many after school programs, and performed well at school it was because I was blessed, not because I was exceptionally gifted. I never had to think about food or money, nor did I have any instability in my family. I basically never had to deal with any of the challenges a foster child like our protagonist had to. Instead, I could put all that energy into accomplishing fairly simple things, such as reading a textbook and regurgitating the information onto a standardized test. Is it equal that I, and a minority, who grew up with a single parent, on food stamps, and held a job as soon (or before) it was legal, are judged with the same weight on our SAT scores?
On the flip side of this, as I move in my life towards a position where I may be the one choosing which resume should be lifted to the top of the stack, I don’t want to work with people who have achieved a lot with a lot. It’s like Trump’s real-estate empire. It’s a lot less impressive knowing that he started it out with a million dollars from his daddy. I’d gladly choose the man with half, or even one tenth of the fortune who had built it himself. If that means hiring people who have managed to succeed despite being poor, an immigrant, a minority, or any other factor that generally makes your life harder, but who have slightly lower test scores, or slightly less acclaimed pedigrees, I think that is a good thing. To conclude the point, I’m simply not convinced that the people tearing down these programs understand the point of them. Can our politicians really be that stupid? Our longstanding establishments? How is it that they can’t seem to learn what should be a relatively simple lesson. For example, in Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, he discussed an astronaut candidate that was on the lower end of some of the qualifications to become an astronaut, but it was mostly because he had an exceptionally challenging life where he worked on a farm to support his immigrant family. Once NASA understood the fact that he had achieved similar results to the pampered pile of resumés he was given a chance and eventually became an astronaut. If NASA, THE organization that is used to gauge intelligence in America, can learn this lesson, why is it not universally accepted without comment?
The second subject Kingsolver has discussed, subtlety, yet not subtlety at all is the emergence of the opioid crisis in America. She puts a small reference to the painkillers here and there, and of course they end up playing a large part in driving the storyline. A side character that is a salesman for Oxycontin that says anyone against the pill is against pain management, or the discussion of a person two or three degrees removed that is in rehab, or even overdosed. And always from the perspective of Demon, who until this point of the book is only 15. He, like probably everyone, is not able to see how the pill is infiltrating the receptive coal mining region. He can’t see that these people who love football, blue collar jobs, and doing everything possible yourself are tiring out their bodies and making a perfect situation for the silver-tongued salesmen to come in with their “wonder drug” and launch the opioid crisis to full tilt. It’s sad to see from this perspective the things we adults who are removed from the situation can so easily identify as unhealthy, if not extremely problematic, and yet the children of the story accept as normal. Things like the pick-up truck with both an American and Confederate flag, or snide remarks about an interracial couple.
I think it is subjects like this that elevate a book to Pulitzer level. There are so many layers, so many subjects to debate or discuss. There’s no black of white. Maybe the high school quarterback Fast Forward is a pretty shitty guy, not extremely so, but overall not a great person. However, when we see how he grew up, in an abusive foster family, doing drugs at 16 years old, and knowing fame and love only through football, you can get why he is the way he is. In any case, I’m excited to read the rest and see where it will go!
What I didn’t like
So far I love the book. It is has been a long time since I was so involved in a book and wanted to spend so much time reading it. At first I thought about the 550 pages and believed it was going to take me more like a month to read it. Now, well over halfway through I’m amazed at how the pages keep turning, how I really want to be reading it instead of doing other things, and especially how even on the days where I’ve got a thousand subjects to handle and life feels like it is going just a bit too quickly, I’m able to focus on a few pages here and actually focus. Really to leave the world behind for a bit while I read. All of this is amazing, exactly what you want from a good book. The complaint is just that the Pulitzer Prize seems to have certain types of books that seem to win it more often than others. It’s a bit like how you can see a movie and not really love it, but know that it will be a nomination for best picture. So far Demon Copperhead feels like a mirror image of The Goldfinch with setting details swapped, but many of the underlying themes swirling together. It was like how Gilead, Olive Kitteridge, and Empire Falls felt very similar to me, while all being released in a 10 year period and all winning the Pulitzer. Some greater variety to appreciate all that literature has to offer could be an improvement.
Questions I asked
Why are we so drawn to the rags to riches stories?
For every hero in these stories that seems to escape their horrible life conditions, how many people in reality are crushed by the same?
How can the foster care system be so horrible in almost any media in which it is represented yet no one ever changes it?
My Favorite Quote
“Don’t look for money to buy your life back”
Barbara Kingsolver
Books I liked like this one
The Goldfinch : Donna Tartt (for what felt to me to be almost the same book with a different setting)
Educated : Tara Westover (for the unique challenges of being poor and living in rural America)
Book Reviews for Mom 