Archer Book Club: September 2024

From Goodreads:

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.

Zoom information will be provided closer to the planned meeting: 12:00pm-1:00pm, September 25th, 2024.

1. Before the story begins, author Barbara Kingsolver includes a quote from Charles Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield, which was published in 1850 amid the poverty of Victorian England, that reads, “It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.” How does this idea relate to the forthcoming story of Demon Copperhead?
2. “First, I got myself born,” begins the story of Damon Fields, aka Demon Copperhead, born to a poor, single mother in the mountains of Appalachia at the beginning of the opioid epidemic in the 1990s? Demon claims that “the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose.” What does he mean by this? What’s the difference between destiny and fate? What part does social or economic privilege play in one’s fate?
3. In his original story, Dickens has David Copperfield wondering “whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life.” But Demon Copperhead poses a different question of heroism: when you’re a child born into a life without choices, does being a hero simply consist of surviving against the odds?
4. Why is the concept of city living so uncomfortable for Demon? Despite its problems and poverty, what did the rural environment of Lee County offer Demon and others that was valuable? Do you agree with Demon’s observation on the differences between “country poor” and “city poor”?
5. While the book isn’t overtly political, there are moments where it touches on current political tensions, for example, the mention of pejorative terms like redneck or hillbilly and how they’ve been reclaimed by some people as a mark of defiance. What do you make of the book’s intersection with real-world politics? Was it successful?
6. Which characters in this story are sympathetic? Which are not? What are your reasons?

Questions are taken from Bookclubs.