On Friday Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver headlines a fundraiser for the Harris Victory Fund. She will be joined by actress Ashley Judd and former Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House for a “virtual conversation” about rural Appalachian perspectives.. The event coincides with Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent push to reach rural voters who overwhelmingly supported former President Donald Trump.
Kingsolver is the Democratic Party’s apparent counterweight to vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. The Ohio senator became famous through books. hillbilly rainIt chronicled his dysfunctional family history, rooted in rural Kentucky. The Trump campaign emphasized his appeal to working-class and rural white voters. Unlike Vance, who grew up in suburban Ohio, Kingsolver actually grew up in rural Kentucky and still lives in Appalachia, Virginia. She won a Pulitzer Prize for a novel set in the very places Vance claims to represent.
“I live among Trump supporters in a county that is 80% Trump supporters.” she said in an interview last May. “If I go to the grocery store, I’ll go to a Trump rally. As I drive downtown, I pass a giant Trump 2024 sign. “This is where I live.”
“I live among Trump supporters in a county where Trump’s approval rating is as high as 80%.”
Poor rural areas represent Trump’s strongest base. He won 65% of the country’s rural voters in 2020, and turnout totals were much higher in many parts of Appalachia. The Harris campaign has been trying to reach many often forgotten places, especially swing states, in an effort to narrow Trump’s margin. For example, in 2020, Trump won Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, 62-36%. But Harris appeared there last Thursday. And former President Bill Clinton was deployed to the rural South to drum up voter interest.
Dan Kanninen, Harris’ battleground director, told CNN last week: “Of course we have to win over people in the Democratic base, but we also have to win over a lot of people.” “In counties where Trump can win 70-30, keep the margins as tight as possible, but if we can lose 60-40 or 65-35, that makes a big difference for dozens of counties in a state.”
Kingsolver’s award-winning novel; Demon Copperheadis a Dickensian coming-of-age story set in the depths of Appalachia. It’s the story of a young devil trying to put down roots in the backwoods while dealing with addiction, foster care, family breakdown, and the overall failure of America’s social welfare system. I love you. It’s a sympathetic portrayal of the people Vance largely despised in his memoir. It’s no surprise, then, that the Harris campaign could see Kingsolver as a useful campaign surrogate who could help bridge the gap between California’s coastal liberals and rural voters who overwhelmingly supported Trump.
The young protagonist of Demon Copperhead Born in Lee County, Virginia. This is a place where 45% of children actually live below the poverty line. The disability rate for adults in Lee County is twice the national average. Nearly 50% of our elderly residents have a disability. Trump also won nearly 85% of the vote there in 2020. Kingsolver believes the dismal state of infrastructure, health care and educational opportunities in rural America makes residents vulnerable to someone like Trump.
“He takes out their anger,” she said, even though his plans do little to help their material circumstances. “What they have in common is that they feel the government has failed them. “Any other attempt to reduce Trump voters to a single culture is downright narrow-minded.”
I have a moment Demon Copperhead Demon is talking with his friend Tommy, who recently started working at a local newspaper, where he discovers for the first time how the rest of the world views Appalachia. On his desk was the headline of an article: “Blight on the nation.” Demon tries to explain to Tommy how the world is structured and how everyone needs someone to dump. It’s like a child who yells at his mother for hitting his stepfather and kicks the dog. “We are America’s dogs,” he explains. Daemon thinks he spent high school in the library without watching a month of Hillbilly Hate Marathon: Hunter’s Blood, Lunch Meat, and Redneck Zombies that his friend aired on a local TV station.
“And it’s worse in comedy shows.” Demon added. “These people act like we’re all on the same side, but just wait. I once dated a Kentucky girl who was always lying between her teeth. Hahahaha.” Confused, Tommy wonders why the Appalachians had to be the ones to be driven out. “I guess I’m just unlucky.” The devil answers. “God made us the butt of the joke.”
As I read this section, I thought it would be an easy way to explain the way the media portrays Trump supporters. “As the devil says in the book, ‘We can see you. We have cable,’ Kingsolver said. “You act like you’re making these jokes behind our backs. we see it I wrote the whole book just to write that part.”
Despite being a rural voter and a liberal, Kingsolver is outraged at the way rural voters are so cavalierly dismissed by liberals.
Earlier this year, I tried and failed to write a sympathetic story about Trump’s most passionate supporters and the ways they are often ridiculed for good reason by liberals and the media. Frustrated, I called Kingsolver to see if he could help me understand and write about complex Americans who are too easily caricatured. She summed up the stereotype succinctly. “We’re just a bunch of backwards hillbillies with no ambition or drive, because if we did we’d be JD Vance competing to be vice president right now.”
In fact, despite being a rural voter and a liberal, she is outraged by the way rural voters are so casually ignored by liberals. “It really annoys me that people are ready to write off 50% of the population as crazy, stupid, uninformed, etc. “It’s so elitist.” She understands why Trump’s rural supporters are so angry and why they like him so much.
Kingsolver spent part of her childhood in the Congo, where her parents worked as public health missionaries. (Her father was a doctor.) She lived there when the country gained independence from Belgium in 1960. “When Belgium suddenly withdrew and there were no educated Congolese, the entire social welfare network was managed by volunteers and missionaries.” said. “Well, I kind of wonder what’s going on here. Many services are handled by non-profit organizations such as Remote Area Medical (RAM). “It’s like Doctors Without Borders in rural Tennessee.” “It’s very normal for kids here, like a 13-year-old has never been to the dentist,” she adds. She said the RAM clinic is “like Coachella, but not as satisfying…There are hundreds of people with their children trying to get seen by a doctor.” It’s similar to Congo. “We depend on missionaries to do what the government should be doing here.”
Then there’s the language used in public conversations to describe Trump’s rural supporters, language she argues would never be tolerated by other marginalized communities. “Progressive people will really bend over backwards not to laugh at people who face different kinds of prejudice, and they will tell people to give them the benefit of the doubt. And structural racism has left this poor woman poorly informed,” she said. . “I will work hard to meet you in the middle. “We’re not doing the same for people who suffer from structural classism and forms of rural oppression.” It goes without saying that there are many “rural stereotypes of educated, knowledgeable, progressive and well-intentioned people.” She recalled a recent book tour. devil “The first question in the live radio interview was, ‘Why did you choose to write about fallen people?’ degenerate?”
Still, there is good reason why liberals are so quick to criticize Trump supporters. It’s not hard to find them outside Trump rallies, for example, offering crazy political beliefs and conspiracy theories. I’ve talked about how almost everyone I’ve met this year believes Trump won the 2020 election.
“It’s not literally crazy for people to believe that every available news outlet, including church leaders, is saying that,” she countered. “We all rely on sources we trust. “I think it’s crazy for some people to not think that way even when everyone around them says so.” Kingsolver continued. “What progressive people say about gender sounds strange to many of my neighbors and my family. In other words, the idea is that you are determined to have a gender even though you were not born with it. That sounds crazy to a lot of people. “When you talk between these silos, everyone sounds crazy.”
Despite his roots in Appalachia, Kingsolver has a foot in both worlds. In July 2023, First Lady Jill Biden was seen reading a book. Demon Copperhead On the Delaware beaches. When I spoke with Kingsolver last May, she said the Biden campaign was trying to hold an event in Bristol, Virginia, to reach rural voters. Less than two weeks later, she attended a White House state dinner for Kenyan President William Ruto.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden enjoy a beach day at Rehoboth Beach. The First Lady is reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer Prize winner. Photo by CNN @JayMcMichaelCNN pic.twitter.com/05Fzl6s3Ou
— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) July 30, 2023
The Bristol incident did not materialize before Biden dropped out of the presidential race. But Harris appears to have picked up where Biden left off by deploying Kingsolver for Friday’s fundraiser. The top ticket price here is $6,600. (Kingsolver fans can still watch the conversation for $25.) Kingsolver will not participate in the joust with Vance. Friday’s fundraiser is her only Harris event. “I’m not really good at knocking on doors or making phone calls,” she says. “I am a writer. So when I saw the first announcement of this ‘Writers for Harris’ event series, I immediately wanted to get involved. “This is what I can do!”
