I read Demon Copperhead a while ago from a recommendation of a friend. It was a tough read about a young boy from poverty with an addicted mother. I kept hoping it would get better, but even when it did, I knew that it wouldn't last, and, it didn't. Barbara Kingsolver wrote with clues from the prospective of the boy at an older age, so at least I knew he lived through his hard times. The book's ending, while not being concrete, gave hope.
It was another read like Hillbilly Elegy, where we are put into a world we really - if we're lucky - know very little about. White trash and rednecks being two other names for hillbilly, I came to see that, like with so many Blacks, what we might project onto others isn't all, or even most, of the story. The racism and discrimination of the past can compound, making it hard for Black people to get ahead. There is so much more.
Whether black or poor 'white trash' or 'rednecks', words Demon had been called throughout his life, it can make for almost insurmountable obstacles for a good life. Working hard and pulling oneself up with one's bootstraps isn't easy when there's no one there to help: no good jobs, no government's understanding, no money saved in the bank, what with each crisis pulling people more and more into debt, and then, worse, others willing to take advantage, like the Sacklers of Purdue Pharma.
Having watched The Bear with family back in the spring, I have been waiting for the second season. Although we don't have the ability to stream it, I know it'll be there to watch sometime. It too is about the hard luck people - this time in Chicago - struggling to work, to make a life to better themselves, but like Demon Copperhead, drugs have taken their toll on some. With friends and people around them who care, they are struggling to make gains, or so I thought at the end of season one.
wrote about this new season, and how people who are struggling need hope and a place to make that hope.
Finally, I read another book A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano. This one not about the down and out but about small town life and the lives we live there. Set in a southern town, one of the main characters is Flannery O'Connor, a real life writer....of tough stories with tough plot lines where people go through tough times.
Another character in the book mentioned to her that it seems many of her books have violence and hard times which left her characters at their lowest points in their lives. The character found that sad. Flannery replied that, to her, thinking of the next step, the potential to come out, that it ended with a chance at grace.
Interesting. Living through hard times, and going beyond them, we can find grace. Oh, I'm not saying everyone can. Not everyone, in fact most didn't in Demon Copperhead, but some can. Many people at their worst moment do come out the other side.
Grace. We fall, we go on, and then with luck, effort, friends and family, and love, we rise. The worst doesn't have to be the end. It can be a beginning too.
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