Dear John,

Join us for a discussion of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead this coming Sunday, December 17, 2023 at 11 AM Eastern / 8 AM Pacific with Scott Hiley. Register here to attend and receive the recording.

The book is a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, transplanted from industrial England to modern-day Appalachia. Young Damon (a/k/a Demon) Fields grows up in the mountains of western Virginia, in a community beset by poverty, unemployment, and addiction. Caught in a broken child welfare system and a society that treats him as expendable, he struggles to hold on to humor, kindness, creativity, and hope.

But his coming-of-age is also a coming to class consciousness, to the realization that degradation and despair don’t spring naturally from the soil of Appalachia. And this brings him to struggle against the lies and distortions that prop up corporate power.

Kingsolver's novel is a magnificent tribute to working-class values, a reminder of the power of art in ideological struggle, and a sorely needed antidote to reactionary propaganda about the rural working class. A question and answer period will follow the opening overview.

Register now!

Dee Miles
CPUSA Education Commission