The Rural Literature Book Club is meeting online for the fourth time on April 28th, 2024, 8pm GMT/ 3pm EST. Join people from all over the world to discuss Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
About the Rural Literature Book Club
You can join the Rural Literature Book Club here, or email RyanDennis@themilkhouse.org to receive the Zoom link.
The conversation is friendly, inclusive and insightful, and generally lasts about an hour. The group meets online three to four times a year.
Previously discussed books include The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, All Among the Barley by Melissa Harrison and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.
To help facilitate discussion and to get the wheels turning, here are a few questions that we might discuss if the group is interested.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
1. In considering how Kingsolver chooses to present the story, who do you think she has in mind as the intended audience for this book?
2. In what ways are rural stereotypes confirmed or upended in the story?
3. In what ways does Kingsolver foreshadow the devastation of the opioid crisis before it gets introduced in the story?
4. In what ways might Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield and Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead be in dialogue, and what might that say about our current society?
5. Demon Copperhead is not the only rural retelling of a canonical text to win the Pulitzer Prize, as Jane Smiley’s recasting on King Lear on an Iowa farm, A Thousand Acres, did so in 1992. Is that a coincidence, or is there something particular to that act that is attractive to either audiences or award bodies?
Feel free to add your own questions in the comment section…