DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF WASTE AND SLOW VIOLENCE IN ANN PANCAKE’S STRANGE AS THIS WEATHER HAS BEEN.

Abstract

This paper addresses the representation of environmental destruction in the Appalachian coalfields in the novel Strange as this Weather Has Been (Ann Pancake, 2007). Pancake’s book follows the disbandment of a family of six in southern West Virginia and presents us with the dilemmas they must confront, most notably whether they should leave or stay and organize against the coal company. I seek to analyze the ways in which the novel conveys each character’s embodied, material experience when facing environmental destruction; moreover, I examine the way in which slow violence is represented in the text. Focusing on Appalachia’s extractivist past (and present), I argue that Strange as this Weather Has Been ultimately helps to counter the existing prejudice against poor whites in the region by fostering reader empathy through the textual recreation of the bleak environmental condition in the novel’s storyworld.