Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel, Demon Copperhead (2022) is an Appalachian spin on Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (1850). Demon is perhaps nine years old when he starts telling the story of his life. This excerpt is from Demon's reflections on something a father figure, Mr. Peg, has taught him about the meaning of "hillbilly" and related monikers. (Maggot, who features in this excerpt, is the nickname for Matt, Demon's very good friend and neighbor, who is Mr. Peg's grandson).
Hillbilly is a word everybody knows. Except they don’t. Mr. Peg at one time had a sticker on his truck bumper, “Hillbilly Cadillac,” but I was a small kid with no comprehension of anything. I mainly knew it from this one rerun that came on Nick at Night, Beverly Hillbillies, which was this family running around a city wearing ropes for a belt, packing antique rifles, and driving a junkass truck. Dead hilarious. More so than most of the old black-and-whites they ran, Gunsmoke, Munsters. Then one time Maggot’s high school cousin Bonnie saw us watching it and said we were clueless little turds. Bonnie was in Drama, Gifted, and Talented, your basic all-around ass pain. She said be careful who we laughed at, that family was supposedly us.
Meaning What? There’s not a person here that carries on like that or drives such crap, I assure you. Not even the Antique Tractor Club guys that tuck their shirts in their underpants and drive their ancient machines in the Christmas parade. Those guys are just old. But shooting the lights out, yodeling, keeping pigs in the house? Maggot told Bonnie to go screw her stuck-up boyfriend she met in Governor’s School and leave us be. Which She did. But I did wonder.
For, like, years. Until one time Mr. Peg was smoking by his truck and I was out there messing around, and thought to ask him why he had that on there, Hillbilly Cadillac. I asked him did it mean something bad, and his answer shocked me: hillbilly is like the n-word. And of course I said what everybody knows, n- is not a word to be used unless by assholes. He said all right, but some do, that aren’t white guys being assholes. Which is true, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, Tupac. Mr. Peg was not a fan of those guys, in fact the opposite, but they still got heard in the house thanks to Maggot and me, so he would know. The n-word is preferred by those guys. Mr. Peg said other people made up the n-word, not Ice Cube. And other people made up hillbilly to use on us, for the purpose of being assholes. But they gave us a superpower on accident. Not Mr. Peg’s words, but that’s how I understood it. Saying that word back at people proves they can’t ever be us, or get us, and we are untouchable by their shit.
The world is not at all short on this type of thing, it turns out. All down the years, words have been flung like pieces of shit, only to get stuck on a truck bumper with up-yours pride. Rednecks, moonshiners, ridge runners, hicks. Deplorables.
(pages 68-69).
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