Madeleine Wright

Madeleine Wright (she/her) is a recent MA graduate from Boston University in the Department of English and American Literature. Her undergraduate degree is also in English Literature from Rhodes College. Madeleine’s research interest is in literature of the New South, with a particular focus on hybridity.

“Like the Worst, She’s a Woman”: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones Through an Ecological Feminist Lens

In her novel Salvage the Bones (2011), Jesmyn Ward presents the disproportionately devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on low-income, rural Black communities as an apocalyptic event, one wrought about by elites participating in a patriarchal system. While Katrina is merely one of many disasters brought about by climate change, the storm causes a complete collapse of Black civilization in Ward’s fictional Bois Sauvage, while the rich white residents are able to flee to safety, therefore escaping most of the destruction. Ward grounds her text in an ecofeminist critique, presenting male attempts at domination over nature and male attempts at domination over women as interconnected, bringing together “the gendered intersections of both human-human injustices and human-environmental exploitations.”^[1] Ward does this by subverting the social hierarchy and collapsing boundaries between the human and natural world, as well as drawing a comparison between her protagonist, Esch, Esch’s brother’s dog, China, and Katrina itself. Katrina, thus, functions as a feminized climate catastrophe, caused by the privileged even though marginalized communities pay the ultimate price.  In Salvage the Bones, Ward presents an ecofeminist reading of Hurricane Katrina in order to warn her audience that, without intervention, vulnerable populations will continue to experience climate apocalypses as a consequence of patriarchal systems.

In order to understand how Ward does this, it is necessary to clarify how she equates the oppression faced by humans, animals, and nature by blurring the boundaries between the three categories throughout the novel. Although these are commonly regarded as separate entities, Ward does not distinguish between them, instead subverting the binary from the beginning of the text. In Salvage the Bones, the “natural” is generally defined as anything that comes directly from the earth, including human processes like sex and speech. Everything else is man-made, including structures and anything manufactured, like clothing. It is clear, however, that these definitions are arbitrary and do not allow for nuance or hybridity. Ward establishes a clear connection between the Batiste family and the land in Salvage the Bones through extensive nature allegory and figurative language, destabilizing constructed boundaries between the human and natural world. This imagery is fundamental to the text, running deep to its core.

Esch and her family, the Batistes, are immersed into the natural world as they consider their home to extend far beyond the walls of their house. In fact, Esch’s father relies upon a combination of natural and man-made elements to protect the house as he prepares for hurricane season each year: “scavenging old wood, he pulls boards from Mother Lisbeth’s house, the chicken coop, or scraps from the Pit to protect the family.”^[2] Esch also reminisces on hunting for eggs in their chicken coop with her mother, Rose, though she “can’t remember exactly how [she] followed” her.^[3] A chicken coop is yet another example of the integration between natural and man-made in Ward’s novel, a man-made construction to promote the natural process of laying eggs. Beyond the practical functions, like survival, the earth is also a source of comfort and enjoyment for the family. Ward shows this when Junior, Esch’s brother, describes how he plays under the house. Esch imagines him “digging sleeping holes like a dog would, laying on his back in the sandy red dirt and listening to [their] feet slide and push across floorboards.”^[4] For Junior, a pleasant time is experiencing life like an animal. Thus, the earth sustains their family, functioning as both life-giver and entertainer. Her emphasis on the physical land suggests that the “most valuable resource this community of primarily Black families has is the land itself.”^[5]

Ward also collapses the distinction between human and animal as she clarifies Esch’s perspective on sex, since sex is something that Esch perceives as natural. Of course, sex is not a solely human experience, but humans do ritualize it in a way that makes them distinct. However, because Esch grounds these experiences in her environment, it collapses the barriers between humans and nature. She compares having sex to “swimming through water.”^[6] She says that both are “easy for [her] to do,” and when she described pulling “the water with [her] hands, [kicking] with [her] feet” and letting the water push her forward, Esch remarks that “that was sex.”^[7] Both swimming and sex, to Esch, are completely natural and intuitive. In comparing it to swimming, Esch shows that she conceptualizes her life as something grounded in the environment: she understands human occurrences as corresponding to natural ones.

Furthermore, when Esch does have sex, it is always outside and therefore grounded in the natural world. It is almost a de-anthropomorphic treatment, as Ward establishes her characters similarly to the other living beings in their environment, as opposed to a human-first hierarchy. Rather than humanizing animals, she is animalizing humans. It is significant that Ward animalizes the Batistes, given how white supremacists have historically dehumanized Black people by equating them to animals. Her characters’ identities “are merged with those of animals, much like derogatory cultural stereotypes that paint African Americans as non-human, or animalistic, in character.”^[8] Ward subverts this racist stereotype, however. She does not reduce her Black characters by animalizing them, as the Batiste family is simultaneously allowed nuance, complexity, and proximity to nature. Instead, she critiques the notion that humans in general are somehow exceptional, positioned above animals in the social hierarchy. Just as in ecofeminist theory, Ward “reconceives what it means to be human as emerging from our relationships with networks of humans as well as other species and ecosystems,” furthering this notion through extensive figurative language tying people to animals and to their environment.^[9]

Ward also ties Esch and her family to non-human natural forces, broadening the audience’s perception of what makes up the environment. At one point, Skeet cuts himself badly climbing through a window. Esch notes that he smells like the “constant wind that pushes the tide in over the Gulf of Mexico, but not the tide at the beach. The tide at the Bay of Angels, which smells of the oysters fresh dug from the mud.”^[10] As Skeet cleans his wound, he is not only removed from the animal world, he is compared to an abstract natural force. Wind is established as an active agent here, with enough autonomy to “push” the tide. Wind is also distinctive, as Esch considers winds to have clear identities and scents. When Katrina hits, the wind actually sighs and says “hello.”^[11]

The relationship between Esch’s childhood and the natural world is further developed when Randall reflects upon the ritual of chicken slaughter that their mother used to perform. This memory resurfaces as Skeet prepares to kill one of China’s puppies who is suffering from parvo. Skeet says that it is not “time yet,” then Randall adds that their mother only used to kill chickens “when it was something special, like one of [their] birthday’s or her and Daddy’s anniversary.”^[12] These statements imbue the acts with an element of tradition, as there is evidently an appropriate time to kill an animal, almost as with a religious sacrifice. Randall then recounts the practice in vivid detail, even noting that “she would put her hand over the bird’s face like she was hiding it from seeing something, and then she would grab and twist.”^[13] After this, though Skeet has a gun, he elects to kill the puppy the same way his mother used to kill the chickens. They have inherited their mother’s respect for nature and humane slaughter, shown as Skeet allows Esch to name the puppy even though they know she is going to die. This suggests that they only kill animals when they must, and that they do it respectfully when they do. For their mother, killing was for food. For Skeet, it is a protective measure, one that minimizes the puppy’s suffering and ensures that the disease does not spread. Furthermore, they align special events and celebrations with the slaughter of chickens. Esch marks these memories by their connections to the natural world.

This connection to the land, however, ensures that the people are more profoundly affected by the hurricane than the animals, who can flee. The connection to animals also makes their disappearance in the “endless eye” of the storm all the more ominous and significant, as the animals are not chained to their places like Esch and her family are.^[14] It is on her run that Esch notices that “there are no chattering squirrels, no haunted rabbits, no wading turtles in the woods.”^[15] She remarks that she doesn’t know where the animals have gone, but there are none there.^[16] Ward allows her audience, presumably informed about the devastating effects of Katrina, to understand that the animals have disappeared because they can sense the storm’s approach. The rich families take the same action, migrating just like the animals do. Ward emphasizes this connection between the rich and nature through her diction, using words like “chattering,” “haunted,” and “wading” to once again collapse the binary. This disappearance helps Esch and her family to understand the gravity of the hurricane, as they attempt to steal supplies from a rich family. Unlike the animals, however, they don’t have anywhere to go, as they are tied to the land as a result of their poverty.

Just before the storm actually hits, Ward reaffirms this connection between the animals and the Batistes as she parallels the effects of class with the animals. Esch explains that, when her mother first told her about hurricanes, she “thought that all the animals ran away, that they fled the storms before they came, that they put their noses to the wind days before and knew.”^[17] She individualizes this sentiment by detailing how she thought the deers and foxes might behave. However, she says, she comes to think that “maybe the small don’t run.”^[18] Instead, just like Esch and her family, the squirrels “pack shed fur and acorns from the oaks in the bowels of their trees,” while the rabbits “stand in profile, shank to shank… and they tunnel down through the red clay and the sand.”^[19] While rich people and big animals have the ability to run, Esch aligns herself with the small animals as they refuse to, or are unable to, abandon their home and their environment. The small animals serve as a model of resilience for the humans just before this devastating hurricane strikes. Ward uses human descriptors while she forges this connection, but places the actions of the animals squarely within the natural world: they “pack” and “stand,” but they behave as a squirrel or a rabbit is supposed to behave.^[20]

As Ward again minimizes the distinction between the human and animal worlds, she also presents nature as a life-giver and means of salvation, even as it devastates. It is actually nature that saves Esch’s family from the storm, as a fallen tree becomes their means of rescue. They are forced to saw through the roof of their attic as the storm screams “I have been waiting for you,” looking upon the integration of human possessions and natural objects left in the remnants of their yard.^[21] Esch notices the “refrigerators and lawn mowers and the RV and mattresses” alongside “trees and branches breaking, popping like Black Cat firecrackers” as the storm enforces a complete disintegration of the separation between nature and human.^[22] As they venture to jump off the roof and climb the tree to higher land, Randall, Esch’s brother, tells Junior that it is “just like the first time [they] swam in the pit.”^[23] Ward attributes human characteristics to the storm, as it “fingers the gaping roof” once they arrive to safety, using this figurative language to describe Katrina at the same time that a tree delivers them to security. Just as people do by naming the storm, Ward humanizes the hurricane, made of wind and water.

In blurring the boundaries between humans, nature, and animals, Ward is also able to create direct parallels between Esch, China, and Hurricane Katrina: all three characters are mothers, all three are oppressed by patriarchy, and all three fight back. The text is thoroughly preoccupied with life-giving and motherhood, as Esch searches for other role models while she navigates pregnancy without her own mother. Thus, Esch turns to China, her brother’s pitbull, and Katrina itself as models for motherhood. Ward therefore aligns a person, a dog, and a storm, establishing them as equals.

The text opens as China gives birth to puppies and Esch observes, noting that “what China is doing is nothing like what Mama did when she had [her] youngest brother, Junior.”^[24] China’s birthing is more aggressive than Mama’s. Esch watches and explains that “what China is doing is fighting, like she was born to do.”^[25] Here, Ward distinguishes between humans and animals — China is, initially, nothing like a human. However, later, as the first puppy is born, Esch remarks that “China is blooming,” drawing a clear connection between Esch’s mother and China, as Esch calls her brother “Mama’s last flower.”^[26] As Esch watches China’s labor, her own mother still serves as her point of reference, as she “does not narrate China’s experience but veers into memories of the mother,” therefore filtering “all of the experiences through thoughts of her mother.”^[27] Just as Bois Sauvage is later forced to piece together the remnants of their society and rebuild after the hurricane, Esch is forced to salvage a model for motherhood based on her fractured memories of her own mother, China, and the storm itself.

This scene also establishes the intimate relationship between Skeet and China, as Esch notes that he is “focused on China like a man focuses on a woman when he feels that she is his, which China is.”^[28] Here, China is just like any other mother giving birth. Later, Skeet even claims that “between man and dog is a relationship… equal.”^[29] Notably, he does not say “his dog,” implying no ownership over China. While the relationship between Skeet and China defies the traditional boundaries between human world and environment, the dynamic works both ways. As Esch and her family prepare for the storm to hit, they attempt to catalog the amount of food in the house, lamenting the minimal supplies. During this conversation, Skeet “looks at China like he would dive into her if he could and drown,” then asks his siblings if they’ve ever “tasted dog food.”^[30] Though Randall shudders, Skeet explains that it’s “salty. Taste like pecans, and if worse comes to worst, [they could] eat like China.”^[31] This statement implies that Skeet has tried dog food before different duress, equating it to a food more commonly consumed by humans. Though Skeet acknowledges that there is a distinction between dog and human food, his willingness to “eat like China” again collapses the boundaries between the human and animal spheres. Just as he treats her like a human, he behaves like a dog. Furthermore, the suggestion to eat dog food as the storm hits suggests that just as “everything will be washed clean” once Katrina arrives, humans and animals will be equalized as they are both equally battered by natural forces.^[32]

Skeet regards China and their puppies with as much respect as his actual family; as the storm grows closer, Skeet begins to insist, against the wishes of his family, that China and the puppies come into the house to brave the weather. He even says that “if they go” stay in the shed, he will too.^[33] His father resists immediately, but Skeet’s commitment to China forces him to buckle down. He cares for her so much that he is willing to make a dangerous bluff, a threat to brave the hurricane unprotected in order to stay by her side. As his father and brother protest, Skeet says that “everything deserves to live… and her and the puppies going to live.”^[34] This illustrates a sentiment going beyond his care for China, a more general reverence for living things. He does not say everyone, meaning every human, but everything. He does not even speak about the creatures he has a distinct relationship with, instead expressing an unequivocal, broad commitment to the natural world.

Though Skeet does esteem China, he reinforces the social hierarchy when he chooses to save his sister over her. China does fall prey to the storm, swept away by the current as they attempt to make it out of the storm to higher ground. Skeet lets go of her in order to save his pregnant sister, as his hand becomes a “leash loop wrapped too tightly around [Esch’s] arm.”^[35] Skeet attempts to save his dog; she “scrabbles against” him as they try to swim to safety, but she “is nowhere” as he calls her and begs her to come back to him.^[36] He does, however, begin searching for her the minute the storm lets up. His face and chest are “running red” with blood from the broken glass they climbed through to safety, the water “at his waist”, but Skeet insists that he’s “got to find” China, that she is “waiting” for him somewhere in the storm.^[37]

When he cannot find her, Skeet decides to “camp out at the house because he was waiting for China to come back” instead of seeking shelter with his family and friends.^[38 Later, as his family brings him food and expresses their worry, Skeet insists that China is “going to come back to [him].”^[39] This sheer devotion to his dog, though he chose to save his sister, once again displays how much Skeet cares for and respects China. As they sit with him, Esch thinks about their future, detailing it as fact rather than imagination. She explains that China “will return,” and when she returns she will “bark and call [Esch] sister.”^[40] Finally, Esch says, China will return to them and “know that [she is] a mother.”^[41] Esch views China as an equal; she perceives China to be fully participating “in mothering without collapsing or recognizing a strict human-nonhuman separation.”^[42] China and Esch are aligned – they are shown to be the same here without humanizing China or dehumanizing Esch. Instead, Ward parallels these two figures in order to destabilize the boundary between human and animal, though Skeet’s choice ultimately reinforces the hierarchy. Because these boundaries are blurred throughout the novel, China’s abandonment also highlights which populations specifically suffer when dealing with the consequences of climate change. China is at the bottom of the social pyramid, so she suffers the most.

Ward ties in a nonhuman element by drawing a parallel between Esch, China, and Katrina, suggesting a reverence for the storm as a living being with agency. All three are characterized as mothers subject to patriarchal domination, and all three push back but are unable to force those who dominate them to take accountability. Ward includes a biblical quote from Deuteronomy in the epigraph, which states that “I kill and I make alive.” By attributing this quote to Katrina, Ward not only humanizes the storm, but feminizes it by aligning it with motherhood. This is also reflected in the text, occurring in the text for the first time as Esch’s father tells them that the storm has been named. Though this is a typical practice, it nevertheless establishes storms as individual entities and gives them distinct identities. This practice also allows for the gendering of storms. Specifically, Esch’s father says “the storm, it has a name now. Like the worst, she’s a woman. Katrina.”^[43] Katrina is privy to both feminization and misogyny here, as Esch’s father places womanhood upon her. His constructed version of the storm is that she is a woman, even using the female pronoun, and that this is a bad thing, the worst thing. Because Esch’s father perceives the storm to be feminine and treats her as such, Katrina is then feminine. Though a storm is theoretically ungendered, the men around her construct the hurricane to be a woman and she is therefore subject to constructs of femininity and misogyny.

Just as Ward describes Esch’s friends and family through natural language, she describes Katrina through human metaphor, thus equating her to Esch. Katrina “enfolds [Esch] in its hand,” “laughs,” and even “slaps” Esch.^[44] At one point, as aforementioned, the storm even speaks directly to Esch, screaming “I have been waiting for you” as the roof opens and they are exposed to the elements.^[45] Esch responds, asking “who will deliver me?” as she fights for her life, to which the storm merely shushes her.^[46] The word “deliver” implies more than just a fight for her own survival, but for that of her child too, playing on the connotation between “delivery” and childbirth. The maternal implications of this exchange make the storm’s shushing almost reassuring, taking on the role of Esch’s absent mother to carry her to this next stage of life. Birth here does not mean just that of Esch’s child, but of Esch herself as the storm destroys their home and forces a kind of social rebirth, as it collapses their entire society and drives them to rebuild completely. Katrina is therefore a mother as she “births” this new society, making her a living being and maternal figure.

Beyond metaphor, the storm is also given human traits and a kind of personality, which again ties her to Esch, as she notes that “Katrina surprised everyone with her uncompromising strength, her forcefulness, the way she lingered.”^[47] The repetition of female pronouns is significant here, as Ward genders the storm just as Esch’s father does. Through this, Ward draws a parallel between Katrina and China, both “mother” figures for Esch. The comparison is more schematic, but most apparent in the brutal love and violence reflected in both figures. For China, this manifests as she pushes away her own puppy suffering from parvo, leaving him to die.^[48] She even directly kills one of her puppies, closing “her jaw around the puppy’s neck as she does when she carries him.”^[49] She takes away life just as she gives it, a thoroughly maternal murder. Esch says that if China could speak, she would ask her “is this what motherhood is?”^[50] As with Katrina, this unforgiving depiction of motherhood ties back to the Deutoronomy quote in the epigraph: China is an arbiter of both death and life, she brings life and takes it away.^[51]

Esch attributes this same kind of brutal love to Katrina, tying China to Katrina. The wake of destruction that the hurricane leaves after it ravages Esch’s home parallels her mother’s death, which caused her father to become an alcoholic. Just as Katrina strips them of their material possessions and ties, Esch’s mother’s death brought about emotional devastation to their family. Esch directly calls Katrina a mother figure as she looks towards her future, imagining telling her child about “the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered.”^[52] She describes the “murderous mother who cut [them] to the bone but left [them] alive… left [them] to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes,” recalling the hurricane’s fingers reaching into the attic as Esch and her family climbed the tree to safety.^[53] Here, the storm functions as the decider of life, causing death just as it gives birth, leaving Esch and the others to rebuild their lives and “crawl.”^[54] The storm collapses their entire civilization and forces them to create a new one, “birthing” a new society. At one point, Esch describes Randall and herself as “newly born.”^[55] These factors contribute to the humanization of Katrina, also establishing a parallel between the storm, China, and Esch; thus placing human, hurricane, and dog within the same realm, establishing them as equals.

The link between these three mothers also draws a parallel between the domination of women and the domination of nature. The abuse that Esch and China experience as a means of patriarchal oppression is reflected in Katrina’s resistance, nature’s refusal to abide by the boundaries set by humans. Specifically, it is a rejection of human domination — male domination in particular. Esch cannot control her unplanned pregnancy, imposed upon her by Manny, and China cannot decide when Skeet forces her to fight. However, just as Manny is unable to control Esch’s pregnancy as he attempts to deny his paternity, humans are unable to exert control over Mother Nature. In New Orleans, this manifested physically as the levees “protecting” the city “gave way under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina… as they simply were not built to withstand a storm of such ferocity.”^[56] This parallel poses “environmental and reproductive injustice as intertwined, material effects of debility enacted on human body-minds and on more-than-human environments.”^[57] Ward roots femininity within nature to clarify the connection between human exceptionalism and patriarchy.

Ward establishes femininity as a natural force by repeatedly describing birth through flower metaphors. This appears in the first image of the text, as Esch reminisces on her brother Junior’s birth during China’s labor. Junior is born “purple and blue as a hydrangea,” described as “Mama’s last flower” as it is this birth that kills her.^[58] Mama touches Junior gently “like she was afraid she’d knock the pollen from him, spoil the bloom.”^[59] Just like the Earth, Esch’s mother is bringing life and creating nature here as Junior is compared to a flower. However, it is also this “flowering” that kills her. She says she does not want to go to the hospital, but Esch’s father “drags her from the bed to his truck, trailing her blood.”^[60] He attempts to exert control over her and goes against what she believes is natural, giving birth in her own bed. Though she dies while giving birth, an act usually associated with femininity, Ward suggests it is not only the maternal act of deliverance that ends her life, but rather Esch’s father’s attempt to remove her to a hospital against her wishes. Through this, patriarchal dominance is portrayed as deadly to women, a force that pushes against the natural process of a home birth.

Ward presents this ability to bring about life as a feminine power. After China gives birth, Skeet attempts to continue having her fight, but Manny remarks that “any dog give birth like that is less strong after… take a lot out of an animal to nurse and nurture like that. Price of being female.”^[61] He gives Esch a look as well, intended to slight her for her femininity. It is clear that Manny understands the sheer stamina required to give birth, but he regards it as a weakening. Skeet, however, laughs, insisting that “that’s power.”^[62] He goes on to add that “to give life… is to know what’s worth fighting for. And what’s love.”^[63] Skeet understands and expresses that the feminine ability to give life is the ultimate strength: it is empowering, rather than diminishing. It is also the most natural force imaginable, and one that is distinctly feminine.

Even as Skeet sees China’s femininity as power, he also attempts to control her by forcing her into dogfighting. Specifically, he wants her to fight Rico’s dog Kilo, who fathered her puppies. Though Esch and her other brother insist that China is not ready, that it is too soon since she had puppies, that “she’s a mother” Skeet insists on proving her strength to the other men by having her fight a male dog because her reputation as a fighting dog reflects upon him and affects how he is perceived by the other men.^[64] China is, however, evidently strong enough, as she fights Kilo until he “screams [and] keens,” making Rico scream for China to hold.^[65] She is feminized in this triumph, as Ward envisions China addressing Kilo as “father” and explaining that she does not “have milk” for him.^[66] Skeet even instructs her to “make them know they can’t live without [her],” (my italics) again establishing China as a bringer of life. Though it does represent an example of China’s maternal strength, it still depicts the ultimate control that Skeet has over her as he forces her to fight. She is therefore still a victim to his attempts of male dominance.

Esch is also abused, both by Manny and by her lot in life. She is abused by the system, as her lack of proper access to reproductive care and education results in her pregnancy at fourteen. She has no choice or autonomy in her pregnancy, nor a mother to guide her. As the text has already shown through Esch’s mother’s death, this absence of healthcare is dangerous and can even be deadly. However, Esch is also a victim to Manny’s attempts at control. Initially, Esch is completely submissive to Manny, calling him “the sun,” and suggesting that she revolves around him while he is her priority.^[67] She also displays that this feeling is not mutual when she says that he has “never kissed me except like this, with his body, never his mouth.”^[68] In fact, at points, Manny refuses to even look at Esch while they are having sex.^[69] Evidently, while Esch loves Manny, he is merely using her for sex. This is directly established when Esch attempts to touch his chest once and he pushes her off, remarking “you know it ain’t like that.”^[70] Thus, he has control over her, deciding where and how they have sex.

This dynamic comes to a head when he realizes she is pregnant and becomes violent in response, a significant example of a male attempt at domination. Because Manny refuses to so much as look at Esch, he does not make this connection until they are hooking up in a bathroom stall. Manny literally throws Esch “up and off of him” when he realizes, yelling an expletive and shoving her into the bathroom door.^[71] He becomes violent specifically when he comes to understand her femininity, punishing her by exerting his physical strength over her as a means of controlling her movement. Later on, when Esch tells Manny she is pregnant with his child, he denies it thoroughly, saying he has “nothing” here.^[72] She takes her anger out on him, slapping him “over and over,” but he “picks [her] up off the ground, and throws.”^[73] Again, his masculine strength gives him power to control her movements and resist her attacks in a way that she cannot. He dominates her specifically through male strength and violence, just as she reveals her femininity.

Just as Esch and China are abused, so is nature. Ward portrays the hurricane as “one in a string of ongoing disasters wrought by global, contemporary forces, such as anthropogenic climate.”^[74] Climate change is a result of human attempts to assert domination over nature and claim human exceptionalism. The notion of anthropocentrism is a direct parallel to China and Esch’s abuse because it is inexorably tied to patriarchy, specifically enforcing the domination of human males. Katrina, then, is nature’s response to this abuse, and the response is very intentionally feminized. Esch does not necessarily regard the storm as a destroyer, even expressing some awe as she says that “Katrina is the mother [she] will remember.”^[75] Therefore, Katrina is represented as an “event that exacerbated and exposed—rather than created—scenes of injustice.”^[76] At the same time, “Katrina is depicted as the continuation of a longer legacy of oppression figured by land destruction.”^[77] The storm is a symptom of climate change, one in a string of natural events that have primarily devastated the most vulnerable communities.

These systemic injustices, from racial to financial, contribute to Ward’s characterization of Katrina as an apocalyptic event for the people of Bois Sauvage, Esch’s fictionalized Louisina hometown. While rich white people look towards the future for an impending collapse of civilization, thanks to the effects of climate change, this event of complete social destruction has already happened for many marginalized communities. Hurricane Katrina wrought around a collapse of society into nature, but Ward illustrates Rob Nixon’s principle of “slow violence” as she illuminates the cracks in the environmental foundation that led up to this upheaval by minimizing the difference between human, capitalist structures versus the environment. Nixon defines slow violence as systemic violence, rather than an immediate one.

By slow violence I mean a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all… violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales.^[78]

Nixon presents climate change as a key example of slow violence, as it is marginalized communities who pay the price for the actions of the elite. Thus, considering Katrina as an apocalyptic event for such communities illuminates the discrepancies in how climate change affects the poor and rich respectively.

Esch’s family lives in extreme poverty and they do not have the resources that rich white people do to save themselves when the storm hits, illustrating how the poor are disproportionately impacted by the actions of the rich. This inequity is first displayed as Ward describes Mother Lizbeth and Papa Joseph’s house. Esch calls her grandparents’ home a “drying animal skeleton, everything inside that was evidence of living salvaged over the years.”^[79 This sentiment alludes to the title of the novel, Salvage the Bones, and therefore imbues this particular phrase with importance. It is especially significant to Ward’s point because it stresses the different reality in which poor people live. In order to survive, Esch and her family are forced to pick apart their grandparents’ home to sustain their own. There is no room for preservation, as “needing a bed for [Esch] and Skeet to sleep in, or needing a pot when [Mama’s] turned black, was more important than keeping the house a shrine.”^[80] Esch qualifies this statement, however, by noting that that is what her father said.^[81] Such is the reality for impoverished families: they are forced to salvage the bones of their ancestors and pick apart what is left of their lives, rather than maintaining and celebrating their remains, in order to survive. Esch even says that “Papa Joseph is no more than overalls and gray shirts and snuff and eyes turned blue with age.”^[82] She does not have the same license to sentimentalize her grandfather that a rich white girl might, she cannot preserve his memory if she is to live. Ward’s focus on the “children of this community further underscores its vulnerability of its people as they lack the resources that would better equip them to weather the storm and its subsequent floods.”^[83] More specifically, she concentrates on a Black, female child to illustrate the ecofeminist concept that the most vulnerable populations are hurt first by the climate’s response to patriarchal systems.

Ward illustrates how the actions of the rich have created cracks in the foundation for the poor, who face the consequences for actions that they did not take. Even as Katrina brings about a breakdown of civilization for white people, this had already begun to happen in Black Bois Sauvage, which already coexists with nature. Esch draws the line between “the black Bois that [they] knew” and the “white Bois that [they] didn’t” as she describes the racialized experience of school bussing in rural Louisiana, suggesting a de facto segregation in the town.^[84] This coexistence is shown as Esch describes the “few dirt scratched yards and thin siding houses and trailers” of the town. She goes on to compare the woods she lives in to the “ponds filled with slime and tall yellow grasses, and at night, frogs turn them teeming, singing a burping chorus,” the “clearings where deer feed, startle white, and kick away,” and the “turtles plowing through pine straw, mud, trying to avoid the pot.”^[85] In Bois Sauvage, there is no delineation between human spaces and animal spaces, representing a disintegration of capitalism. They do not have perfectly manicured lawns; instead, they share swimming pools with the frogs. While Katrina does destroy their homes, Ward’s portrayal of this gradual decline positions the hurricane as merely “one in a string of ongoing disasters wrought by global, contemporary forces, such as anthropogenic climate change, while also connecting the effects of such violence to histories of racial subjugation.”^[86] Because of the link between class-based oppression and racism, it is Bois Sauvage’s poverty that causes this gradual decline of their society — they do not have the money to maintain pools or perfect lawns, and the city is therefore overrun by nature. The boundaries are made thin by their poverty and when the levees break. At the same time, the residents of Bois Sauvage cohabitate with nature in a way that demonstrates the minimal negative impact they have had on the environment. Nevertheless, because of the actions of the elite, they are the ones who face the consequences of climate change.

The rich, however, are mostly absolved and removed from the effects of Katrina. When the mandatory evacuation is announced, the rich are the ones who have the resources to flee. Ward shows this socioeconomic inequality as Randall tells Esch that they are going to “the white people’s house” in order to get supplies.^[87] The white people live at the top of the hill, illustrating an income disparity even through their location within Bois Sauvage. The Batiste home is in a clearing in the woods, suggesting that “the black family is literally lost in the woods, trapped in the lowlands that are susceptible, and will succumb to, flood damage, whilst the white family evokes the American fantasy of the ‘city upon a hill.’”^[88] These unnamed white people are an abstract presence in the text, though Esch and her family often rely upon them for resources when they have no access. This is shown first when Skeet steals worming medication for China, then during the hurricane. Of course, the white people are long gone by the time Esch and Randall arrive at the house, which is boarded up in preparation for the incoming storm, reaffirming the boundaries between man-made and natural. Though they have evacuated, they still have the means to protect their property. Furthermore, this preparation emphasizes the boundaries between Black Bois Sauvage and white Bois Sauvage, as even “though white homes are nicer, better maintained and stocked with materials that the characters can use to rebuild their homes and care for their families, salvaging in the white Bois becomes theft.”^[89] The contrast between their experiences illustrates the ecofeminist notion that the most vulnerable populations are disproportionately hurt by the natural response to patriarchy.

Of course, when Randall and Esch eventually break in, they see that “there’s nothing there. It smells clean,” and that the white people “probably took everything when they evacuated.”^[90] There is no chance for Esch and her family to flee, they do not have anywhere to go, the equipment to handle such a journey, or the finances to undertake it. While Esch and her brothers are forced to steal in order to avoid eating dog food during the hurricane, the white people have emptied out their home and cleaned it, leaving absolutely nothing behind for any desperate salvagers. The contrast between these two racialized experiences is a significant example of slow violence at work, as marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by extreme climate events. Here, Ward leaves her audience with the “disconcerting idea that marginalized communities will become increasingly vulnerable to the ravages of climate change unless we implement strategies to address these interconnected social and environmental issues.”^[91]

Ward furthers Katrina’s identity as an apocalyptic event after Katrina destroys Bois Sauvage, as Ward depicts a complete collapse of civilization amongst those forced to shelter in their homes. Esch first notes that the “teenage girls and women foraging in the parking lot and hollow shell of a gas station, hunting the wreckage for something to eat, something to save.”^[92] All of their structures have disintegrated. Capitalist society no longer exists in Bois Sauvage and they are forced to, once again, salvage the bones by digging through the rubble of their town in order to sustain themselves. Esch also describes the people standing in “clusters at what used to be intersections, the street signs vanished, all they own in a plastic bag at their feet, waiting for someone to pick them up. No one is coming.”^[93] The narrative refuses to consider “rescue or recovery as resolution,” as the distribution of post-Katrina relief continued to privilege the white and wealthy, continuing the effects of slow violence.^[94] Bois Sauvage is “rendered irretrievable to those who once inhabited [it].”^[95] It does not exist anymore as it was, and the nature of its rural location means it will receive little mourning. The people of Bois Sauvage are left to fend completely for themselves, with absolutely no governmental assistance before the storm and little after. Thus, Katrina’s complete decimation of their society is an apocalypse that they did not cause, while they are left alone to rebuild it.

In Salvage the Bones, Ward presents Hurricane Katrina’s disproportionate devastation of the Black Bois Sauvage as an apocalyptic event, one which the Batistes and their peers did not bring about. Instead, the storm is a feminized climate catastrophe resulting from rich white male attempts at patriarchal control over nature. She grounds her ecofeminist approach through natural imagery and language in the text, collapsing the boundaries between the human and natural world, and drawing a parallel between Esch, China, and Katrina itself. Through this parallel, Ward also equates society and maternity, as Esch loses her models for motherhood and must salvage a new version for her own child. Ward therefore treats climate change as a mode of patriarchal oppression as she correlates male attempts of domination over women and over nature. Through Ward’s ecofeminist analysis of Hurricane Katrina, Salvage the Bones warns its audience, suggesting that without intervention, marginalized communities will continue to experience catastrophic events as a result of patriarchal systems.

End Notes

^[1] Greta Gaard, “Ecofeminism,” in Companion to Environmental Studies, ed. Noel Castree, et al., (Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 286.

^[2] Alvin Henry, “Jesmyn Ward’s Post-Katrina Black Feminism: Memory and Myth through Salvaging,” English Language Notes 57 (2019), 75.

^[3] Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 22.

^[4] Ward, 5.

^[5] Kelly Mckisson, “The Subsident Gulf: Refiguring Climate Change in Jesmyn Ward’s Bois Sauvage,” American Literature 93, no. 3 (2021), 488.

^[6] Ward, 22.

^[7] Ward, 22, 24.

^[8] Christopher W. Clark, “What Comes to the Surface: Storms, Bodies, and Community in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones,” The Mississippi Quarterly 68, no. 3-4 (2015), 349.

^[9] Gaard, 288.

^[10] Ward, 84.

^[11] Ward, 219.

^[12] Ward, 51.

^[13] Ward, 51.

^[14] Ward, 194.

^[15] Ward, 206-207.

^[16] Ward, 207.

^[17] Ward, 215.

^[18] Ward, 215.

^[19] Ward, 215.

^[20] Ward, 215.

^[21] Ward, 230.

^[22] Ward 231.

^[23] Ward, 232.

^[24] Ward, 1.

^[25] Ward, 2.

^[26] Ward, 2, 4.

^[27] Henry, 73.

^[28] Ward, 3.

^[29] Ward, 29.

^[30] Ward, 192.

^[31] Ward, 193.

^[32] Ward, 205.

^[33] Ward, 212.

^[34] Ward, 213.

^[35] Ward, 235.

^[36] Ward, 235.

^[37] Ward, 239-240.

^[38] Ward, 245.

^[39] Ward, 258.

^[40] Ward, 258.

^[41] Ward, 258.

^[42] Henry, 82.

^[43] Ward, 124.

^[44] Ward, 232, 234, 248.

^[45] Ward, 230.

^[46] Ward, 235.

^[47] Ward, 248.

^[48] Ward, 40.

^[49] Ward, 139.

^[50] Ward, 130.

^[51] For an explanation of Ward’s invocation of the Medea myth in Salvage the Bones, see Benjamin Eldon Stevens, “Medea in Salvage the Bones,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 25, (2018), 158-177.

^[52] Ward, 255.

^[53] Ward, 255.

^[54] Ward, 255.

^[55] Ward, 207.

^[56] Eu Kintisch, “Levees Came up Short, Researchers Tell Congress.” Science 310, no. 5750 (2005), 953.

^[57] Annie Bares, “”Each Unbearable Day”: Narrative Ruthlessness and Environmental and Reproductive Injustice in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones,” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. 44.3, (2019), 21.

^[58] Ward, 2.

^[59] Ward, 2.

^[60] Ward, 2.

^[61] Ward, 96.

^[62] Ward, 96.

^[63] Ward, 96.

^[64] Ward, 169.

^[65] Ward, 176.

^[66] Ward, 175.

^[67] Ward, 16.

^[68] Ward, 16.

^[69] Ward, 146.

^[70] Ward, 56.

^[71] Ward, 146.

^[72] Ward, 203.

^[73] Ward, 204.

^[74] Bares, 22.

^[75] Ward, 255.

^[76] Bares, 22.

^[77] Mckisson, 488.

^[78] Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 2.

^[79] Ward, 58.

^[80] Ward, 58.

^[81] Ward, 58.

^[82] Ward, 59.

^[83] Zackary Vernon, “Environmental Pedagogy, Activism, and Literature in the U.S. South,” South: A Scholarly Journal 50, no. 2 (2018), 233.

^[l84] Ward, 70.

^[85] Ward, 158.

^[86] Bares, 22-23.

^[87] Ward, 207.

^[88] Clark, 346.

^[89] Mckisson, 488.

^[90] Ward, 209.

^[91] Vernon, 233.

^[92] Ward, 250.

^[93] Ward, 250.

^[94] Bares, 34.

^[95] Nixon, 7.