Image courtesy of the Associated Press
The Keystone Pipeline leaked more than 200,000 gallons of oil on Nov. 16.
BY RILEY GUERRERO ’20
It would be difficult not to note the recent trend towards the apocalyptic — and post-apocalyptic — in American fiction. From the popularity of television shows like “The Walking Dead” to the recent “Blade Runner” reboot to the renowned “Hunger Games” trilogy and its kin in the “Divergent” series, the end-times seem to loom large even in the urban centers around the world. However, for many located just miles outside these steel and concrete cores, that apocalypse has already arrived, either domestically or abroad.
As reported by the New York Times, on Nov. 16, the Keystone pipeline leaked over 210,000 gallons of oil into South Dakota. This is a state named for the very native inhabitants that famously protested the new Dakota Access Pipeline last year because of its reported dangers. Eerily reminiscent of the water poisoning of Flint, Michigan, this disaster is a grim reminder that these environmental fights were a part of a larger, global battle, which has been waged for decades. The Bhopal disaster of 1983 in India, which is considered the worst industrial disaster ever recorded, killed and injured thousands, with government estimates of immediate deaths reported by publications such as the Atlantic at more than 5,000 and activists’ estimates at more than 20,000. This number is dwarfed, however, by the estimated injured, which over the last 34 years has grown to over 500,000. All of this happened under the watch of Union Carbide, a subsidiary of the American-owned Dow Chemical Company, when their chemical plant’s outdated and safety precautions were unable to prevent a massive chemical fire that engulfed the entire town.
Man-made environmental “disasters” — the word itself drenched in the thick, black veneer of unavoidable, tragic, and blameless occurrences — such as these continue to wreak havoc in the global sphere. A new literary response, then, rises from the ashes; a post-apocalyptic literature that can no longer call itself “speculative fiction.” In this literature, white saviors are viewed with scorn, fighting the mysterious companies and men in suits gets you killed, and, most terrifying of all, it’s grounded in truth.
“Animal’s People,” now celebrating its tenth year of publication, does not claim to be at the forefront of this literary movement — there are other books much older, much longer, perhaps much more eloquent. But much like its titular character, the young, crass, angry Animal, “Animal’s People” synthesizes voices and languages, and brings together communities in a conversation on ableism, capitalism , violence and humanity.
The book, written as a transcription of about two dozen tapes recorded by Animal himself, is the record of two years of his life, starting at the age of seventeen. Animal, severely maimed in his infancy by a chemical disaster that befell his fictional town of Khaupfur and left without a legal name, is forced by his twisted spine to “walk” on all fours, and lives by begging and thieving or giving tours or tragic interviews to voyeuristic white visitors and journalists.
Witty, coarse, bitter and achingly human, Animal recounts his exploits as he meets — and falls for — a well-off university student named Nisha. Joining the inner circle of her older activist boyfriend, Zafar, Animal becomes a cynical voice to question the growing campaign of nonviolent resistance against the malevolent “Kampani” that is responsible for the chemical disaster. Animal both scorns Zafar, who himself was not directly harmed by the Kampani but still spearheads the resistance, and also often argues the nature of change or vengeance through legal means when the law itself is corrupt, despite his and Zafar’s shared hatred for the Kampani itself. Animal’s narrative is filled with constant self-interrogation over whether or not he would want his spine to be straightened if he was given the opportunity, and the arrival of an ostensibly altruistic white doctor –– and potential Kampani agent — paints a nuanced picture of the politics and meaning of ability and disability that come out of disaster on a massive scale.