“Soaked” Stories Explore Humanity’s Adaptability to Climate, Each Other https://ift.tt/ZJPSDae
In a deeply intimate and significantly important contribution to the ever-expanding canon of climate change-focused literature, Toby LeBlanc’s debut story collection Soaked addresses topics about which so many are afraid to speak.
In a time when 14.8 percent of the United States population denies climate change, with rates highest in the central and southern regions, LeBlanc’s stories address a wet and vastly reshaped Louisiana, focusing on landscapes, fragile environments and unique culture through keenly depicted scenarios rife with destructive flooding and apocalyptic hurricanes that bear a strong, speculative warning for those paying attention to melting glaciers, changing weather patterns and increased global temperatures.
Soaked not only addresses the impending doom and disaster unchecked climate change will unleash but discreetly reveals the increased reliance on technology. The stories’ speculative nature challenges readers to consider how technology continues to fit into humanity’s everyday existence, quietly displaying an ethical dilemma currently rippling through the tech and medical industries. One of the most memorable commentaries about technology arrives in “Relief,” a story about Arlis, who works as part of the Cajun Navy. As he performs his duties, Arlis checks on and takes care of elderly people like Mr. Hebert, a resilient old soul whose “entire world hangs precariously on carbon fiber, cement-filled pillars.” Mr. Hebert — like many of the marsh’s older, “sodden residents” — resists having “technology lo-jacked into his brain” even if the metal and plastic suits “allow the wearer to move in ways not possible in years.” The “prosthetic barriers” Mr. Hebert refuses to enter simply reinforce the “artificial barriers with the world,” since the wearers “already feel too removed from the life they should be living.” In LeBlanc’s future, such devices frequently act as a mechanism allowing wearers to adapt to their harsh, ever-changing and completely soaked environments. At the same time, because of Soaked’s transcendentalist bent, LeBlanc’s stories call for humans to reexamine their relationship with — and respect for — nature.
Another inherent theme is generational differences and the way location, environment and wealth exacerbate or smooth them. “Lite Enough” the story of young Lenae who relies on ancestral recipes for her restaurant business, highlights food trends like vegetarianism and veganism by exploring what it is to be an outlier to such trends because of heritage and culture. Lenae recalls that while “the rest of her parents’ generation were becoming solidly vegan and vegetarian, her family staged a rebellion” by continuing to incorporate meat into their meals despite society’s proclamation that doing so was “inhumane” and “ignorant.” As Lenae remembers her family’s rebellion, she admits feeling “perpetually stuck between the ideals of her generation and her region about what is enough.” For Lenae, altering her family’s recipes is like “altering her memory of them” something she refuses to do. Lenae briefly rises to fame because of her ancestral recipes and outdated cooking techniques. Even though she could easily escape the rural region in which she lives and earn a fortune by cooking with more modern, tech-driven methods, she chooses home, family and heritage, returning to her quaint life to cook her family’s recipes, using the past’s tried-and-true methods.
A similar theme emerges in the collection’s eponymous, and final, story. Catcher is an older, disgruntled farmer who recognizes that, like him, the land is tired. However, Catcher’s grandson, Quinlan, has some alternative farming ideas that could rejuvenate the family’s farming legacy by growing marijuana. Catcher’s “unfederalized/noncorporated” land is “all the more important,” despite the “rest of the country” that viewed this status as yet “another backward-looking practice which spit in the face of safety and innovation.” While others saw “going corporate or federal” as “the only way to ensure the most precious resource is handled with care,” Catcher holds a different perspective. Thus, the story delicately addresses the vast and immediate corporatization of land, resources and even agriculture by juxtaposing it with Catcher, who can be seen as resilient and brave for not falling into capitalism’s large, all-consuming maw. Still, “Soaked” is not just another depiction of an anti-authoritarian, anti-government lone wolf. Catcher and Quinlan work together to heal the land and grow their crop, navigating the fractures and chasms in their relationship and learning to like one another and work together. The journey holds unique, philosophical anecdotes for both Quinlan and readers: “Life here must struggle. As days of plenty become a memory, and pragmatism replaced blind optimism for a life scratching out less than what is deserved.” Moreover, LeBlanc’s careful, intimate depictions of the journey from seed to crop stands as a reminder that remembering the past is integral to navigating an uncertain future. For Quinlan, seeing his grandfather work in the fields is a time to learn from an older generation that worked elbows-deep in the soil they tilled, loving each crop they planted as though it were their own offspring.
Echoing novels like Andrew Forbes’s The Diapause and Alison Stine’s Trashlands, Soaked is filled with unforgettable characters and landscapes that mirror each other, the past from which they emerged and the future in which they must survive. LeBlanc offers the fiction world a new exploration of human nature and what they will and will not do to adapt their lives to unpredictable weather, environments and even those around them.
FICTION Soaked
By Toby LeBlanc
Cornerstone Press
Published February 11, 2025
0 Commentaires