Radical Red

This
winner of the 15th annual BOA Short Fiction Prize features linked
stories that indict the ultraconservative movement that emerged at the end of
the Cold War and extends into present day.

One strand of narratives follows a cohort of tea party
conservatives—a politician, a radioman, and a
televangelist—as their hyperbolic language
shapes the world around them and leads to episodes of time travel and body
horror. The second strand follows individuals victimized by conservative
policy: their voices, their futures, their very bodies stripped from their
possession. The final strand investigates the ways in which young conservatives
have adapted the nostalgic rhetoric of their forebears to carry on the twin
projects of minority oppression and environmental degradation—both of which they couch in the language of “freedom.”

The book is set in the South and parodies the stereotypes
that are still so prevalent here. Although the characters are more than mere
ciphers, they move through their semi-speculative world to illustrate ideas in
the same way as Richard Wright and Ursala Le Guin’s characters.

As income inequality soars, as industries become further mechanized, as
the populace cries out for some semblance of a social safety net and
corporations complain of too much regulation, we are long overdue for a strong
dose of protest literature.