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.