@article{ART003397057},
author={Jieun Kwon},
title={Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class},
journal={Cross-Cultural Studies},
issn={1598-0685},
year={2026},
volume={79},
pages={37-64}
TY - JOUR
AU - Jieun Kwon
TI - Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class
JO - Cross-Cultural Studies
PY - 2026
VL - 79
IS - null
PB - Center for Cross Culture Studies
SP - 37
EP - 64
SN - 1598-0685
AB - This article examines Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior through the lens of class, exploring the limitations of dominant American climate discourse and the possibility of an alternative climate community. Drawing on Anna Brickhouse’s concept of “elsewhere catastrophe,” the article argues that the American exceptionalist tendency to externalize climate disasters obscures the vulnerability of economically marginalized populations within the United States. Against this tendency, Flight Behavior places the rural white poor of Appalachia at the center of its climate narrative, exposing the tensions between the environmental ethics of the urban middle class and the material demands of economic survival. Rather than reducing climate denial and seemingly anti-environmental choices to mere ignorance or political conservatism, the novel presents them as complex responses shaped by poverty and precarity. Furthermore, through the protagonist Dellarobia Turnbow’s encounters with Mexican climate migrants and with an imagined low-wage Chinese female worker, the novel develops a “cosmopolitanism from below” grounded in class consciousness. Her emerging sense of solidarity extends beyond economic poverty to encompass the shared experiences of climate vulnerability, gendered labor, and constrained mobility. Although this solidarity remains largely confined to the level of personal recognition, Flight Behavior extends Ursula K. Heise’s eco-cosmopolitanism by incorporating class sensitivity into its planetary perspective, thereby envisioning a climate community founded on solidarity with economically and ecologically vulnerable populations.
KW - Flight Behavior;climate fiction;elsewhere catastrophe;white poverty in Appalachian rural area;class-based cosmopolitanism
DO -
UR -
ER -
Jieun Kwon. (2026). Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class. Cross-Cultural Studies, 79, 37-64.
Jieun Kwon. 2026, "Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class", Cross-Cultural Studies, vol.79, pp.37-64.
Jieun Kwon "Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class" Cross-Cultural Studies 79 pp.37-64 (2026) : 37.
Jieun Kwon. Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class. 2026; 79 37-64.
Jieun Kwon. "Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class" Cross-Cultural Studies 79(2026) : 37-64.
Jieun Kwon. Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class. Cross-Cultural Studies, 79, 37-64.
Jieun Kwon. Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class. Cross-Cultural Studies. 2026; 79 37-64.
Jieun Kwon. Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class. 2026; 79 37-64.
Jieun Kwon. "Reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior from the Perspective of Class" Cross-Cultural Studies 79(2026) : 37-64.
