Familial Home

Familial Home: Strong Foundations

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
Bloomsbury, 2011
Climate Fiction Collection
Vanderbilt University Library

Salvage the Bones follows the Batiste family in the days surrounding Hurricane Katrina. In the wake of Mama’s death, her children are left devastated as Papa devolves into alcoholism and abuse. Though Hurricane Katrina destroys the Batiste family’s physical home, it simultaneously revives their familial bonds, as their trust in each other becomes necessary for survival. By portraying family as an extension of the environment, Salvage the Bones illustrates that salvaging the home in the climate crisis is salvaging the family itself.

“We sat in the open attic until the wind quieted . . . until the sky brightened . . . until the water . . . receded. . . . We huddled together in Mother Lizbeth’s attic . . . a pile of wet, cold branches, human debris in the middle of all of the rest of it”.

(237)

The family members survive the storm by taking shelter in the attic of their grandmother’s house, which sits on higher ground. They are saved by familial connections that span generations. Though the family is battered, reduced to human debris that must be salvaged, it remains strong like the foundations of Mother Lizbeth’s house.