Exploring representations of American Agricultural Farmers and laborers: a post-colonial reading of In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story By Jerry Apps

Abstract

The article investigates how Jerry Apps’ novel In A Pickle: A Family Farm Story represents the lives of American farmers and laborers in Wisconsin in the 1950s and the relevant industrial issues humans are facing nowadays. The study applies an ecological approach and post-colonial perspective especially using Bill Ashcroft’s post-colonial concepts to scrutinize a variety of representations of things from neo-colonialization to surveillance in Apps’ narrative and the post-colonial issues regarding humanity, agriculture, and industry which are elicited in the story. A post-colonial analysis of the novel deals with themes such as hegemony, othering, and ecological imperialism. Through his observations and factual evidence, Apps offers his readers some historical phenomena that impacted American farming workers, especially in Wisconsin in the 1950s. In general, his novel portrays the conflicts and sufferings of workers after the industry began to penetrate their agricultural lives. Some conflicts resulting from financial failure, crop failure, and inability to meet standards imposed by industry lead them to suffer economically, socially, and culturally and to lose the capability to produce sustainable foods.