It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me
At tea time, everybody agrees
I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero
-Taylor Swift
Introduction
The end of the world has been depicted throughout different genres and modes, recently
via the new genre of climate change fiction (cli-fi): speculative fiction, based on scientific
reasoning, that shows the human and nonhuman relationship with climate change, each other and
themselves. One thing that is often central to these narratives, no matter the genre or mode, is a
hero. In dystopian worlds, protagonists follow the hero’s journey. There seems to always be a
Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games), or a Thomas (The Maze Runner), who must gain physical
skills as a means of survival, or, there is a protagonist that comes from nothing and must become
a savior. The dystopian genre sets its heroes up to make their time in life really count, usually by
trying to save the world.
But what happens to those who do not want to be the hero during the end of times? Claire
Vaye Watkins explores that question with her novel Gold Fame Citrus. When talking about her
intentions for this novel in her interview with Kyle McAuley, she states that “I very much didn’t
want to write a book that sounded pedantic or preachy, or ringing the alarm bells or wagging
fingers. I don’t like to read novels that are trying to teach me a lesson.” Through
Watkins’decadent prose, which she creates with her use of clear descriptive language, she creates
a world that is not too far off from our own, and shows realistic characters' reactions to life in a
world that is slowly destructing due to forces beyond human control, which is also known as a
slow apocalypse. When looking at Gold Fame Citrus, Watkins’ portrayal of Luz’s ordinary
thoughts around heroism, relationships, and mental health allows viewers to see a realistic and
humanistic journey through a slow apocalypse.
Gold Fame Citrus is set in the near future after a ruinous drought has hit California and
most of the Southwest. This creates a massive sea of dunes, which Watkins called the Amargosa,
an ever-growing desert that is slowly taking over the West and decimating resources. The main
characters and lovers, Luz and Ray, are squatting together in a starlet's abandoned mansion in
Hollywood. In isolation, they have become each other’s respite. As the novel begins, Luz and
Ray have no real purpose or drive beyond basic survival, and they have no plan to leave
California anytime soon. That changes when Luz decides to capture two-year-old Ig, which
forces them to abandon Los Angeles for the hopeful, lush, and nature-rich Eastern states. As they
head East and brave the Amargosa, they find that they are unprepared for the challenges that lay
ahead of them.
In Gold Fame Citrus, Watkins portrays a relatable female protagonist who allows female
readers to learn how to die through a slow climate apocalypse. I will be using Roy Scranton’s
term, which he created using his life experience in the army to reflect on the harsh realities of
adapting to climate change. Scranton says that how we learn to die is through “the practice of
learning to let go: learning to die means learning to let go of the ego, the idea of the self, the
future, certainty, attachment, the pursuit of pleasure, permanence, and stability. Learning to let go
of salvation. Learning to let go of hope” (92). Through this protagonist, readers are invited to
empathize with an antiheroine who struggles with relationships and mental health, values
survival, and models internal self-reflection from her personal development. By going on this
journey with Luz, readers are able to better conceptualize the world we are heading toward.
Climate Sentimentalism
Many readers, and some authors, assume that the main goal of cli-fi should be to incite
social change. This call to action, which incites social change, is answered in most cli-fi novels,
and moves the genre towards what Stephanie LeMenager coins as a mode which is “a method, a
way of getting something done” (222). In the nineteenth century, women authors adopted
sentimentalism as a form of emotion-based writing that gained sympathy with readers who were
predominantly white-middle-class women (Williamson 2), the same demographic of readers of
cli-fi. To fully explore and expand the genre of cli-fi into a mode, I will be drawing on the
tradition of sentimentalism to reveal how Watkins crafts modern emotional experiences into her
depictions of a climate apocalypse, and I will be calling this new mode of cli-fi, climate
sentimentalism. Taking inspiration from both cli-fi and sentimentalism, climate sentimentalism
can be used as a polemic lever for social change because of the strong empathetic reaction a
reader can have from their connection with the author’s characters.
In creating this concept, I draw on the work of Suzanne Keen, a narrative theorist, who
analyzes the ways that readers form empathy with characters through different craft choices an
author makes, like creating a relatable character. Keen developed the concept of narrative
empathy to explain how readers form connections with a character even when they have a
different belief system from the reader. She states in A Theory of Narrative Empathy:
Character identification often invites empathy, even when the fictional character and
reader differ from one another in all sorts of practical and obvious ways, but empathy for
fictional characters appears to require only minimal elements of identity, situation, and
feeling, not necessarily complex or realistic characterization. (Keen 214)
In this novel, some readers may not relate to Luz, either because they would not make her same
choices, or because they do not understand her choices when it comes to her and Ray’s survival.
However, as Luz experiences more, and Watkins reveals more about her background, readers can
form a connection with Luz and are able to see how they might relate to her. This relatability is
seen in Keen’s coined term broadcast strategic empathy, which “calls upon every reader to feel
with members of a group, by emphasizing common vulnerabilities and hopes” (215). While we
are unable to truly know what it would be like to live through an apocalypse, in Gold Fame
Citrus, Watkins shows moments that commonly occur to people on a day-to-day basis, which
creates an empathetic pathway and connection for readers to relate with a character as she lives
through an apocalypse.
This connection becomes important because, as society fails to adapt fast enough to
climate change, literature is a tool that can help identify and promote social change. In a day and
age where women’s rights are regressing, it is important to remember that the genre of
sentimentalism was created by women for women to actively promote suffrage. Though some
traditional sentimentalists might think that psychological realism could be a more appropriate
way to categorize Gold Fame Citrus, sentimentalism and cli-fi overlap while giving each other
the space to uphold their intended meanings to create a new mode of cli-fi. Readers can see this
overlap when Watkins includes emotionally charged themes and tropes but makes them more
modern and suited for cli-fi by using traditional elements of sentimentalism that are updated.
A typical troupe of sentimentalism is when people cry; a clear example of this is when
Luz, out of fear, punts the prairie dog into the library and she has Ray “deal” with it. As he kills
the prairie dog, Luz is reminded that Ray used to kill people when he was in the army. This
triggers a strong emotional response which readers can see when Luz:
turned around and lurched up the stairs. She did not want to be around when he returned.
Halfway up, she tripped. The floating stairs had always unnerved Luz and now they
enraged her. She kicked the leaden galoshes from her feet down to the living room with
some effort, staggered barefoot to the darkened bedroom, peeled off the suddenly chafing
mermaid gown, climbed into the massive unmade bed, and wept in the sandy nest of it.
She wept briefly for the creature, and then at great length for all her selves in reverse.
(Watkins 10)
In this scene, Luz succumbs to her emotions for the creature and shows that she has a heart.
Because Luz shows her emotions for a being outside of herself, this scene demonstrates classic
sentimentalism. However, this scene also shows a more modern sense of sentimentalism when
Luz weeps for “all her selves in reverse” because she is facing her past trauma of being used as a
child throughout her childhood as a mascot for climate change, and also being sexually abused as
a model.
When Watkins demonstrates a more modern sense of sentimentalism through Luz crying
for all of herselves in reverse, Watkins updates classic sentimentalism by opening a space for
cli-fi to expand traditional sentimentalism to include modern emotions that we now have terms
and understandings for, including what Sianne Ngai calls ugly feelings. These feelings, as Ngai
explains are, non-cathartic, “offering no satisfactions of virtue, however oblique, nor any
therapeutic or purifying release” (Ngai 6). Included under this umbrella are negative emotions
that cannot can’t be released because our efforts are blocked by external forces. Emotions that
cannot be released due to external forces can be seen In Gold Fame Citrus when, Luz relives
trauma and is unable to process anxiety, depression, and feelings of inadequacy because of the
problems she faces onset by the slow apocalypse, which results in Luz’s mental health
deterioration.
In moments like this, when Luz reflects on her trauma, we see how cli-fi can expand and
update the mode of sentimentalism through the modern emotional moments that Watkins creates
throughout Luz’s character arc. This storyline allows readers to recognize a representation of
modern choices within Luz’s decisions, or at least understand her decisions, whether they are
relatable or not. Though some readers respond to Luz’s choices by thinking that they would step
into that heroic role and take it upon themselves to learn the survival skills needed during an
apocalypse, others have a more realistic mindset by recognizing that they are not made/meant for
those strenuous skills, and decide to live as they are or even choose their own way to die. The
choices of the latter allow the reader to see their choices within Luz giving them a representation
of what it feels like to live through an apocalypse as a person who rejects the heroic ideology.
With the creation of the term climate sentimentalism, which connects cli-fi to
sentimentalism, the pessimistic audiences of cli-fi can see that their genre is not dead and has a
purpose: educating readers through telling stories of those affected by climate change. Through
representation of a world that is similar to our own but with relatable characters, which creates a
space where readers can find familiarities like marriage and birth certificates in destitute
California.