Emma Wippermann, _Joan of Arkansas_

 I SPOTTED THIS on the shelves at North Figueroa Bookshop (worth a visit when you are in Los Angeles) and plucked it out, fanboy of La Pucelle that I am. I turned it over to read the back cover and saw a blurb from…Cole Swensen! Ring that item up!

When asked for a contemporary figure comparable to Joan, I usually mention Greta Thunberg. Addressing the U.N. Is not quite the same thing as leading an army, but the two young women had to overcome the same kind of prejudiced resistance—why should we listen to a little thing like you?—and did so through moral clarity and sheer persistence. Wippermann’s take on Joan goes along similar lines, setting her story in the present-day United States and making her a climate activist.

The book begins with “The Legend of Petit Jean,”  for whom a state park in Arkansas is named. Christened Adrienne Dumont, Petit Jean dressed as a male and got taken on as a cabin boy on a French ship to North America in the 18th century. He, she, or they died and was buried in Arkansas before Arkansas was Arkansas or the United States was the United States, giving his, her, or their name to a nearby mountain and the park established much later.

Wippermann’s Joan hails from Arkansas, and in the text’s first main section, “Joan of Arkansas,” written in dramatic form, her voices tell her she must persuade a politician from her state—Charles VII (ha!)—to run on a platform of combating climate change. He does, he wins, then immediately becomes the tool of energy interests. 

In a brilliant move, Wippermann’s next section is a kind of erasure poem carved out of the transcript of the original Joan’s trial for heresy. This is an audacious leap, but it makes the point that her Joan would get the same kind of vilifying pushback that Thunberg got from the people whose profits she endangered, and this campaign would be analogous to Joan’s show trial and martyrdom.

Drama, poetry, and in the concluding section, “The Dove,” fiction—a short story written from the point of view of a devoted and loving friend of Joan’s named…Adrienne. (Perfect.) A wildfire breaks out, as is becoming increasingly common, and (spoiler alert) Joan dies fighting it, but Adrienne sees a dove fly out of the fire…just as a witness saw one fly up as the original Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen.

Joan has an inspired a multitude of well-meant but hokey tributes and a few that are actually worthy of her. Wippermann’s Joan of Arkansas belongs in that smaller and more distinguished company.