Wednesday, July 27, 2022 — 7 
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

A

s the top-selling fiction book of 
2019 — selling over 12 million 
copies by January 2022 — 

“Where the Crawdads Sing” has seen 
a degree of popularity that few books 
achieve. In addition to topping the 
New York Times fiction bestseller list 
for an astounding 153 weeks, Delia 
Owens’ first work of fiction was also 
selected for Reese Witherspoon’s book 
club in September 2018 and adapted 
into a feature film that was released 
last Friday. Catapulting this novel to 
an almost hyperbolic level of attention, 
Taylor Swift even penned an original 
song for the movie adaption of what 
she describes as a “mesmerizing story.”

Clearly, in the context of book sales 

and public attention, “Crawdads” 
is a major success story that has left 
millions of readers, including the 
likes of Swift and Witherspoon, with 
nothing but rave reviews. However, it 
only takes one quick Google search to 
see the thorny backstory behind this 
rose of the literary world.

For context, Owens and her former 

spouse, Mark Owens, spent 22 years 
in Africa — traveling first to Botswana 
and then elsewhere — working as 

conservationists, a period of time that 
Jeffrey Goldberg describes in detail in 
the New Yorker. The couple seemed 
to leave a trail wherever they went, 
earning “a reputation in the valley for 
their intolerance of local people.” They 
were expelled from Botswana in 1986 
after attempts to rally international 
support against the conservation 
policies of the country’s government 
which is how the locally unpopular 
pair ended up in Zambia. 

In 1995, almost a decade after the 

couple arrived in Zambia, ABC did a 
segment on their conservation work. 
In the segment, which aired in 1996 
on national television, an unidentified 
alleged poacher was shot and killed. 
The details of this shooting have 
remained incredibly vague: The body 
was never found, the shooter was 
never officially identified and, as a 
result, nobody has been charged with 
the crime.

The discourse I’ve seen around 

this controversy has largely been 
sparked by cavalier questions about 
this murder. These questions are often 
subsequently met with claims that 
Delia Owens wasn’t involved or even 
less comprehensive responses arguing 
that it was her husband who was 
involved and that they’re now divorced. 
Regardless of these claims, Lillian 

Shawa-Siyuni, Zambia’s director of 
public prosecutions, has confirmed 
that Owens — along with her former 
husband and stepson — are still wanted 
for questioning for the alleged televised 
killing of the individual.

While some readers seem to take 

solace in the fact that Owens has 
not been legally implicated in this 
unresolved murder — she has denied 
her involvement numerous times — 
there are clear connections between 
Owens’ time in Africa and her famous 
novel — some that Owens herself 
seems to draw. In fact, the author even 
said in an interview with Amazon that 
“almost every part of the book has 
some deeper meaning” and “there’s 
a lot of symbolism in this book.” 
Considering the parallels between Kya 
Clark, the protagonist of “Crawdads,” 
and Owens, it is hard to separate the 
art from the artist in this novel.

It doesn’t require too many liberties 

to read “Crawdads” — a story about 
a girl who’s accused of murder and 
actually did commit the murder out of 
self-defense — as a confessional tale for 
Owens and the allegations surrounding 
her time in Africa. Clark and Owens, 
both raised in the South, prefer nature 
to humanity and demonstrate reclusive 
personalities. When asked about her 
involvement in the shooting in an 

interview with the New York Times, 
Owens even validated her struggles 
with these kinds of questions by saying, 
“It’s painful to have that come up, but 
it’s what Kya had to deal with, name 
calling.”

There 
are 
also 
connections 

between this book and Owens’ time 
in Africa beyond the similarities 
between Owens and her protagonist. 
For example, the jailhouse cat in the 
novel, Sunday Justice, has the same 
name as a man who cooked for the 
Owenses while they were in Zambia. 
In “The Eye of the Elephant,” a memoir 
written by Mark Owens, he recounts 
a conversation Delia had with this 
cook. According to her, the real Sunday 
Justice had “always wanted to talk to 
someone who has flown up in the sky 
with a plane.” She describes him asking 
if you get close to the stars when you fly 
on a plane and how she so graciously 
explained how far stars really are from 
Earth.

However, Owens’ retelling of this 

exchange doesn’t match up with 
Sunday Justice’s: When asked about 
this alleged conversation, Sunday 
Justice responded with a laugh. He 
had flown often, both as a child and as 
an adult, and went on to work for the 
Zambian Air Force after working for 
the Owenses. This discrepancy reflects 

the kinds of biases about Africans that 
are littered throughout the Owens’ 
other memoirs, as well.

Given the numerous occasions like 

this where Owens has unapologetically 
shown her discriminatory and racist 
colors, it’s peculiar — but unsurprising 
— that this story was picked up by G.P. 
Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin 
Random House. What’s even more 
telling than this book being picked up 
by a Big Five publisher is the success it 
was met with after being turned into a 
film. Raking in $17 million during its 
opening weekend, this movie clearly 
has not been sullied by the plethora of 
articles published by well-established 
news sources on the controversies 
surrounding Owens.

There 
is 
plausible 
deniability 

that people who have read the book 
don’t know about its suspected 
backstory. However, I am doubtful 
that the publishers, Taylor Swift, 
Reese Witherspoon and the directors 
of the movie were unaware of the 
murky events during Owens’ time in 
Africa. And yet, when asked about 
“Crawdads’” connection to the murder 
in Zambia, the film’s screenwriter, 
Lucy Alibar, told TIME that she was 
unfamiliar with it.

Let’s talk about Delia Owens and “Where the Crawdads Sing”

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A 

global 
pandemic 
has 

proved that understanding 
global health is paramount 

if we would like to preserve the 
existence of humanity. To many, the 
pandemic seems like it is over, with 
mandatory 
mask 
requirements 

dropped in public places and 
children as young as six months old 
now able to get vaccinated. But in 
reality, the two-and-a-half-year-
old virus is still making its rounds, 
and people are still getting sick 
and being hospitalized. COVID-19 
isn’t over, but instead has joined 
the dozens of other public health 
crises we have faced for years, 
some with solutions, others almost 
unavoidable.

Public health is an umbrella 

term that covers a plethora of 
health-related issues, primarily 
those 
connected 
to 
disease 

prevention and everyday health. 
We often cite this term when 
discussing issues such as the global 
spread of infectious disease, the 
clean water crisis and healthcare 

disparities, both in the United 
States and abroad. Typically, the 
conversation surrounding public 
health only covers the issues that 
directly relate to our bodies and 
physical health. More recently, 
though, its definition has come to 
encompass matters of health that 
are less biological and focus more 
on modern social issues. Public 
health isn’t all about vaccines and 
sickness anymore — it’s about 
everything.

The American Public Health 

Association, 
the 
APHA, 

acknowledges the range of public 
health issues that we are currently 
battling, 
including 
substance 

abuse, public planning and overall 
mental health. Each of these fields 
is not commonly associated with 
issues related to bodily well-being, 
but they are nonetheless important 
and still fit alongside the subject 
of public health. The foundation of 
this term is that it is “public” — it 
has to do with communities and 
the matters that impact them the 
most. The public health crises of 
this day and age are much more 
urgent, divisive and impactful en 
masse than we’ve ever seen before, 

and they fit a seemingly new 
definition of the term we’ve heard 
in previous conversations.

The three largest and “new-age” 

public health crises that we face 
today, specifically in the United 
States, are gun violence, racism 
and climate change. Though not 
what we consider to be issues 
traditionally related to health, they 
tend to act just like infections: they 
spread where they are not welcome, 
and they are hard to eliminate. 
We are constantly surrounded by 
disease, but not ones that can be 
cured with medical diagnoses and 
immunizations. 
These 
diseases 

impact all of us and can only truly 
be solved with a concoction of 
collective action and policies.

In 2020, the leading cause of 

death for children was no longer 
car-related incidents; it was gun-
related injuries. Gun violence is 
not only a political issue but a 
public health crisis. Guns are the 
cause behind thousands of deaths 
each year, and, just like infections, 
they deny once healthy individuals 
of their livelihoods. From incidents 
of domestic violence to homicide by 
firearm, gun violence threatens the 

health and well-being of each of us 
— it is not only a crisis of violence 
but of various external factors. 
It 
is 
multi-faceted, 
impacting 

and impacted by socioeconomic 
status, race, health and politics. 
In approaching the epidemic of 
gun violence as a public health 
crisis, we may be better equipped 
to examine all of its related 
causes and effects, and in turn, 
we can provide both physical and 
emotional safety for all.

Another 
multi-faceted 
issue 

that 
has 
plagued 
the 
nation 

throughout history is that of 
racism. Multiple cities and states, 
including Michigan, have declared 
racism a public health crisis, 
specifically within the realms 
of the criminal justice system, 
health justice and socioeconomic 
justice. Naming racism as a public 
health 
crisis, 
or 
“emergency,” 

acknowledges it as a problem 
that 
debilitates 
the 
livelihood 

of people of Color, depriving 
certain individuals of care and 
citizenship because of their race. 
Institutionalized racism is present 
in multiple social, political and 
economic circumstances. Public 

health is not just connected to 
our general physical health but 
also to our education status and 
socioeconomic background — it 
is a crisis that requires action, 
especially when it comes to racial 
injustice.

A crisis that has no known 

limitations, 
climate 
change 
is 

undeniably the most formidable 
challenge facing humanity today. 
Addressing global warming and 
the various impacts of climate 
change on the planet as a public 
health crisis is crucial — the health 
effects of its continued existence 
are a threat to all of us, whether 
we notice them or not. From our 
physical health to our mental 
health, rising temperatures and 
increased rates of natural disasters 
pose a threat to both social 
structures and our bodies. Due to 
lack of political action in recent 
years, climate change’s wrath is 
likely irreversible, and declaring 
it a public health crisis is a last 
attempt by climate scientists to get 
politicians and the general public 
to take the problem seriously.

The eternal public health crisis

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OLIVIA MOURADIAN

Opinion Senior Editor

LINDSEY SPENCER

 Opinion Columnist