The Fishermen and the Dragon by Kirk Wallace Johnson

The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast by Kirk Wallace Johnson | 2022 | Viking | Hardcover $28.00

By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. […]

A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution.

Disclosure statement: I received a digital ARC of this title from the publisher.

I was delighted to get a chance to read a pre-pub copy of the book because, for me, it’s locally relevant; I currently live on the Texas Gulf Coast. 

When I first read the blurb, I was a little skeptical. How well could a single book encompass both environmental justice and racial justice? As it turns out, these stories are more intertwined than I’d expected. 

The character- and story-focused narrative style is engaging and immediately hooks the reader with a feeling of suspense. Narrative nonfiction is delightful when done well, but runs the risk of leaning too far into sensationalism and abandoning good scholarship. This book’s extensive citations are evidence of a well-balanced tightrope act.

In my opinion, this title fits more into the “true crime” genre than in the “history” genre. Lest you imagine that this is a history-history book set in the era of your grandparents or more distant ancestors, the events that take place in this story happened fairly recently, beginning just a little over 40 years ago. But it’s not just about the time period of the events; it’s the detailed investigation into terrible deeds done in the service of corporate greed, into conspiracy theories that festered into violence, and into the terrorism committed by unapologetic racists that tips this book into the category of true crime.

It was difficult to read about the influence of the KKK and similar organizations on the culture of the place I now call home. Citizens who could have welcomed refugees fleeing a devastating war were instead convinced to blame the newcomers for all their problems simply because they had a different skin color and spoke with an accent. If an immigrant made a social faux pas (or worse, committed a crime), it was seen not as an individual mistake but as evidence of the wicked intentions of their entire race.

I had heard nasty rumors about a couple of nearby communities on the Texas Coast, but assumed that was all more or less water under the bridge by now. For example, a few towns in the area were once known as sundown towns; Black people in particular were explicitly unwelcome there for any length of time, and would be in real danger if found in the vicinity after dark. Decades later these communities still have reputations as havens for racists — even though the metro hub of the region, Houston, ranks as the most diverse city in America. I had naively assumed that this current diversity (+ local pride in that fact) meant that somehow equality had at least locally, partly “won” and discrimination had in some sense “lost”, but this book has made it clear to me that the problem of racially-motivated injustice around here is not ancient history, and did in fact have a significant impact on the local communities that is still problematic to this day. And as recent events have made clear to me, nationalist conspiracy nuts and fanatic jingoism are still major problems all over this country — but, admittedly, especially in Texas.

Of course, this book isn’t just about social conflict. One of the major inciting factors in this case was the destruction of economically important fish and shellfish populations due to chronic misuse of natural resources by chemical and petroleum companies. This is a topic I’m a bit more familiar with; our neighborhood is across the street from a Superfund site. It’s a sad paradox that the part of our country that produces over a third of the nation’s oil and that houses the world’s largest petrochemical manufacturing complex is subject to serious harm because of that same industry. Both the national and the local economies depend on the industry for survival, but at the steep cost of extensive damage to the local environment and danger to human health. The state offers financial and political favors to big companies who promise to bring money to the state, but the communities where they land suffer from pollution and lose out on financial support for public schools. But it’s a political third rail, and struggling people would rather blame their problems on the new neighbors who talk funny than on the giant corporation that signs their paychecks and donates an occasional piece of equipment to the local hospital.

Given the current trajectory of our planet’s climate (terrible), and our government’s level of ability or willingness to do anything about it (zero), this story feels almost like an optimistic prequel to the current desperate state of affairs. This story had a more or less happy ending, although the activists’ fights against scofflaw polluters and white supremacism continue to this day. Reading about people who successfully take on powerful companies in defense of their land and their livelihoods is certainly inspiring. 

But… I don’t think our current story, the long arc of a story that encompasses not just the events and places in this book but the world and its near future, will have a happy ending. I hate to end this review on a down note, but it’s true. I struggle daily with the irrepressible feeling that we as a nation have gone too far down the wrong track, both culturally and environmentally, to ever fully recover. The epilogue’s description of the danger that the Gulf Coast faces from its embedded industries and snowballing climate change neatly sums up some of my concerns. This book contains a story of perseverance in the face of injustice and of hope in a time of harm, and for that I appreciate it very much — but it feels like an impossible fairy tale from once upon a time.

I have recommended this to my local public library for their annual “one community, one book” program. I don’t know if they can pull it off in our current political climate, but I hope they’ll seriously consider it. I definitely recommend this to anyone who’s interested in the intersection of ecological and politico-economic justice.

Links:

• Website of author Kirk Wallace Johnson
• Review at Kirkus
• Superfund information from the US Environmental Protection Agency
• Superfund information from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
• Sundown Towns by James. W. Loewen, hosted by Tougaloo College
• Website of documentary Seadrift

Publication information: Johnson, Kirk Wallace. The fishermen and the dragon: Fear, greed, and a fight for justice on the Gulf Coast. New York: Viking, 2022. EPUB.
Source: ARC provided by publisher via Edelweiss.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.