Precarious Reality: A Review of Allison Cobb's Plastic: An Autobiography
Plastic: An Autobiography
By Allison Cobb
April 2021
Nightboat books
ISBN: 978-1643620381
352 pages
reviewed by Shelby Hettler
Since the mass-production of plastics began in the early 1950s, humans have produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic—the majority of which has ended up as unrecycled waste in landfills and the ocean. As the average amount of plastic created per year increased from two million metric tons to over 380 million, scientists have found microplastics in Antarctica, soil, human organs, the stomachs of multiple animal species, and even placentas.
In Plastic: An Autobiography, Allison Cobb artfully explores how we arrived at this precarious reality without heavily relying on facts and figures. Instead, Cobb focuses on weaving together stories and personal experiences: an old car part discovered in her yard, a dead albatross at Midway Atoll, individuals who fight back against the corporations that pollute their communities. These stories are fragmented, calling back to each other throughout. As a result, the reader is able to join Cobb in working through her web of connections to process the impact of plastic pollution, as well as the intersecting beliefs, ideologies, and circumstances that led to its pervasiveness.
The consequences of plastic pollution are set against a historical backdrop that is personal to Cobb: the development of thermonuclear weapons. As the daughter of a physicist in Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were created, Cobb acknowledges her own entanglement in this violent piece of history. She reflects, “I have benefited my whole life from money that supports nuclear weapons. It paid for every bite of food that entered my mouth as a child, every piece of clothing on my back, all my security and privilege.” Similar to how she grapples with her relationship to nuclear weapons, Cobb acknowledges the detrimental impact that her actions can have on the planet, documenting the emissions released by each of her research trips. The honesty with which Cobb confronts her own relationship to destruction is one of the aspects that makes this book so compelling. The reflections do not come across as appeals for forgiveness or pity. Rather, they speak to the complex human experience of realizing how our existence causes harm to others—both through the history that precedes us as well as how we actively respond to it.
While examining personal entanglements, Cobb also addresses the culpability of entities with greater power—specifically, the plastic industry executives who use manipulation and lies to market their products. In doing so, Cobb reveals the deeply intentional creation of consumers that are both never satisfied and also oblivious to the true cost of most commodities. By recognizing how the individual is both implicated and harmed by overconsumption, Cobb avoids the defeatist mindset that can accompany the now trite phrase, “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” Her work delves deeper than this adage, analyzing the nuances at play and going beyond a merely theoretical lens. As she confesses, solely reading data can have a numbing rather than emboldening effect: “I sit at a computer screen and feel nothing. These facts don’t register in my body,” Cobb writes. Conversely, “The shards of the world that catch, that light fire inside me, are people.” This direct engagement with both people and plastic, often referred to as “the thing itself,” is one of the standout strategies of Plastic: An Autobiography. Too often, environmental media strips data and facts of the real people and experiences behind them. It’s refreshing to read an environmental work in which the consequences of plastic feel tangible and present; one that is mindful of how these are real lives, not just data points to fit a wider narrative.
Throughout Plastic: An Autobiography, Cobb’s honest portrayal of the harm that plastic is responsible for prompts important questions and reflections that she never promises a solution to. However, by unveiling what capitalism and related oppressive structures work hard to keep concealed, Cobb empowers her readers to find their own ways of dealing with this knowledge. Her work challenges readers to pay attention to the destruction that we have become accustomed to, and to channel the resultant grief, anger, despair, and guilt into resistance. A stunning tapestry of carefully woven stories, Plastic: An Autobiography is essential reading for all who are concerned about the state of our environment as well as the impact it has on those it supports.
Allison Cobb (pronouns she/her) (@allisoncobb) is the author of Plastic: An Autobiography from Nightboat Books. Her other books include After We All Died (Ahsahta Press); Born2 (Chax Press); and Green-Wood, originally published by Factory School with a new edition in 2018 from Nightboat Books. Cobb’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and many other journals. She was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and National Poetry Series; has been a resident artist at Djerassi and Playa; and received fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Allison lives in Portland, Oregon.
Shelby Hettler (@shelbrh) is a writer who currently works for an online environmental magazine in New York. They studied at Barnard College, and their work has appeared in Ratrock Mag, 5.18 Mag, Crossroads Zine, and elsewhere.