“[I]t’s my skin that’s paid most dearly”

Suzanne Collins's main protagonist and narrator, Katniss Everdeen is at the center of The Hunger Games series, in both the novels and the films. This chapter explores Collins's constructions of Katniss's body and/as the Appalachian body. It examines the connection Katniss has to her beloved home; from the food provided by its green hills to the cultural capital that makes her strong, including the "mountain airs" she sings, the restored verdancy of this ecosystem affords the historical and sociocultural matrix that makes her a survivor. The chapter consider the processes Katniss body undergoes— preparatory processes, such as aesthetic interventions and training; medical processes to heal the trauma she suffers, such as bone fusion and skin grafts— as representative of the exploitive processes visited upon the Appalachian range she calls home, with its actual history of underground, strip, and mountain-top removal mining, and its fictional destruction at the hands of the Capitol.