Social Justice Issues In Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees

Individuals have different views of the world and to be fair this world has many flaws that individuals can’t see because they’re not willing to see those flaws. These flaws are seen by Barbara Kingsolver, the author of The Bean Trees. In the society, there are many social justice issues that people think it is normal for it to be happening, those social justice issues can be child abuse, racism, over-sexualization of women and poverty. Barbara Kingsolver is an author of the book called The Bean Trees which is a story about the journey of Taylor from Kentucky to Arizona. This journey of hers brings out a purpose to show these social justice issues within the society we had and we still have. This story showed lots of examples of the social

In The Bean Trees, Taylor is one of the people who is hurt emotionally knowing that she let Turtle down by “letting” someone hurting Turtle. According to The Bean Trees, “She won’t talk…. Not now...Maybe not ever,” (Kingsolver, 224). Based on the tone of the way Taylor is talking about Turtle’s situation from this evidence is with disappointment, sadness, and lost hope. From Lou Ann’s point of view, child abuse is another problem that you can’t blame anyone for. According to the tone of Lou Ann, “Listen at this: ‘Liberty, Kansas. The parents and doctor of severely deformed Siamese twins joined at the frontal lobe of the brain have been accused of attempting to murder the infants by withholding medical care…can you blame them?...’”(Kingsolver 206). From this evidence, individuals can assume that this problem is sad but because of the other social justice issues, they have an excuse, even though, these events are spiteful in many ways. According to the article Abuse in America, “An estimated 3.3 to 10 million children a year are at risk of witnessing domestic violence, which can produce a range of emotional, psychological or behavioral problems,”(“Abuse in America”). This evidence is from the real world not from The Bean Trees that when we read we can just imagine it’s not in this world. The truth is that children will go through a phase of phobia. If a child is abused

One of the significant proceedings that occurred in the book was when Turtle was abused, again. The climax was where readers established an understanding toward the second incident, “All these months we had spent together were gone for her. I knew it from her eyes: two cups of black coffee…” (Kingsolver 222). This part of the plot was the most outrageous part because this time Turtle was hurt but the difference was that no one knew if she will ever go back to her happy self, not to mention it effected Taylor’s behavior toward everything. After this incident, Taylor was convinced that she can’t take care of Turtle since she couldn’t keep her safe from the world. According to The Bean Trees, “…That they have the right to take her out of a perfectly good home and put her in some creepy orphanage where they probably make them sleep on burlap bags and feed them pig slop”(Kingsolver 235). Even though, Taylor believed that she can’t keep Turtle safe from this society where people try to hurt a child so young, on the other hand, Lou Ann thinks that Taylor can keep Turtle safer than anybody else. According to Abuse in America, “As of September 30, 2004, there were 517,000 children in foster care in the United States” (“Abuse in America”). This shows that people that are living the way that Lou Ann has described is not safe for children, not to mention that lots of people, because of poverty put their children