Summary Of The Bean Trees By Barbara Kingsolver

Kamerin Litten Analysis and Overview of the Works of Barbara Kingsolver

The work of Barbara Kingsolver in The Bean Trees, a heartwarming, funny, touching debut as reflected in the novel's own sequel Pigs in Heaven, opens in rural Kentucky. The main character, Taylor Greer is gutsy and practical. She decides she wants to make her escape to a more interesting life, leaving her small hometown. After a woman puts a baby in the front seat of Taylor’s car, telling her to take it, she names the baby Turtle and Taylor and Turtle make it to Tucson, Arizona. After an incident with Turtle and her blind babysitter, the police investigation into the attack on Turtle reveals that Taylor has no legal claim on Turtle. The social worker in Tucson

The major characters in her novels The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer are women struggling to make places for themselves. They consider new situations and ideas with courage and humor. The women express a feminist perspective and thrive off of self determination, commitment and compassion.

The topic of gender is explored in two general ways in the novel. First, the novel shows the success of a female world. Kingsolver often features exceptionally strong women who act unexpectedly, and who aren't so sure they need men around. The women in this community strengthen one another. Second, the novel portrays gender inequality as a societal phenomenon instead of as a series of individual conflicts. Women suffer because they are women, Kingsolver takes a personal approach and uprises women to be confident and independent, showing they are a strong gender and can overcome the ‘burden’ of being a

She has said “it's important to illuminate the lives of people who have not been considered as glorious or noteworthy.” Kingsolver brings light to the people that don't normally have the light shined on them again bringing into view current political and legal placements. Her nonfiction work Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 critiques aspects of the western myth that the West is a place of freedom and equal opportunity, including people and settings of central America. In Animal Dreams the narrator returns home after 14 years and gets reacquainted with a Native American. (barbara