Adventure of the American Mind

1955 Born April 8, Annapolis, Maryland.

1977 B.S., magna cum laude, in biology. DePauw University, Indiana.

1981 M.S., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. University of Arizona.

1981-85 Scientific Writer, Office of Arid Lands Studies, University of Arizona.

Barbara Kingsolver

1988

Lesson Plan on
The Bean TreesPowerPoint

1989 Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983

1989 Homeland and Other Stories

1990 Animal Dreams

1992 Another America

1993 Pigs in Heaven

The Bean Trees was Kingsolver's first novel about the search for identity and connectedness of a young woman who befriends an abandoned child from the Cherokee Nation.

kissing turtles

1995 High Tide in Tucson

1997 The Bellwether Prize for Fiction: In Support of a Literature of Social Change

1998 The Poisonwood Bible

2000 Prodigal Summer

2002 Small Wonder

Kingsolver on The Bean Trees:

"I always think of a first novel as something like this big old purse you've been carrying around your whole life, throwing in ideas, characters, and all the things that have ever struck you as terribly important. One day, for whatever reason, you just have to dump that big purse out and there lies this pile of junk. You start picking through it, and assembling it into what you hope will be a statement of your life's great themes.
That's how it was for me. It probably wasn't until midway through the writing that I had a grasp of the central question:
What are the many ways, sometimes hidden and underground ways, that people help themselves and each other survive hard times?"

The Bean Trees also contains as a subplot the story of two illegal Guatemalan immigrants, Esteban and Esmerelda. For background on Guatemala, click on this PowerPoint.

Discussion Questions:

1. The Bean Trees deals with the theme of being an outsider. In what ways are various characters outsiders? What does this suggest about what it takes to be an insider? How does feeling like an outsider affect one's life?

2. How and why do the characters change, especially Lou Ann, Taylor, and Turtle?

3. In many ways, the novel is "the education of Taylor Greer." What does she learn about human suffering? about love?

Credits: HarperCollins, Inc, Reading Group Guides.com

ECOFEMINIST LITERATURE