The Bean Trees 657Taylor drives farther west until she reaches Ari-
zona, where she is forced to stop when her car breaks
down. There she finds work with Mattie who runs
a tire shop and befriends Estevan and Esperanza,
illegal emigrants from Guatemala who seek shelter
in Mattie’s home after guerrillas kidnapped their
daughter in their home country. These guerrillas
blackmailed Estevan and Esperanza, asking them
to give up their friends if they wanted to see their
daughter alive. Unwilling to lead their friends to
certain death, and willing to sacrifice the life of one
to save 17 others, the couple was forced to make an
unbearable choice, to abandon their daughter and
flee to the United States.
In Arizona, Taylor also befriends Lou Ann Ruiz,
another single parent who was abandoned by her
husband Angel when their son Dwayne Ray was
born. Lou Ann and Taylor become an unusual fam-
ily unit as two single mothers who struggle to raise
their children on their own. A few months later,
Angel asks Lou Ann to move with him to Montana
and live with him in a yurt or to allow him to return.
Lou Ann, who has by now found a job, refuses to
leave Arizona or to take Angel back.
Turtle, who was sexually and physically abused
before being abandoned with Taylor, personifies the
strongest and most poignant example of abandon-
ment in the novel. This early abandonment proves
to be lifesaving for the little girl as she clings like
her namesake mud turtle to Taylor, who struggles
to bring some normalcy into her life. However, just
as Turtle is emerging from her emotional shell, she
is once again attacked while in the care of a blind
woman. Although Turtle comes to no physical harm,
she is emotionally scarred and withdraws once more.
As a result of this incident, Social Services ques-
tions Taylor’s guardianship of Turtle and the agency
threatens to remove the little girl from the only stable
home environment she has known. To legally adopt
Turtle, Taylor has to show proof of abandonment.
In the meantime, Estevan and Esperanza face
legal problems of their own as they cannot stay in
Arizona unless they can produce documented proof
that their life was in danger in Guatemala, but as
Mattie says “when people run for their lives they
frequently neglect to bring along their file cabinets
of evidence” (159). For these refugees, abandoning
their homeland and their daughter was not a choice
but a cruel twist of fate.
Taylor is able to use the immigrant’s lack of
documentation to save Turtle by convincing Estevan
and Esperanza to pretend they are Turtle’s parents
before a judge, so that they can fool him into believ-
ing that they are giving up Turtle’s guardianship to
Taylor. This second “abandonment” of Turtle, a child
whom the couple had grown to love as their daugh-
ter proves to be both cathartic and heartbreaking for
them, as this time they find power in the right to
make a decision without being blackmailed.
The characters in The Bean Trees face familiar,
social, governmental, and even spiritual abandon-
ment. They are able to overcome their hopeless
situations by cultivating emotional and social rela-
tionships that ensure they will not face an uncertain
future on their own.
Lourdes ArciniegaGender in The Bean Trees
Women have traditionally remained within the
domestic sphere, taking care of family and home,
feeling marginalized and unable to access jobs in
the public arena. Barbara Kingsolver challenges
this conventional depiction of women by creating a
fictional world that foregrounds strong, independent
female characters who epitomize women’s conflict-
ing and conflicted roles within a patriarchal society.
Marietta Greer, the protagonist of The Bean
Trees, comes from a strong-willed female lineage,
descendants of Cherokee. Alice Greer is raising her
daughter Marietta Greer as a single parent after
her partner abandoned her. Alice supports Mari-
etta’s desire to leave the hopeless Pittman County
in which they live, and encourages her to get a job
and buy a car. Marietta refuses to become an unwed
teenage mother like many of her schoolfriends and
instead leaves town, asserting her independence and
authority by renaming herself Taylor. The fact that
Taylor is a gender-free name represents Taylor’s
unwillingness to be defined and confined by a name.
The Greer women’s strong will, stubbornness, and
non-conformity foreshadow Taylor’s unusual nam-
ing of her own daughter Turtle.
When Taylor arrives in Arizona she befriends
Mattie, another unconventional female who runs a