2 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
Biography
David King Dunaway and Sara L. Spurgeon, eds., “Barbara Kingsolver,” in their
Writing the Southwest (New York: Plume, 1995), pp. 93–107.
Based on interviews done by Dunaway for a radio documentary. The piece
provides an overview of Kingsolver’s work and career with samples of her and
Dunaway’s discussion of her childhood, influences, political awareness, and sense
of the possibilities of community.
Criticism
Mary Jean DeMarr, “Mothers and Children in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean
Trees,” in Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender, edited by
Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003),
pp. 26–28.
Brief article arguing that The Bean Trees appeals to female readers because it
depicts several models of mothering.
Bob J. Frye, “Nuggets of Truth in the Southwest: Artful Humor and Realistic
Craft in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees,” Southwestern American Litera-
ture, 26 (March 2001): 73–83.
Argues for more critical attention to be paid to Kingsolver’s work and furthers
that project by focusing on her narrative art. Frye claims that Kingslover combines
an effective use of humor with several “artful” means for encouraging reader iden-
tification—attention to the realities of low social class, satire, cultural criticism,
valuing exemplary role models—thus creating an “aesthetics of the ordinary.”
Catherine Himmelwright, “Gardens of Auto Parts: Kingsolver’s Merger of
American Western Myth and Native American Myth in The Bean Trees,”
Southern Literary Journal, 39 (Spring 2007): 119–139.
Sees Kingsolver starting with the archetypal American story of a protagonist
heading west for adventure but then reversing all the major points of that story,
with Taylor accumulating friends and community as she makes her way. Him-
melwright profitably focuses on the diametric opposites running through the
novel—for example, junkyards and gardens in the same space, a Southern sensi-
bility in a Western setting—and her references to historical women’s experiences
of going west add context.
Magali Cornier Michael, New Visions of Community in Contemporary American
Fiction: Tan, Kingsolver, Castillo, Morrison (Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press, 2006).
Reads The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven as depicting healthy, vibrant communi-
ties of extended families not necessarily created due to blood ties or kinship and
argues that Kingsolver successfully promotes multiculturalism without erasing
difference.
Loretta Martin Murrey, “The Loner and the Matriarchal Community in Barbara
Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven,” Southern Studies, 5 (March
1994): 155–164.