Kingsolver, Barbara (1955-)

Born in Maryland in 1955 and raised in eastern Kentucky, Barbara Kingsolver's fiction is nonetheless firmly rooted in the American West. Her highly acclaimed first novel, The Bean Trees (1988), introduced readers not only to her authorial voice and political concerns but also to her love of the landscape and inhabitants of her adopted home, Tucson, Arizona. In this novel, the central character, Taylor [Page 177]Greer, embarks on a journey from Kentucky to Tucson that mirrors Kingsolver's own adult relocation. Along the way, Taylor becomes the caretaker to an abused and abandoned Cherokee child. As Taylor forges a new life among a community of women and children in Tucson, she confronts single motherhood, the reality of child abuse, poverty, and the plight of Guatemalan refugees escaping political persecution. Taylor's eventual decision to adopt the child signifies a commitment to both her new role and her new home. Kingsolver herself seems equally committed to her adopted southwestern home, for while her subsequent novels and short stories explore a variety of locales and themes, her narratives often return to the landscape and people of the American West.

Kingsolver's upbringing in the rural South provided the roots for the committed social conscience evident in all of her work. Her father was a doctor who treated many working-class patients in her home state of Kentucky. He also took his practice to the Congo (now Zaire) in 1963 and to the island of St. Lucia in 1967, both times taking his family with him. Through these experiences, Kingsolver was made vividly aware of the distinctions between rich and poor and the divisions and inequalities perpetuated by racism. She came to identify with those on the outside of the power structure and to sense an “obligation to do the right thing rather than … the thing that rewards you financially.” In her novels, Kingsolver often explores the effects of poverty and racism on the indigenous peoples of the southwestern reservations. Her interest in her own Cherokee great-grandmother further influenced her identification with the plight of Native Americans.

All these themes are obvious in her second novel, Animal Dreams (1990), and in the sequel to The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven (1993). In both texts, Native American characters confront historical and contemporary oppression by the dominant Anglo culture. These and other novels also rely on strong, insightful female characters, which reveal Kingsolver's feminist sensibilities. The women of her novels embrace the ideals of community and connectedness, which Kingsolver feels are essential for healing society and the environment. As she stated in one interview, “Independence is stupidity…. I celebrate dependency.”

Her 1998 novel, The Poisonwood Bible, marks an even deeper involvement with these ideals. In this narrative, Kingsolver achieves a thematic and stylistic complexity beyond any of her earlier work. The novel focuses on the fate of the Price family, who have been led by the fiercely patriarchal and fundamentalist Nathan Price into the jungles of the Belgian Congo in 1959. The story covers nearly 30 years and is told from multiple perspectives, with Nathan's wife, Orleanna, and their four daughters each telling her own version of the family's experience and its lasting impact on their lives. Through this family's eventual collapse, Kingsolver explores the damaging effects of sexist oppression, racist/colonialist ideology, and U.S. complicity in the continued turmoil in this African nation. In The Poisonwood Bible, the idea of “the West” takes on a global and negative connotation, as Nathan Price's arrogant attempts to impose western Christianity on the African villagers mirrors the U.S. imposition in postcolonial Zaire's political development.

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