"But nothing on this earth is guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know? I've been thinking about that. About how your kids aren't really YOURS, they're just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you'll all grow up someday to like eachother and still be in one piece. What I mean is, everything you get is really just on loan. Does that make sense?""Sure,"I said. "Like library books. Sooner or later they've all got to go back into the nightdrop."I'm trying to get better about listening to more audiobooks in the car and less Top 40s best hits of today and your school days. Allow me to be perfectly clear: there is entertainment value in your child knowing all the words to Soulja Boy's romantic serenade "Kiss Me Through the Phone," but it's also rewarding for him to say that Barbara Kingsolver is a good storyteller, discuss immigrants, refugees, and murderous South American regimes on the way home from the bus stop, and groan when the narrator announces the last disc. "There's a sequel! We'll read it! Don't worry," I offered. I picked The Bean Trees to rehabituate myself to the life of an audiobook commuter because I remembered reading another Barbara Kingsolver book in college, and I remembered her writing to be funny and engaging, I remembered she leans toward female protagonists that don't suck, and she wrote that book everyone loves, Animal Vegetable Miracle. I keep meaning to read AVM, but it's got such a long wait at the library. The Bean Trees had no waiting at all, and Sue Monk Kidd said it was one of her all-time favorites it in the Goodreads September newsletter. That's enough good reasons.So I "read" the audiobook of The Bean Trees, and I enjoyed it. The pace of the story is occasionally more of a stroll than a walk, the characters fluctuate in ways that are more convenient for the plot than authentically human, and the dialogue trails off occasionally, leaving the reader hanging. All these things can be annoying, or charming, and I think they work well enough here. So, yes, it reads a little bit like a first novel, which it is. I was quite surprised to realize this was written in 1988 - a number of the sentiments and political views seem timely and contemporary, like Native parental rights & US immigration/refugee policies. This book has feminist characters and stories, it's structured around unconventional families, and includes an emphasis on community support in a way that's not contrived, hokey, or idealistic. Special bonus for the most amazing business name ever: Jesus is Lord Used Tires. The most important things I hope I remember about this book:1. The new year started on July 12, my birthday.2. They spend a lot of time in Oklahoma, which I have done. 3. The ladies in this book are smart, independent, and they talk to each other about real life. 4. I just love a good, epic road trip with life-altering consequences.5. There's a lady whose "power color" is red, and she wears it all the time. I love people with power colors.6. The theme of unintentional single motherhood & parenting in a fairly unconventional way.
My stepmother was the type of woman who painted the walls in our house eighteen different colors and wore turquoise-encrusted Kokopelli jewelry to show how in tune she was with the local culture. She hung Frida Khalo prints on the bedroom walls and thought that speaking ‘Food Spanish’ to waiters made her nearly fluent. She also compelled my sister and me to read a lot of Tony Hillerman paperbacks and other ‘local literature,’ which I am now almost positive included The Bean Trees. Because after reading the first chapter of this book, I got the strangest sense of de ja vu. This is probably appropriate in its way, given that the reason I picked it up in the first place was to suppress a bit of homesickness. Because a couple times a year—amidst the April snowstorms and one too many guys on the subway who splay themselves across two seats while playing audio-enabled Snood on their cell phones—I start pining for the homeland. I turned to this book hoping to get a good dose of Tucsonan flavor to keep me going until I had the time and money to go home and remember why I left in the first place. I have to say, though, The Bean Trees didn’t really do the trick. Because even though I appreciate details about the Sun Tran bus line and the way it smells in the desert when it rains (the thing I miss the most about Tucson), there’s more to invoking a landscape than just listing of things that are really there. A good book about New York, for instance, isn’t good because it mentions the Empire State Building or talks about people taking taxis. It is a major (and frequent) misstep in novels to try and just be factually accurate about a place, without ever getting into how it really feels there. To be fair, though, while the landscape wasn’t terribly reminiscent of Arizona, the writing style really was in its own (probably accidental) way. Because Ms. Kingsolver really illuminates that deep Southwestern flare for ‘characters’ and ‘culture’—a fondness for highlighting how darn quirky desert folk really are, and a gringo’s deep and abiding love of all things latino. (As a side note, though: if we’re going to just start dropping real places into the book for authenticity, I would have swapped the ‘Jesus Is Lord’ tire place for the church that has ‘Happiness is Submission to God’ painted on it—a slogan which often gets altered to ‘Happiness is Submission to Godzilla!’ by persistent neighborhood delinquents…)
What do You think about The Bean Trees (1989)?
In this delightful first novel by Kingsolver, she already has her skills working on all cylinders. The tale portrays a journey of a young woman, Taylor, to escape from a restricted life in a small town in Kentucky. Along the way, an abused 3-year old Cherokee girl is abandoned in her car in Oklahoma, whom she names Turtle, and incorporates into her life at the point her car falls apart in Tuscon, Arizona. With a relatively simple plot and a few characters, she captures well how even poor, uneducated people with big hearts can draw in a circle of fellow humans sufficient to handle many tough challenges and to make the essence of a joyful extended family. The impacts of poverty, classism, racism, child abuse, and persecution of political refugees from South America are some of the themes. Despite these subject lines, humor and personal triumphs abound in the telling. Books like this that make me both laugh and cry, as well as encapsulate visions of the universal in the particular, garner highest ratings from me. I place this one in the same ball park with novels of Kent Haruf and Billie Letts.
—Michael
It's funny. I have recently been thinking about women with children living in the same house as best friends, not as sexual lovers, and wondering if it really happens. Well, it happens in this book with Lou Ann and Taylor being roommates in Tuscon, Arizona. Lou Ann had Dwayne Ray and Taylor has Turtle, an abused child who was actually given to her on a cross-country trip. This is a story about moms, moms and daughters, friendship, and what it means to belong. I enjoyed the character Mattie in this book. It wasn't my favorite Kingsolver book, and I don't have a desire to read Pigs in Heaven, but I am glad I read this story.
—Devin
I just finished reading this book for the second time. I think I did like it better ten years ago when I taught it to my sophomore English class! That is probably because we did activities with the book along the way, and we were able to discuss the book in more detail.Although I think the book is a slow read and it takes a LONG time to get into it, there are some good themes to think about. I do like the ending because it's hopeful and you can see a lot of growth in the characters by the end. The best part about reading The Bean Trees though is that it really got me thinking about my teaching career, and it prompted me to reconnect with a close friend/fellow teacher. We're back in touch now, and that's a great thing!
—Michelle
