Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Bean Trees, has produced three national bestsellers, and we realize that using bestselling writers in the high school classroom carries some potential hazards. Nonetheless, we, secondary school teachers with some experience, think The Bean Trees has the earmarks of becoming a new classroom classic.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Barbara Kingsolver is an award-winning writer whose works have been published in more than 65 countries around the world. Her works are available in a range of media: she has recorded her novels and personal essays on audio tape, and she has at least one story on the World Wide Web (“Fault Lines” at http://buzzmag.com/issue28/faultlines28.html). It sometimes seems that she is everywhere.

Kingsolver is multidimensional. To her credit so far she has two books of nonfiction: the gripping neo-journalism of Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989), a story of the role that women played in the Phelps Dodge Copper Company labor dispute, and High Tide in Tucson (1995), a collection of personal essays that made the New York Times Bestseller list. She has a volume of poetry, Another America/Otra America (1992), featuring Kingsolver's English poems interleaved with translations by Rebeca Cartes, a volume of short stories, and three novels, two of which have been national bestsellers.

Barbara Kingsolver is obviously not an unknown, undiscovered writer. Nonetheless, she is one of the fresh new American voices whose work could find a comfortable niche in the curriculum canon for high school literature classes.

THE BEAN TREES

The Bean Trees is a “teachable” text, a meaningful novel that wrestles with significant personal and social issues while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls that frequently incur the wrath of censors. These characteristics may sound like a prescription for blandness, but the bright vision and loving wisdom of Barbara Kingsolver coupled with the wit and absolute audacity of the central character combine to make The Bean Trees an eminently usable text for faculty and an engaging novel for students.

The story begins with Taylor Greer's determination not to become pregnant in high school and thus face a premature marriage that would likely result in her being stuck in Pittman County, Kentucky, the rest of her life. The story is positive, uplifting, never depressing or even sad, yet the subject matter is substantial and varied, ranging from the long-term effects of child abuse to the plight of Guatemalan political refugees and the struggles of Native Americans. All of this subject matter is presented amidst a general atmosphere of care and concern for others.

The characters are admirable and engaging, and almost all are women. Yet, though this is basically a woman's novel, it is not a story bereft of men; both Taylor and Lou Ann exhibit interests in the opposite sex. Furthermore, the character of Taylor is tough enough to elicit admiration from even the most macho males in the class. And Taylor's independent, adventuresome spirit appeals to their yearning to go into the world. This is an engaging novel for many high school students.

To fit the needs of the classroom setting, The Bean Trees also lends itself to chapter-by-chapter teaching. The first two chapters may be treated almost as short stories. In fact, in a Contemporary Authors interview (1984, Detroit, MI: Gale Research, Vol. 134, 287), Kingsolver points out that she originally wrote the first chapter of The Bean Trees as a short story but was encouraged to reconceptualize it as a novel. Approaching the first two chapters as short stories may be an effective strategy for engaging more reluctant students.

THEMES IN THE BEAN TREES

While The Bean Trees features family values, these values work themselves out in a nontraditional setting. Taylor's mother raises her alone, Taylor's father having cleared out long ago. Taylor's mother supports and encourages Taylor in all that she does—not heroically but clearly and consistently—so that Taylor's recollections are of a mother who felt all the positive things Taylor did were grand achievements. The result is that Taylor apparently regards herself as capable of grand achievements, some of which we see in the course of the novel. The support from her mother probably contributes to Taylor's determination to avoid an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a plight that seems all-too-common among her high school classmates. Clearly, the support from her mother sustains Taylor throughout the novel: it serves her when she seeks a job at the Pittman County Hospital; it sustains her in her cross-country travel; and it strengthens her in her decision to adopt Turtle, an abused and abandoned Cherokee baby.

But maybe the most impressive expression of nurturing values comes from the nontraditional extended family in Taylor's Tucson neighborhood. Taylor becomes an integral part of that neighborhood community. In fact, Taylor seems to crystallize that community's bonding. It is a community of mutual support and interdependence consisting of two single mothers, Taylor and Lou Ann, living together each with an infant; two older neighbor women (one of whom is blind); Mattie with her tire store and residence which doubles as a safe-house for Central American refugees; and two of the refugees themselves, Estevan and Esperanza.

The novel pictures an underside of life: independent women with children scratching out a meager existence. They are able to do so because of their mutual interdependence, and that's a lesson in living.

Among other things, The Bean Trees is a lesson in the maturing process. As Taylor's confidence waxes and wanes, students may come to understand maturing as a process, not as an on/off proposition.

There are no depictions of sexuality. There are some urgings toward adultery (between Estevan and Taylor), but Taylor resists them, albeit for practical rather than for any inherently moral reasons. It is important to note that we see Taylor's interest in or at least infatuation for Estevan, but we do not have any substantial, positive indicators from Estevan regarding his inclinations.

A central element in the novel is the sexual and physical abuse that Turtle has experienced. We see none of the abuse itself, but do see the consequences, both physical and psychological. Taylor discovers bruises on Turtle the first time she changes her. Later in the novel, a doctor checks Turtle and discovers her now-healed broken bones and detects her “failure to thrive.” In addition, we witness her clinging behavior; in fact, that's how Turtle got her name: her tenacious grip reminded Taylor of the myth that once a turtle locks its jaws onto something it supposedly holds on until the next thunder. It seemed as if Turtle's grip was that tenacious. We also witness Turtle's reticence about talking and later her seemingly compulsive talk about seeds, plants, and vegetables.

In teaching the novel, we can effectively encourage students to become aware of alternate perspective on an issue by asking them to rethink the adoption of Turtle. When we finish The Bean Trees, we feel relieved that Taylor has in fact secured adoption papers for Turtle. As readers, the adoption feels right to us and brings a satisfying closure to the novel.

But a letter in Pigs in Heaven (1993, New York: HarperCollins, 148-150), the sequel to The Bean Trees, invites us to rethink that ending. The letter is from Annawake Fourkiller, a Native American who becomes aware of Taylor's adoption of Turtle and recognizes its irregularities. Annawake's letter comes three years after the close of The Bean Trees with Turtle now six years old. In it, Annawake asks Taylor to consider the plight of the Native American child raised in white society. Sharing that letter with students a week or so after having completed The Bean Trees is an excellent tool for encouraging both reflection and an alternate way of viewing what happens in the novel. The letter admits to the charm of raising a cute little Cherokee infant and appreciates the advantages of that upbringing, but it also articulates the grim reality of the racial discrimination that Turtle is likely to face in adolescence, and the fact that she will have to face that discrimination without any of the cultural supports or reinforcements that she might otherwise have if she were living among her people on a reservation. In addition, this letter on discrimination might be an excellent opening for a lesson on prejudice.

LITERARY TECHNIQUE IN THE BEAN TREES

From the perspective of literary techniques, this novel is, again, eminently teachable. Lessons on character come easily, especially in the case of Taylor because she is an inherently engaging persona. Lou Ann, Angel, and Turtle are also strong character studies.

Lessons on plot profit from the inherently engaging nature of the story. The classic plot construction builds the story effectively as it combines basic conflicts, both external and internal, in a model of plot development.

In addition to plot and character, lessons on symbol and irony are readily available and accessible for most students. For example, The Bean Trees features strong instances of irony. Two things that Taylor was intent on escaping by leaving Kentucky were tires and babies. When she was about twelve years old, she witnessed Newt Hardbine's father being hurled through the air when an overinflated tire he was working on exploded. That experience impressed on Taylor an inordinate fear of tires. Ironically, by the time Taylor gets to Tucson she has a baby, Turtle, and in a matter of weeks, she finds herself working around tires daily in Mattie's used tire store.

Some standard symbols are also readily apparent. To symbolize embarking on a new life, Taylor changes her name as she starts her journey westward. The fact that she journeys westward, the direction of new frontiers in the U.S., makes use of another standard symbol. Finally, for name symbolism, the Hardbines seemed continually on hard times.

The symbol with the best potential for development is rhizobia, the microbe that lives on the roots of the wisteria and provides a direct infusion of nitrogen to the plants, allowing them to grow in the most hostile of environments. In addition to an opportunity to teach a little lesson in biology, the rhizobia is a fitting symbol for systems of mutual support that constitute the thematic life blood of the novel.

OTHER CONNECTIONS

The Bean Trees offers the opportunity to teach a range of lessons in geography (by tracking Taylor's travels during the novel), biology (through the study of rhizobia), sociology (the sociology of single-parent families), psychology (the effects of child abuse as borne out in Turtle), and world politics (in terms of the story of Estevan and Esperanza as political refugees from Guatemala). All of that is in addition to the opportunity to teach The Bean Trees simply as good literature.