Barbara Kingsolver - 1955
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I. Personal and Professional Biography Born to Virginia and Wendell Kingsolver, a homemaker and a doctor, Barbara Ellen Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955, in Annapolis, Maryland. Shortly after, her
family moved to "the middle of an alfalfa field" in Nicholas County, Kentucky. She was raised there with her two siblings, except for the year they spent in Congo.
She left for DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1973. While she was there, she switched her major from classical piano to zoology. She chose earth sciences because,
"The writers that I read were mostly old, dead men. It was inconceivable to me that I might grow up to be a writer myself…I chose biology because it interested me and it seemed
'Reasonable,' with a capital R." Kingsolver graduated from there magna cum laude in 1977. After working in Greece and France as an archaeologist, copy editor, X-ray technician,
housecleaner, biological researcher and a translator of medical documents, she came back to the United States and visited Tucson, Arizona. She decided not to leave and to return
to school. Kingsolver attended the University of Arizona in Tucson until 1981, from where she earned her master's of science in ecology and evolutionary biology. Her thesis was about the social life of termites.
Barbara Kingsolver married a chemist, Joe Hoffman, in 1985, and had a daughter with him named Camille. She divorced Hoffman in 1993 and married Stephen Hopp in 1995. They
have a daughter named Lily, who was born in 1996. All three of them live in Tucson at present. Hopp is a guitarist and Kingsolver plays the keyboard and hand drums for his
band, The Rock Bottom Remainders, who just came out with a new CD called, "Fingers Crossed." Her other interests include hiking, gardening, and parenthood. She is a strong
human rights activist and follows the religion Pantheism. Pantheism believes that nature is sacred and does not focus on gods as much as other religions do. Barbara Kingsolver is a
member of the International Women's Writing Guild, Amnesty International, Committee for Human Rights in Latin America, Phi Beta Kappa, and PEN West.
Kingsolver has received many awards for her works. In 1989, only a year after The Bean Trees came out, she was praised by the United Nations Council of Women for her
accomplishment, which is published in over twelve languages in at least sixty-five countries. She also got an award from The American Library Association in 1988 and received one again in 1990 by the same group for Homeland
. In 1991, she obtained two awards for Animal Dreams: PEN fiction prize and Edward Abbey Ecofiction Award. As well as receiving these honors and more, she created the Bellweather Prize, an award given
to encourage writing and publication of literature that promotes social change. She uses her interests in her works and says, "If there were a single banner hanging over
my writing desk, it would say, 'Don't preach!' I have to work hard to refrain from diatribe, because I feel very strongly abut human rights and human justice." Her writing and social
activism started when she was only in second grade. She wrote an essay called, "Why We Need a New Elementary School" which was published in her local newspaper. It helped
voters to raise more money for the school district. Starting when she was 8 years old, she kept a journal religiously. As a child, she begged her mother to let her tell her stories and
she wrote stories and essays. However, Kingsolver never imagined she would be an author when she got older. She got more serious about writing when she was a free-lance journalist and eased into her first fiction novel,
The Bean Trees, when she was beating insomnia of her pregnancy with her first daughter. There are certain themes that are always dominate in Kingsolver's writings. Her main
characters, women, journey across America to the West to start a new life, trying to find themselves in the desert, which is what she did after traveling in Europe. She stresses
love, relationships, and the sense of community. Her protagonists are from the middle class who use their dignity to support themselves while being dependent on people in their
situation. Other themes include feminism and motherhood, which she has lived through and is knowledgeable about. According to American Writers, her characters "live both
within the real world and in the doorway to a better one." Barbara Kingsolver presents her material to her most likely reader-an American who values individualism-with the
importance of shared work and responsibility within the human community. It is also obvious she is concerned about child abuse, divorce, and political injustice. Nature is
important in her novels and has its own drama, "eco-feminism." Unlike many authors, Kingsolver does not use actual people in her books. She lives
through her characters herself but makes up characters' situations without getting ideas from what is around her. She uses some incidents in her life to explain what characters go through. II. Place Although Barbara Kingsolver was born in Maryland and grew up in Kentucky, she is placed in Arizona. She says she belongs there and all her works take place in this state.
She loves the southwest and shows it in her works. In an interview with Contemporary Authors, she said, "Living in the Southwest makes you pay attention to color and contrast
and hard edges, in terms of both physical landscape and human landscape." III. List of Works The Bean Trees (1988) IV. Interviews 1. Contemporary Authors. Ed. Susan M. Trosky. Volume 734; Detroit: 1992.
This interview with Barbara Kingsolver gives you a good idea of what the author is really like. It starts off with general questions about her life and why she writes and then goes
into specific questions about her major works. I recommend this interview, because everything said in it is very clear and easy to understand. V. Web Links "Barbara Kingsolver" This is website is written by Kingsolver herself and is connected with her publisher, HarperCollins. You can click on links within the site to view her books, read an interview
with the author, and includes a bibliography, an update on her life, and her background. It is straight-forward and very accessible. "Feminism"
Barbara Kingsolver is a feminist and displays this throughout her books by having the main characters be females. This site gives a lot of background about feminism and helps
the reader better understand feminism as a topic in her books. "Pantheism" Barbara Kingsolver's religion is pantheism, which is not very prevalent in the world. This
site by Paul Harris gives a lot of background information about it and the beliefs involved in the religion. Kingsolver's books include this religion and it is important to know about
since it is not common. The religion is focused on nature and not necessarily on gods. "What Could an Eco-Feminist Society Be?"
Barbara Kingsolver is an eco-feminist. This site explains in detail what that is and gives detailed information on the topic. It talks about the earth and women and then describes how the two are related. VI. Address Agent: Frances Goldin
VII. Bibliography Bear, Perry. "Kingsolver, Barbara." Contemporary Southern Writers. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: St. James Press, 1999.
Chenes, E.A. Des, ed. Authors and Artists for Young People. Vol. 15. New York: Gale Research, 1995. Discovering Authors. CD-ROM. 1996 ed. Gale Research, 1998.
Jones, Daniel, ed. Contemporary Authors. Vol. 60. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Kingsolver, Barbara. Barbara Kingsolver. N/D .
Interview with Barbara Kingsolver. N/D. . Parini, Jay, ed. American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Vol. 7. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.
SISTERwho. Barbara Kingsolver…Sister of Conscience. 25 May 1999. Trosky, Susan M., ed. Contemporary Authors. Vol. 734. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992.
This essay was submitted by a student of Susan Davis at St. Timothy's School in Stevenson, Maryland.
Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (1989)
Homeland and Other Stories (1989)
Animal Dreams (1990)
Another America (1992)
Pigs in Heaven (1993)
Another America/Otra America (1994)
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never (1995)
The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
Prodigal Summer (2000)
http://www.kingsolver.com
http://www.friesian.com/feminism.htm
http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/falllinlight/ecofem/society2.htm
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