Barbara Kingsolver writes, in her essay entitled “Jabberwocky” from High Tide in Tucson (1995): “Art has the power not only to soothe a savage breast, but to change a savage mind.” Since her first novel, The Bean Trees, was published in 1988, Kingsolver has used her fiction both to entertain and to teach and inform. Linking herself with an American tradition of political writers that includes Thoreau, Whitman, and Steinbeck and critical of what she views as a contemporary American tendency to dismiss fiction that engages in political critique, Kingsolver consciously seeks in her works to promote social change. Many of her novels explore themes related to social injustice: in The Bean Trees she writes about …
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Citation: Koza, Kimberly. "Barbara Kingsolver". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 September 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2518, accessed 24 November 2024.]
