The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Genre: YA Realistic Fiction

Blurb (on back of book): Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.

MY OPINION: ***

I read this book for freshman English and it was nothing like what I expected.

This book explored a HUGE variety of themes, running around all over the place. You can really take away a lot of things from this book, even ideas that the author may not have thought of or really intended.

Marietta renames herself "Taylor" and leaves home to drive across the country in an old clunky car, leaving behind Kentucky and heading to Arizona (though it wasn't really where she was intended). Taylor wants to leave behind the same old people and the teenage pregnancies that she experienced while growing up but lo and behold, along the way, she acquires somebody else's baby, who she soon names Turtle.

When she arrives in Arizona, she meets a wide variety of characters, including Lou Ann, the worrisome woman with a son and a husband who left her, who takes Taylor in and houses her and builds a real relationship with her, despite their many differences in opinion. We also meet Mattie, a female who is kind of all over the place and cares for everyone, and Esperanza and Estevan, illegal immigrants who Taylor forms some attachment to, especially Estevan.

Throughout the book, we uncover the idea of motherhood and what it means to be a mother. Taylor figures this out without ever getting pregnant, and even though Turtle isn't her blood baby, it doesn't make any difference, something that is learned throughout the book. Lou Ann and Taylor both learn the struggles of being a single mother, something that also pertains to Taylor's own mother who raised her on her own and treated her like she was everything. We also see a racially-skewed elderly woman known as Granny Logan and Lou Ann's mother, Ivy, who also goes along with the theme of motherhood, although they aren't as large of a part of the story.

We also see evidence of the idea that "we are a world of immigrants," an idea that we talked about in great detail in English class. Immigration is a huge part of this book. We see the perspective of a woman, Virgie May Parsons, who is discriminatory and reluctant to accept immigrants, being blunt and publicly rude to Estevan and Esperanza. Illegal immigration is a hard topic to discuss but this book takes it in hand and tells the story of a couple whose child was taken away from them and who don't really belong anywhere else.

There are little things in this book that symbolize large ideas that the author is trying to convey. All in all, this book was full of literary devices that elaborated on wide ideas and made them feel closer to the readers. This entire book was full of writing that resonated with readers and the characters alike.

"Look at those guys out in the park with no place to go... And women, too. I've seen whole families out there. While we're in here trying to keep the dry-cleaner bags out of the kids' reach, those mothers are using dry-cleaner bags for their children's clothes, for God's sake. For raincoats. And feeding them out of the McDonald's dumpster. You'd think that life alone would be punishment enough for those people, but then the cops come around waking them up mornings, knocking them around with their sticks. You've seen it. And everybody else saying hooray, way to go, I got mine, power to the toughest. Clean up the neighborhood and let the devil take the riffraff."

"How people call you 'illegals.' That just pisses me off, I don't know how you can stand it. A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal?"

I would recommend this book to readers looking for a longer, intuitive, and thoughtful novel.

Main Character: Taylor
Sidekick(s): Estevan, Lou Ann, Turtle, Mattie, etc
Villain(s): "Illegal" immigration, racial discrimination, etc

Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all very real to life.