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Since Barbara Kingsolver published The Bean Trees in 1988, her work has been of great interest to readers – first, American readers; then British and South African readers; and finally to readers the world over. With incredible speed, Kingsolver became one of the best-known United States writers, a person who collected honors and awards as if she were a much more mature literary producer.
From the beginning Kingsolver touched an elbow of keen interest in her readers: hers was the voice of world awareness, a conscientious voice that demanded attention for the narratives of the disadvantaged, the politically troubled, the humanly silenced. By paying special attention to her non-fiction (essays and books), this new study by renowned literary critic Linda Wagner-Martin highlights the way Kingsolver has become a kind of public intellectual, particularly in the 21st century. It provides fresh readings of each of her novels, stories, and poems.
Preface
Chapter One: Flight Behavior, Dellarobia's Bildungsroman
Chapter Two: The Innocence of The Bean Trees
Chapter Three: Pigs in Heaven and Its Interrogation
Chapter Four: Animal Dreams, The Prototypical Ecological Novel
Chapter Five: The Fiction of Kingsolver's Non-Novels
Chapter Six: Kingsolver as Essayist-a different expertise
Chapter Seven: Kingsolver as Poet
Chapter Eight: The Poisonwood Bible as Apex
Chapter Nine: The Prodigality of Prodigal Summer
Chapter Ten: Traveling to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Chapter Eleven: The Lacuna
Chapter Twelve: Small Wonder: Staying Alive and the Bellwether Prizes
Chapter Thirteen: Flight Behavior, Our Bildungsroman
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Chapter One: Flight Behavior, Dellarobia's Bildungsroman
Chapter Two: The Innocence of The Bean Trees
Chapter Three: Pigs in Heaven and Its Interrogation
Chapter Four: Animal Dreams, The Prototypical Ecological Novel
Chapter Five: The Fiction of Kingsolver's Non-Novels
Chapter Six: Kingsolver as Essayist-a different expertise
Chapter Seven: Kingsolver as Poet
Chapter Eight: The Poisonwood Bible as Apex
Chapter Nine: The Prodigality of Prodigal Summer
Chapter Ten: Traveling to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Chapter Eleven: The Lacuna
Chapter Twelve: Small Wonder: Staying Alive and the Bellwether Prizes
Chapter Thirteen: Flight Behavior, Our Bildungsroman
Bibliography
Index
Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. Her many books include Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987) and Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life (2nd edition, 2003).
"[In this] thorough book-by-book analysis [...] readers receive ample guidance concerning the plots, characters, and themes of each of Kingsolver's novels and stories."
– Contemporary Women's Writing
"In this landmark study, Linda Wagner-Martin traces Barbara Kingsolver's evolution into an author whose work fully synthesizes fiction and ecology. Reading Kingsolver's essays and interviews alongside her novels, Wagner-Martin delves into what it means to be an ecological writer. Scholars will find Barbara Kingsolver's World to be foundational, and general readers will appreciate its insights into the writings of a fascinating living author."
– Jennifer Haytock, Professor and Chair of the English Department, The College at Brockport, SUNY, USA
"In a landmark new study, Professor Wagner-Martin fuses discussion of Barbara Kingsolver's use of different lines of scientifically-based knowledge with readings of her fourteen books. While other critics persist in pigeonholing Kingsolver's work, Wagner-Martin expertly manoeuvres Kingsolver's dexterity of genres to provide a comprehensive study of the full range of her oeuvre. A model of scholarly agility and critical sensitivity, Barbara Kingsolver's World: Nature, Art, and the Twenty-First Century is essential reading."
– Laura Rattray, Reader in American Literature, University of Glasgow, UK
"One of the most insightful – and prolific – of American literary scholars, Linda Wagner-Martin here offers an excellent ecocritical reading of Barbara Kingsolver's work, written in Wagner-Martin's lucid, accessible prose. Focusing on what she calls "the reciprocity between the human and the natural," Wagner-Martin discusses natural elements even in those Kingsolver works – such as The Lacuna – that are usually viewed as political novels. She is especially good on Kingsolver's new and "strangely foreboding" Flight Behavior."
– Fred Hobson, Professor of English and Lineberger Distinguished Professor Humanities, The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, USA
"Provides detailed analysis of each of Kingsolver's novels as well as discussion of her non-fiction writing and poetry [...] Tracing thematic elements that appear across texts, including working-class women's labour, motherhood and parenting, interracial working-class communities and tensions, and community responses to social injustice as well as environmental devastation, Wagner-Martin ultimately provides a comprehensive and compelling account of the import of Kingsolver's work. Because she situates her readings at the conclusions of chapters within recent critical debates, her monograph also provides nice coverage of up-to-date commentary on Kingsolver's connection to women's literary history and the political novel of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century."
– This Year's Work in English Studies
