Essays on Barbara Kingsolver

April 8, 1955 (age 65 years), Annapolis, Maryland, United States

Novelist, Poet, Essayist

1988–present

Historical Fiction

Social Justice, Feminism, Environmentalism

• Flight Behavior
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
• The Poisonwood Bible

• "Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws."
• "Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."
• "Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier."

April 8, 1955 (age 67)

Barbara Kingsolver is an American writer and political activist whose best-known novels concern the endurance of people living in often inhospitable environments and the beauty to be found even in such harsh circumstances.

“The Poisonwood Bible", “Animal Dreams”, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, “Another America (Otra America)”, “Flight Behavior”, “Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983”, “Pigs in Heaven”, “Prodigal Summer”, “The Bean Trees”, “The Lacuna”, “Unsheltered”

Kingsolver's characters are frequently written around struggles for social equality, such as the hardships faced by undocumented immigrants, the working poor, and single mothers. Other common themes in her work include the balancing of individuality with the desire to live in a community, and the interaction and conflict between humans and the ecosystems in which they live.

Kingsolver has written novels in both the first person and third person narrative styles, and she frequently employs overlapping narratives. Kingsolver's literary subjects are varied, but she often writes about places and situations with which she is familiar; many of her stories are based in places she has lived in, such as central Africa and Arizona. Her work is often strongly idealistic and her writing has been called a form of activism.

Each of her books published since 1993 has been on the New York Times Best Seller list. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011, UK's Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna, and the National Humanities Medal. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change".

“The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.”
“Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.”
“God doesn’t need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.”