Pigs in Heaven (Kingsolver)

Pigs in Heaven
Barbara Kingsolver, 1993
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060922535


Summary
When 6-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, her insistence on what she has seen leads to a man's dramatic rescue. But Turtle's moment of celebrity soon draws her and everyone in her life into a conflict of historic proportions. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—April 8, 1955
• Where—Annapolis, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., DePauw University; M.S., University of
   Arizona
• Awards—Orange Prize
• Currently—lives on a farm in Virginia


Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955. She grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields. While her family has deep roots in the region, she never imagined staying there herself. "The options were limited--grow up to be a farmer or a farmer's wife."

Kingsolver has always been a storyteller: "I used to beg my mother to let me tell her a bedtime story." As a child, she wrote stories and essays and, beginning at the age of eight, kept a journal religiously. Still, it never occurred to Kingsolver that she could become a professional writer. Growing up in a rural place, where work centered mainly on survival, writing didn't seem to be a practical career choice. Besides, the writers she read, she once explained, "were mostly old, dead men. It was inconceivable that I might grow up to be one of those myself..."

Kingsolver left Kentucky to attend DePauw University in Indiana, where she majored in biology. She also took one creative writing course, and became active in the last anti-Vietnam War protests. After graduating in 1977, Kingsolver lived and worked in widely scattered places. In the early eighties, she pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she received a Masters of Science degree. She also enrolled in a writing class taught by author Francine Prose, whose work Kingsolver admires.

Kingsolver's fiction is rich with the language and imagery of her native Kentucky. But when she first left home, she says, "I lost my accent.... [P]eople made terrible fun of me for the way I used to talk, so I gave it upslowly and became something else." During her years in school and two years spent living in Greece and France she supported herself in a variety of jobs: as an archaeologist, copy editor, X-ray technician, housecleaner, biological researcher and translator of medical documents.

After graduate school, a position as a science writer for the University of Arizona soon led her into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her numerous articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including The Nation, the New York Times, and Smithsonian, and many of them are included in the collection, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. In 1986 she won an Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing, and in 1995, after the publication of High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University.

Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a writer's discipline and broadening her "fictional possiblities." Describing herself as a shy person who would generally prefer to stay at home with her computer, she explains that "journalism forces me to meet and talk with people I would never run across otherwise."

From 1985 through 1987, Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by day, but she was writing fiction by night. Married to a chemist in 1985, she suffered from insomnia after becoming pregnant the following year. Instead of following her doctor's recommendation to scrub the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, Kingsolver sat in a closet and began to write The Bean Trees, a novel about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky (accent intact) and finds herself living in urban Tucson.

The Bean Trees, originally published in 1988 and reissued in a special ten-year anniversary edition in 1998, was enthusiastically received by critics. But, perhaps more important to Kingsolver, the novel was read with delight and, even, passion by ordinary readers. "A novel can educate to some extent," she told Publishers Weekly. "But first, a novel has to entertain—that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page. I have a commitment to accessiblity. I believe in plot. I want an English professor to understand the symbolism while at the same time I want the people I grew up with—who may not often read anything but the Sears catalogue—to read my books."

For Kingsolver, writing is a form of political activism. When she was in her twenties she discovered Doris Lessing. "I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way. And it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do, if I could ever do that."

The Bean Trees was followed by the collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989), the novels Animal Dreams (1990), and Pigs in Heaven (1993), and the bestselling High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never (1995). Kingsolver has also published a collection of poetry, Another America: Otra America (Seal Press, 1992, 1998), and a nonfiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of l983 (ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 1989, 1996). The Poisonwood Bible (1998) earned accolades at home and abroad, and was an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Barbara's Prodigal Summer (2000), is a novel set in a rural farming community in southern Appalachia. Small Wonder, April 2002, presents 23 wonderfully articulate essays. Here Barbara raises her voice in praise of nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the genesis of war, violence, and poverty in our world.

Two additional books became best sellers. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle came in 2007, again to great acclaim. Non-fiction, the book recounts a year in the life of Kingsolver's family as they grew all their own food. The Lacuna, published two years later, is a fictional account of historical events in Mexico during the 1930, and moving into the U.S. during the McCarthy era of the 1950's.

Extras
• Barbara Kingsolver lives in Southern Applachia with her husband Steven Hopp, and her two daughters, Camille from a previous marriage, and Lily, who was born in 1996. When not writing or spending time with her family, Barbara gardens, cooks, hikes, and works as an environmental activist and human-rights advocate.

• Given that Barbara Kingsolver's work covers the psychic and geographical territories that she knows firsthand, readers often assume that her work is autobiographical. "There are little things that people who know me might recognize in my novels," she acknowledges. "But my work is not about me...

• If you want a slice of life, look out the window. An artist has to look out that window, isolate one or two suggestive things, and embroider them together with poetry and fabrication, to create a revelation. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Possessed of an extravagantly gifted narrative voice, Kingsolver blends a fierce and abiding moral vision with benevolent concise humor. Her medicine is meant for the head, the heart and the soul.
New York Times Book Review

There is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and the earthy poetry of ordinary folks' talk; her descriptions have a magical lyricism rooted in daily life but also on familiar terms with the eternal.
Washington Post Book World

That rare combination of a dynamic story told in dramatic language, combined with issues that are serious, debatable and painful.... [It's] about the human heart in all its shapes and ramifications.
Los Angeles Times Book Review

Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee daughter Turtle, first met in The Bean Trees, will captivate readers anew in Kingsolver's assured and eloquent sequel, which mixes wit, wisdom and the expert skills of a born raconteur into a powerfully affecting narrative. Now six years old and still bearing psychological marks of the abuse that occured before she was rescued by Taylor, Turtle is discovered by formidable Indian lawyer Annawake Fourkiller, who insists that the child be returned to the Cherokee Nation. Taylor reacts by fleeing her Tucson home with Turtle to begin a precarious existence on the road; skirting the edge of poverty and despair, she eventually realizes that Turtle has become emotionally unmoored. In taking a fresh look at the Solomonic dilemma of choosing between two equally valid claims on a child's life, Kingsolver achieves the admirable feat of making the reader understand and sympathize with both sides of the controversy, as she contrasts Taylor's inalterable mother's love with Annawake's determination to save Turtle from the stigmatization she can expect from white society. The chronicle acquires depth and humor when Kingsolver integrates the story of Taylor's mother Alice, a woman who believes that the Greers are "doomed to be a family with no men in it" (that she is proven wrong adds a delicious element of romance to the story). Alice's resolve to help her daughter takes her into the heart of the Cherokee Nation and results in an astonishing but credible meshing of lives. In the end, both justice and compassion are served. Kingsolver's intelligent consideration of issues of family and culture—both in her evocation of Native American society and in her depiction of the plight of a single mother—brims with insight and empathy. Every page of this beautifully controlled narrative offers prose shimmering with imagery and honed to simple lyric intensity. In short, the delights of superior fiction can be experienced here.
Publishers Weekly

It takes an insightful writer like Kingsolver to tackle the complicated, emotional issue of dysfunctional families, but she does it well (again), making this development of characters first introduced in The Bean Trees as enjoyable to read as its predecessor—and better. Taylor Greer and her kindergarten-aged adopted daughter, Turtle, unwittingly place themselves at the center of a controversy involving Turtle's Native American heritage. Their love for each other—an unspoken, unquestioning bond—helps them cope with family, friends, and lovers as they try to tie the loose ends of their lives into a strong, tidy knot. Maybe this novel will help readers understand the meaning of life or simply provide them with some good entertainment. But as Kingsolver brilliantly reveals from the first pages of this novel, the answers to our questions aren't delivered easily but must come from the heart. Recommended for all general collections. —Marlene McCormack-Lee, Reedsport Branch Lib., Ore.
Library Journal

When a young Cherokee tribal lawyer comes to the door to claim Taylor's illegally adopted Indian daughter, the white woman must face the fact that her stable life is about to be torn apart. The story follows her and six-year-old Turtle across the West as they flee from the threat of separation and exist on minimum-wage earnings. Meanwhile, Taylor's mother, Alice, leaves her second husband and goes to stay with her cousin in Heaven, Oklahoma. There she meets Cash, a full-blooded Cherokee, who has been living outside the reservation, but yearns to return to his roots. The richness of Indian tribal life is seen through the eyes of Cash, Alice, and Annawake Fourkiller, the lawyer. There are some wonderful scenes revealing Cherokee customs and lifestyles. The stories of the different characters are woven together with humor and sensitivity. When Taylor and Turtle come to the reservation to face their future, readers will feel the adoptive mother's helplessness as she admits that she, too, might have let the child down. The characters are ordinary, yet noble and memorable, and the ending is just and gratifying. The issue of Indian children being adopted outside the tribe is addressed with respect from all sides. —Penny Stevens, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
School Library Journal

For what's hoped to be a "break-out book," a greatly gifted storyteller returns to the characters and settings of her celebrated first novel (The Bean Trees, 1987). Kingsolver previously tracked plucky ex-Kentuckian Taylor Greer as she made her way west to Tucson, struggling to earn a living and to deal with the frightened, wounded toddler Turtle, who had been abandoned in Taylor's care in Oklahoma. Now it's three years later. Settled Tucsoners Taylor and Turtle are on vacation at the Hoover Dam when six-year-old Turtle witnesses an accident—a retarded man has fallen into a spillway. When the man is rescued, Turtle becomes a celebrity—which brings self-confidence but also the attention of Cherokee Nation authorities in Heaven, Oklahoma—especially that of Indian-activist lawyer Annawake Fourkiller, who recognizes Turtle as a missing Cherokee child called Lacey Stillwater; Lacey, it turns out, is the daughter of a deceased Cherokee woman whose alcoholic sister's abusive boyfriend broke both of Turtle's arms before the sister and boyfriend ditched her and disappeared. When Fourkiller pays an ominous visit to Taylor, whose adoption of Turtle may have been illegal, Taylor packs up the child and goes on the lam. As their flight becomes more punishing, Turtle regresses severely. Meanwhile, Taylor's spirited mother Alice Greer, remembering she has a Cherokee cousin in the town of Heaven, pays a visit, snoops around, and falls in love—with Cash Stillwater, Lacey/Turtle's grandfather and only living relative. Soon Taylor (no mother, not even those in the Indian myth of the odd title, is more loving) shows up to spare Turtle the trials of flight. All will be amicably,hilariously, and heartwarmingly settled to everybody's satisfaction. Not the truly wonderful book it might have been—characters who seem important disappear; carefully marked trails turn out to be merely picaresque, leading nowhere—but a terrific read nonetheless.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. When Annawake first meets Taylor, she states the book's central problem this way: "There's the child's best interest and the tribe's best interest, and I'm trying to think of both things." What is Turtle's best interest—in Taylor's view? in the tribe's view? in your view? Did the book change the way you might respond to such a case if you read about it in the newspaper? Do you think the events of the novel relate at all to the complexities of interethnic adoptions in general? Particularly in a racist society?

2. What motivates Taylor when she runs away? What motivates Annawake's pursuit of Taylor? How do you feel about these two women? In what ways are they similar? How do they change, and why?

3. Talking to Annawake, Jax poses the question: "How can you belong to a tribe, and be your own person, at the same time? You can't. If you're verifiably one, you're not the other." (chp. 15, "Communion"). Are there ways to reconcile the claims of individuality and those of the group? Does the novel suggest any of them? What does Alice discover, for instance, during the stomp dance (in Chp. 26, "Old Flame")? How do the values of the Cherokee community described here differ from those of dominant U.S. culture, particularly around this question of community vs. individualism?

4. The novel seems to suggest that cultural emphasis on independence, mobility, and self-reliance can lead to loneliness and alienation. How do individual characters—Alice, Barbie, Rose, Cash, Taylor, Jax—reflect this view of independence as isolation? Do you agree with the novel's judgement? How have you, or people you know about, been affected by the cultural celebration of "self-reliance?" Do you think men and women relate differently to this cultural value?

5. In explaining why it's important for the tribe to get Turtle back, Annawake tells Alice, "We've been through a holocaust as devastating as what happened to the Jews, and we need to keep what's left of our family together" (Chp. 27, "Family Stories"). How does the novel go about demonstrating the validity of this comparison? How do you feel about it? How should people living today deal with histories of oppression?

6. The title, Pigs in Heaven , refers to the Cherokee legend about the six bad boys that got turned into pigs before their mother's eyes. Annawake tells this story—in two entirely different ways—on page 87 and again on page 313. How does this story, in its two versions, demonstrate the book's theme, and Annawake's growth? In what other ways do pigs enter the story, as symbols of renegade individualism and community spirit?

7. How—physically and spiritually—does povery affect people's lives? How does poverty affect Taylor? Does this novel offer a judgement on poor people? On our society's attitudes towards poor people?

8. The novel is divided into three sections: Spring, Summer, and Fall, written in English and Cherokee. What significance for you is there in the fact that the novel is structured according to the cycles of nature, ending during harvest, just short of winter?

9. When Cash shoots his TV at the end, it's a rather complex image. If you think about the other scenes in which TVs and TV-watching figure, or how TV may be said to function in the U.S. culture at large, what possible meanings might his gesture have?

10. Occasionally, readers have felt that Kingsolver's heroines and endings are idealized—that is, too good to be true. How do you feel about this criticism? First of all, would you agree that this is so in Pigs in Heaven? Second, do you think that good fiction ought not to idealize its characters or situations? (Questions provided by publisher.)

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