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In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to do something for their country. Thousands of young people answered his call, launching an era of flourishing social activism that eclipsed any in U.S. history. Citizens rallied behind an endless variety of social justice organizations to change the country's social and political landscape. As these social movements gained momentum, the severe poverty of the Appalachian region attracted the attention of many spirited young Americans. In 1964, a group of them formed the Appalachian Volunteers, an organization intent on eradicating poverty in eastern Kentucky and the rest of the Southern mountains. In Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and the War on Poverty, Thomas Kiffmeyer documents the history of this organization as their youthful enthusiasm led to radicalism and controversy. Known informally as the AVs, these reformers sought to improve the everyday lives of the Appalachian poor while also making strides toward lasting economic change in the region. Considering themselves "poverty warriors," the AVs helped residents by refurbishing schools and homes and by offering much-needed educational opportunities, including job training and remedial academic instruction. Their efforts brought temporary relief to the Appalachian poor, but controversy was soon to follow. Within two years of the group's formation, they faced nationwide accusations that they were "seditious" and "un-American." Kiffmeyer explains how these activists, who worked for a worthy cause, ignited a firestorm of public criticism that ultimately caused their mission to fail. Before the decade was over, the Volunteers had lost the support of the federal and state governments and of many Appalachian people -- an irreversible setback that caused the group to disband in 1970. The Appalachian Volunteers' failure was caused by multiple factors. They were overtly political, attracting divisive reactions from local and state governments. They were indecisive in defining the true nature of their cause, creating dissension within the group's ranks. They were engaged in a struggle to "integrate" the poor into mainstream American culture, which alienated the AVs from many of the very people they sought to help. They were also caught up in the unrest of the civil rights and anti--Vietnam War movements, which distracted them from their core mission. Reformers to Radicals chronicles a critical era in Appalachian history while also investigating the impact the 1960s' reform attitude had on one part of a broader movement in the United States. Kiffmeyer revisits an era in which idealistic young Americans, spurred on by President Kennedy's call to action, set out to remake America.

A prayerful guidebook and spiritual resource for the modern-day Nana. Grandmothers, with their lifetime of experience, have more wisdom than anyone since Solomon. Nanas, simply put, have a hotline to God! But how can she fulfill her role as a godly grandma today? The modern-day grandmother faces challenges that were unheard of a few decades ago, with the Internet at our fingertips, daily advances in technology, and evolving family structures and traditions. How can she leave her spiritual legacy as mentor and counselor? The Faith-Filled Grandmother provides a spiritual blueprint to help reverse, or at best mitigate, the impact of a transient society, fragmented families, and strained relationships, all while sustaining godly Christian traditions that many say is lacking in today's families. Writing with grace, humor, and insight, Teresa Kindred tackles Nana's modern-day hopes and fears and provides strategies to handle topics like: Being a long-distance grandparent, Navigating difficult relationships with adult children, Keeping your children spiritually focused in a material world, The physical challenges of being a grandmother, Raising your grandchildren as a primary caregiver, Multigenerational families under the same roof, And more! With accompanying scriptures, devotions, and prayers, The Faith-Filled Grandmother will inspire, empower, and relay God's promises to a new generation of grandmothers--from fearful first-time nanas to seasoned grandmothers--as well as new parents and women's ministry pastors. A grandmother's wisdom will never go out of fashion!

A new 6 x 6 gift book version of the popular little book, Hug One Another is an enduring Precious Moments keepsake filled with adorable artwork and charming sentiments suitable for a variety of occasions and relationships. A hug says "Congratulations." "Job well done." "I think you're the greatest." Or "Wasn't that fun?" There are lots of things that hugs can do And they mean so much when they come from you! Hug One Another has an instant audience. Known by at least 85 percent of American women, Precious Moments is America's most loved inspirational and collectibles license-and that love translates to sales.

- Humor for the Heart is a best-selling book series. - This book is a great gift for students to give to their teachers. - Short, humorous stories are the perfect lift-me-up for yourself or a teacher close to you. Multiple authors.

Have you ever walked on a treadmill that was going too fast? Like the pink bunny in the battery commercial, we keep going and going, even when it means neglecting our health and our own personal well-being. God and our families and friends don't get the best of us...they get what is left of us. Every woman deals with stress. The key is learning how to adjust the speed of your life. Teresa Bell Kindred provides ten proven strategies that can help you hold on when you are stressed out. The stories and practical DEstressor tips in this book will encourage you, while at the same time remind you that you are not alone.

Tender thoughts fill this charming Precious Moments tribute to a mother's love and devotion-a perfect gift for a mom or mom-to-be.

Most moms don't think of themselves as leaders. But in reality, moms are the most important leaders in the world. This simple, six-step course will equip mothers to be the Positive Home Directors God intended them to be.

Trivia and miscellanea; 55 pages.

Enjoy Teresa Kindred's reflections on the universal experience of mothering while listening to the peaceful strains of Mozart.

"For the elementary classroom, applicable to middle school curriculum" --cover.

From Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Bean Trees, and other modern classics, Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman's struggle to find her place in the world. At the end of her rope, Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home to face her ailing father, with whom she has a difficult, distant relationship. There she meets handsome Apache trainman Loyd Peregrina, who tells her, "If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life." Filled with lyrical writing, Native American legends, a tender love story, and Codi's quest for identity, Animal Dreams is literary fiction at it's very best. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more. Originally published in 1990.

Barbara Kingsolver's 1988 debut novel is a classic work of American fiction. Now a standard in college literature classes across the nation, and a book that appears in translation across the globe, The Bean Trees is not only a literary masterpiece but a popular triumph--a narrative that readers worldwide have taken into their hearts. It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a 3-year-old native-American little girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Tucson, Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West. Written with humor and pathos, this highly praised novel focuses on love and friendship, abandonment and belonging as Taylor, out of money and seemingly out of options, settles in dusty Tucson and begins working at Jesus Is Lord Used Tires while trying to make a life for herself and Turtle.

The extraordinary New York Times bestselling author of The Lacuna (winner of the Orange Prize), The Poisonwood Bible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver returns with a truly stunning and unforgettable work. Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver's riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions--religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians--trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world. Flight Behavior is arguably Kingsolver's must thrilling and accessible novel to date, and like so many other of her acclaimed works, represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.

With the same wit and sensitivity that have come to characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver gives us a rich and emotionally resonant collection of twelve stories. Spreading her memorable characters over landscapes ranging from northern-California to the hills of eastern Kentucky and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Kingsolver tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance. In every setting, Kingsolver's distinctive voice -- at times comic, but often heartrending -- rings true as she explores the twin themes of family ties and the life choices one must ultimately make alone. Homeland and Other Stories creates a world of love and possibility that readers will want to take as their own.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. From a coastal island jungle to the unpaved neighborhoods of 1930s Mexico City, through a disastrous stint at a military school in Virginia and back again, his fortunes never steady as Salomé finds her rich men-friends always on the losing side of the Mexican Revolution. Sometimes she gives her son cigarettes instead of supper. He aims for invisibility, observing his world and recording everything with a peculiar selfless irony in his notebooks. Life is whatever he learns from servants putting him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Making himself useful in the household of Rivera, his wife Frida Kahlo and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, and the howling gossip and reportage that dictate public opinion. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in the internationalist good will of World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. Under the watch of his peerless stenographer, Violet Brown, he finds an extraordinary use for his talents of observation. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach--the lacuna--between truth and public presumption. This is a gripping story of identity, connection with our past, and the power of words to create or devastate, unfolding at a moment when the entire world seemed bent on reinventing itself at any cost.

A phenomenal bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction, Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees. When a six-year-old child named Turtle is the sole witness to a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, she and her adoptive mother Taylor have a moment of celebrity that will change their lives forever. Turtle is claimed by Annawake Fourkiller, a Cherokee activist, to have been wrongly taken from the Cherokee nation. Fear of losing Turtle sends Taylor fleeing across the country with her mother Alice, pursued by Annawake. In the course of their journey, the three find love and wisdom in surprising places. First published in 1993.

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Originally published: HarperCollins, 1998.

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the complexities of a world neither of them expected. Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth. With the richness that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative and ideas that only an accomplished novelist could render so beautifully.

The New York Times bestselling author returns with a timely novel that interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval. How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family's one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own. In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town's powerful men. Unsheltered is the compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat. Originally published in 2007.

A bilingual collection of thirty-seven political and protest poems about the social conditions of America.This edition contains six new poems, a foreword by Margaret Randall, a new preface by Barbara Kingsolver, and a newly designed cover.

Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven. In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Barbara Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Kingsolver's canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.

Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first non-fiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment which occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters. Hundreds of families held the line in the 1983 strike against Phelps Dodge Copper in Arizona. After more than a year the strikers lost their union certification, but the battle permanently altered the social order in these small, predominantly Hispanic mining towns. At the time the strike began, many women said they couldn't leave the house without their husband's permission. Yet, when injunctions barred union men from picketing, their wives and daughters turned out for the daily picket lines. When the strike dragged on and men left to seek jobs elsewhere, women continued to picket, organize support, and defend their rights even when the towns were occupied by the National Guard. "Nothing can ever be the same as it was before," said Diane McCormick of the Morenci Miners Women's Auxiliary. "Look at us. At the beginning of this strike, we were just a bunch of ladies." First published in 1989.

Last Stand" takes readers from the tall grass prairies of Kansas to the Arctic tundra of Alaska to the deserts of the Southwest and bears passionate witness to the last wildernesses, reminding why they must be preserved.

In twenty-two wonderfully articulate essays, Barbara Kingsolver 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 From the author of High Tide in Tucson, comes Small Wonder, a new collection of essays that begins with a parable gleaned from recent news: villagers search for a missing infant boy and find him, unharmed, in the cave of a dangerous bear that has mothered him like one of her own. Clearly, our understanding of evil needs to be revised. What we fear most can save us. From this tale, Barbara Kingsolver goes on to consider the chasm between the privileged and the poor, which she sees as the root cause of violence and war in our time. She writes about her attachment to the land, to nature and wilderness, trees and mountains-the place from which she tells her stories. Whether worrying about the dangers of genetically engineered food crops, or creating opportunities for children to feel useful and competent - like growing food for the family's table - Kingsolver looks for small wonders, where they grow, and celebrates them. First published in 2002.

With an introduction by Wade Hall, Morris Grubbs has sifted through vintage classics, little-known gems, and stunning debuts to assemble this collection of forty stories by popular and critically acclaimed writers. In subtle and profound ways they challenge and overturn accepted stereotypes about the land their authors call home, whether by birth or by choice. Kentucky writers have produced some of the finest short stories published in the last fifty years, much of which focuses on the tension between the comforts of community and the siren-like lure of the outside world. Arranged chronologically, from Robert Penn Warren's "Blackberry Winter" to Crystal E. Wilkinson's "Humming Back Yesterday," these stories are linked by their juxtaposition of departures and returns, the familiar and the unknown, home and beyond. Contributors: Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, James Still, Jane Mayhall, Elizabeth Hardwick, Dean Cadle, Jesse Stuart, Billy C. Clark, Janice Holt Giles, A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Hollis Summers, Ed McClanahan, Sallie Bingham, Robert Hazel, Jack Cady, Jim Wayne Miller, David Madden, Gayl Jones, Jane Stuart, Gurney Norman, Walter Tevis, Bobbie Ann Mason, Joe Ashby Porter, Leon V. Driskell, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Richard Cortez Day, Sena Jeter Naslund, Pat Carr, Wendell Berry, James Baker Hall, Lisa Koger, Barbara Kingsolver, Normandi Ellis, Guy Davenport, Kim Edwards, Chris Holbrook, Paul Griner, Chris Offutt, Dwight Allen, Crystal E. Wilkinson. Edited by Morris Allen Grubbs; with an introduction by Wade Hall and an afterword by Charles E. May.

Agents or victims, liberated or oppressed, "bad girls" or "good girls." What do these labels mean and do they further or hinder women's progress? How are today's visions of female sexuality and power like or unlike those of the past? How do younger women define feminism? Isn't the personal still political? Dismayed by the media's tendency to reduce the feminist enterprise to labels and superstars, Donna Perry and Nan Bauer Maglin decided to find out what a diverse group of feminists think about women, sex, and power in the nineties. The result is a provocative and varied collection of twenty-four essays by second- and third-wave feminists; artists and activists; professors and graduate students; professional journalists and just-published writers; mothers and daughters. By focusing on society's construction, containment, and exploitation of female sexuality, in particular, these essays offer fresh perspectives on women's agency or lack of it. The contributors focus on the oversimplifications and false dichotomies in current discussions of female sexuality, as well as the privileged perspective and individualism that currently dominate the popularized feminist message. Individual writers--including Emma Amos, bell hooks, Ann Jones, Lisa Jones, Paula Kamen, Matuschka, Marge Piercy, Katha Pollitt, Anna Quindlen, Elayne Rapping, Lillian S. Robinson, and Ellen Willis--reexamine women's empowerment in the light of issues like AIDS, battering, acquaintance rape, narratives of childhood sexual abuse, and pornography. Several draw political conclusions from their personal struggles, while others read stories and texts--from history, the art world, the media, popular culture, and social science research--in new and controversial ways.

Barbara Kingsolver wears the feminist mantle with joyful pride, and her spirited embrace of political themes is contagious. Responding to richly-drawn heroines along their journeys to do right by family and community, readers embrace Kingsolver's political novels, making them bestsellers. From the haunting Arizona landscape of Kingsolver's early trilogy of novels, to the lush African jungle that sets the scene in her latest, The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver weaves colorful tapestries with vivid prose, exceptional intelligence, and unexpected humor. DeMarr's comprehensive treatment covers not only Kingsolver's four novels, each with its own chapter, but also discusses with considerable insight her background as a feminist, as a journalist, and, most importantly, as a humanist. Introducing readers to Kingsolver, DeMarr devotes a chapter to her life and work, showing how the two are deeply intertwined. While Kingsolver's writing is never strictly autobiographical, the well-researched section on politics and genre discusses how experiences in Kingsolver's own life and in her work as a political journalist have influenced her fiction writing. In addition to the celebrated novels that readers have come to love: The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, Animal Dreams, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as the poems and short stories, DeMarr covers the nonfiction: the essays and political writings. A full chapter analyzes each novel in terms of plot and character development, thematic content, symbolism, and the importance of place and language. Students and fans of Kingsolver will find this work, including its well-organized bibliography, accessible and interesting.

This volume in the Critical Insights series brings together a set of materials to serve both as an introduction to Barbara Kingsolver's writings and as a guide to scholarly readings of her work. The volume begins with a general introduction to Kingsolver's life and work that provides a context for the beginning reader. Biographical data shedding light on her fiction and essays are provided in the sketch by Marilyn Kongslie and Karen L. Arnold, and Katherine Ryder's sketch for The Paris Review shows us Kingsolver at her most political, especially in her essay collection Small Wonder (2002).

The Great Writers series explores the lives of some of the most talked about literary figures of the past half-century. Kentucky native Kingsolver gained recognition as a contemporary author for works such as The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible. Ages 14+.

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.

Barbara Kingsolver--a writer of fiction, documentary, verse and essay--supports entertaining stories with profound themes of ecological responsibility and defense of human rights. This work is an introduction and overview of the author's literary achievements, opening with an annotated chronology of Kingsolver's life, activism, works, and awards, followed by a family tree. The 122 alphabetical entries in the main text provide data and analysis on characters, dates, historical figures and events, allusions, literary motifs, and themes from Kingsolver's works, combining insights with generous citations from primary and secondary sources. Each entry concludes with a selected bibliography. Appendices include a timeline of events in The Poisonwood Bible, a list of 46 writing and research topics, a bibliography, and a comprehensive index.

Maternal Conditions analyzes the depiction of motherhood in the works of Barbara Kingsolver, Ana Castillo, Louise Erdrich, and Ruth Ozeki. The book examines the politics underlying and engendered by ethnically diverse representations of the maternal, interrogating the dominant cultural understanding of the good mother. This analysis then moves to a study of how the subjective experience of mothers is portrayed in these writings, ending with an exploration of the relationship between motherhood and ethics.

Our English classrooms are often only as vibrant as the literature that we teach. This book explores the writing of contemporary American author, Barbara Kingsolver, who offers readers and students engaging fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that confront the reader and the world. Here, teachers will find an introduction to the works of Kingsolver and an opportunity to explore how to bring those works into the classroom as a part of the reading and writing curriculum. This volume attempts to confront what we teach and how we teach as English teachers through the vivid texts Kingsolver offers her readers.

Best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver's life and works are explored in this comprehensive, unique reference guide. Ideal for book club members and essential for high school students, this valuable resource introduces the plot summaries as well as theme and character analysis for seven of Kingsolver's major works. Kingsolver's usual topics, primarily focusing on the working class, environmental issues, feminism, and Native American studies, are closely examined in relation to current events and contemporary popular culture. Also discussed are Kingsolver's presence on the Internet, as well as the media's reception of the author. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking, analytical discussion questions, ideal for encouraging book club conversation as well as stimulating classroom discussion. The What Do I Read Next chapter will delight readers who enjoy Kingsolver's work. This guide is a must-have for public and high school library shelves! Best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver's life and works are explored in this comprehensive, unique reference guide. Ideal for book club members and essential for high school students, this valuable resource introduces the plot summaries as well as theme and character analysis for seven of Kingsolver's major works. Kingsolver's usual topics, primarily focusing on the working class, environmental issues, feminism, and Native American studies, are closely examined in relation to current events and contemporary popular culture. Also discussed are Kingsolver's presence on the Internet, as well as the media's reception of the author. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking, analytical discussion questions, ideal for encouraging book club conversation as well as stimulating classroom discussion. The What Do I Read Next chapter will delight readers who enjoy Kingsolver's work. This guide is a must-have for public and high school library shelves!

Barbara Kingsolver's books have sold millions of copies. The Poisonwood Bible was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and her work is studied in courses ranging from English-as-a-second-language classes to seminars in doctoral programs. Yet, until now, there has been relatively little scholarly analysis of her writings. Seeds of Change: Critical Essays on Barbara Kingsolver, edited by Priscilla V. Leder, is the first collection of essays examining the full range of Kingsolver's literary output. The articles in this new volume provide analysis, context, and commentary on all of Kingsolver's novels, her poetry, her two essay collections, and her full-length nonfiction memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Professor Leder begins Seeds of Change with a brief critical biography that traces Kingsolver's development as a writer. Leder also includes an overview of the scholarship on Kingsolver's oeuvre. Organized by subject matter, the 14 essays in the book are divided into three sections that deal with recurrent themes in Kingsolver's compositions: identity, social justice, and ecology. The pieces in this ground-breaking volume draw upon contemporary critical approaches--ecocritical, postcolonial, feminist, and disability studies--to extend established lines of inquiry into Kingsolver's writing and to take them in new directions. By comparing Kingsolver with earlier writers such as Joseph Conrad and Henry David Thoreau, the contributors place her canon in literary context and locate her in cultural contexts by revealing how she re-works traditional narratives such as the Western myth. They also address the more controversial aspects of her writings, examining her political advocacy and her relationship to her reader, in addition to exploring her vision of a more just and harmonious world. Fully indexed with a comprehensive works-cited section, Seeds of Change gives scholars and students important insight and analysis which will deepen and broaden their understanding and experience of Barbara Kingsolver's work.  

Historical mystery. "A missing boat, a Nazi cover-up, and a son determined to discover the truth." --Amazon