The American writer, Barbara Kingsolver is a poet, novelist, and essayist. The political activist was born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1955. Her writings are mainly based on the survival of people in harsh and unreceptive environments. However, she manages to dig out the hidden beauty of life in even such circumstances.
Kingsolver dedicates most of her works to environmental concerns and social justice for the people. As she ascribes importance to these subjects, her works often become successful in gaining the attention of the world. However, she does not only follow the issues of everyday life in her works.
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Kingsolver, in real life, is also devoted to her values. For example, she established the Bellwether Prize for the unpublished works about ‘social change’.
Since 1993, Kingsolver’s most of the writing has become The New York Times Bestseller list. It is because she writes about biodiversity and human connection with others and the environment. Her two most praised works include “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”.
The first novel is about a missionary family who moved to Congo on a health delegation. While “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is Kingsolver’s non-fiction work about an effort of her family to eat local food for almost a year.
Writers Digest entitled Kingsolver as one of the most notable 20th-century writers. She also received some major prizes for her notable works. For example, she won the Dayton Literary Peace Price in 2011. She also got the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010 in the UK for “The Lacuna”, and the National Humanities Medal.
She had also been nominated for the most coveted awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and PEN/Faulkner Award. Now she lives with her second husband and daughter in the mountains of Southern Appalachia and Southern Arizona.
Barbara Kingsolver, one of the leading English writers, was born in 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland. She also spent some of her childhood in Carlisle, Kentucky. At seven years of age, Kingsolver moved to The Republic of Congo with her family. As her father was a physician, her parents worked in the public health sector in Africa. The family lived there without basic facilities like water and electricity.
When Kingsolver finished her school life, she got admission to DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. There, she studied Classical Piano on a music scholarship. However, due to huge competition for 6 seats of classical pianist jobs annually, she changed her subject to the biology major. She also took part in activist movements on her campus and was a leading figure in protests against the barbarism of the Vietnam War.
She completed her graduation in the oldest academic honor society, Phi Beta Kappa with a science degree in 1977. After graduation, Kingsolver shifted to France to live for a year before going to Tucson, Arizona. In Arizona, she lived for about twenty years of her life. She got admission to the University of Arizona in 1980. At Arizona University, Kingsolver got a master’s degree in the subjects of evolutionary biology and ecology.
In the mid-1980s, Barbara Kingsolver began writing for her university as a science writer. Due to her science background and her love for writing, she became attracted to writing for the public. Within some time, she extended her writing career to freelance working. For example, she wrote cover stories for the local paper, Tucson Weekly. However, when she earned distinctive success in a short story contest in a local Phoenix magazine, Kingsolver formally set her journey of writing literature.
Kingsolver, after the beginning of a successful literary career, in 1985 got married to Joseph Hoffman. Moreover, she gave birth to her daughter, Camille two years after her wedding in 1987. Later, Kingsolver left Virginia perhaps due to the first Gulf War and American involvement in it for almost a year and moved to Tenerife, Canary Islands. However, she came back in 1992 to the US and the couple parted their ways forever.
In 1994, Kingsolver got married for the second time to an ornithologist, Steven Hopp. She gave birth to her second daughter, Lily, in 1996. They lived in Tucson for seven years after the wedding. In 2004, the family took residence in a farm in Virginia, Washington County to live there for their remaining life.
In 1994, the DePauw University, Kingsolver’s alma mater, honored her with the Doctorate of Letters, the year she married Hopp. Later, in 2008, she delivered a speech on “How to be Hopeful” at Duke University where she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.
Kingsolver claims that she abhors fame the most. In an interview with The New York Times in 2010, Kingsolver declared that she never craved popularity. She always “dreaded the most” to be famous. However, she was rewarded with it. She also highlighted that her making of a personal website is just to defend herself and her family from fake news and scandals.
Kingsolver’s first work of fiction came when she was pregnant with her first child in 1988. At that time she was fighting against insomnia. In the story, “The Bean Trees”, a young lady moves from Kentucky to Arizona. While on her journey, she adopts a lonely child and settles in Arizona with her.
Kingsolver’s writing continued through 1989 also, when she wrote “Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike”. It was a non-fictional work about women’s struggles against a mining organization due to its biased policies.
In 1990, she wrote the novel “Animal Dreams” in which a psychologically isolated and disconnected lady meets moral challenges after returning to Arizona, her hometown. In 1992, she wrote, “Another America”, a collection of poetry in which deprived women raise their voice against violence, abuse, and death.
In 1993, Kingsolver composed another novel, “Pigs in Heaven” which was the continuation of her first novel, “The Bean Trees” in which the protagonist tries to justify the adoption of her daughter, a Native American. Furthermore, Kingsolver presented some other works before the end of the century i.e. “High Tide in Tucson” in 1995.
In 1998, she wrote, “The Poisonwood Bible” which turned out to be one of her most celebrated novels. In the novel, Kingsolver depicts the condition of the wife and daughters of a Christian Baptist during their missionary stay in Africa. This novel hints at Kingsolver’s biographical elements. She also moved to Congo due to her father’s public health mission there. In this story, Kingsolver moved from limited setting to extended geography and represents the redemption of the family in the struggle for freedom of the colony.
Then Kingsolver moved on to “Prodigal Summer” in 2000. In the novel, she created a deep interrelated connection between nature and humans through the setting of Appalachia. In a way, Kingsolver’s life and her movement to different locations played a vital role in the development of her creative literary works. Furthermore, the setting she uses in her works is always based on her deep knowledge about the places.
In 2009, “The Lacuna”, a historical fiction, got published. It narrates the tale of a novelist who makes a kinship with Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo who were later presented for a trail during the anti-communist movement.
This novel was awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010. Later in 2012, Kingsolver gave us “Flight Behavior” about the effects of global warming on monarch butterflies and the community’s reaction to it.
Likewise, another successful work, “Unsheltered”, came in 2012 in which Kingsolver depicted the impact of cultural change on two families living in Vineland, New Jersey. They lived in the same house; however, there was a century difference between their stay in the house. For instance, one family lived there in the 1800s while the other after the time of Hurricane Sandy. Still, they suffered from the effects of cultural distinction.
She also wrote about science subjects and published certain journals in publishing papers like Economic Botany. She mostly wrote about environment, bio-resources, and desert growth.
In 2007, Kingsolver composed a non-fiction work “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” about her family’s experience to eat local, farm food for a year. In the story, she highlighted the use of natural foods as a way of existence and focused on the result of consumption on the environment.
In April of 2005, Kingsolver and her family made an effort to produce and consume as much local food as they can. They sowed vegetables and raised livestock on their farm in Virginia. They also made cheese and stored much of their harvest for future use. Later on Kingsolver, her husband, and elder daughter preserved their experience in the non-fictive work of art.
In her writing, there is a blend of cultural values with hope and courage in their veins. These qualities are the effect of her optimistic and resilient approach towards life in general. It is because of Kingsolver’s exposure to different cultures from her childhood, as she lived with the black and the white people.
Her most important feature of writing is an empathetic feeling towards every kind of readership. For example, in “The Poisonwood Bible”, there is an exposure to African culture and a sense of “otherness”. As Kingsolver lived in Congo for some part of her life, there is a blend of Southern culture and a foreign African culture that imparts a universal dimension to her work.
Her setting is also mostly based on real places she had visited or lived in. They include Arizona and Congo. Even though Kingsolver negates the autobiographical elements in her fictive works, she inevitably used her personal experiences and real locations in her stories.
She writes about what she feels significant to pen down and what she satisfies her first. In this way, Kingsolver becomes one of the most appealing English writers of this century.
Kingsolver composed her work in a poetic way with humor intertwined in it. Her realism combines lyricism to create a timeless impression of artistic unity. She describes the moods and feelings of characters in exact detail.
For example, in “The Bean Trees”, Kingsolver describes the physical surroundings of Lou Ann and Taylor as “a little senile, with arthritic hinges and window screens hanging at embarrassing angles . . . transformed in ways that favored function over beauty.” This presents a diffusion of seriousness and humor in vivid imagery.
She served as a guest editor for the stories collection The Best American Short Stories 2001 volume. Being one of the celebrated writers, her articles have circulated among the prestigious newspapers of the US. Likewise, her works of art have been a part of several academic curricula and other courses in the educational institutes. Moreover, her works have been converted into many languages and are read worldwide because of their relevance to the lives of average people.
Critics often call Kingsolver’s work as art of activism. She highlighted many political and social issues in her works actively and even worked for them in her real life. For example, her non-fiction “Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983, 1989” tells about the political differences and partiality between the two genders.
Her work also contains realistic figures and events traces and love for the natural world. For example, in “Unsheltered”, Kingsolver portrays two real-life figures, Mary Treat and her husband, Dr. Joseph Treat. They moved to Vineland in 1868 and Mary had shared study research about the history of nature with Charles Darwin. Unfortunately, the couple fell apart because her husband left Mary for another woman in New York.
The story is about how people act in a situation when their world seems to be falling apart. It depicts the realistic situation of a failing social life in natural surroundings. The point of view that Kingsolver applies in her works is usually first-person or third-person. Through this kind of narrative, she gives her stories a realistic shade and connectivity with the readers.
Kingsolver’s females are sensitive and active women who invade their everyday lives with a strong approach towards their existing situations. For example, “The Lacuna” is about a happily married life in which there are certain harsh realities but the overall tone predicts the strong role of a woman in life. Most of Kingsolver’s works are about grave matters of social life with harsh situations and dilemmas; however, there is a tinge of freshness and humor in her art. Furthermore, Kingsolver does not only portray one nation or culture.
In her works, Kingsolver highlighted the social, political, and environmental struggles of a common lot of society. For example, she wrote about the relationship between nature and man, and the impact of humans on their ecosystem, a worker’s life, women’s struggles, social justice, and single parenting. Kingsolver once famously said, “I don’t understand how any good art could fail to be political”.
She also wrote about historical issues in a captivating way for the common readers. For instance, her experience on the struggles of Congo for liberation from their colonizer masters is also depicted in an engaging way for the readers e.g. “The Poisonwood Bible”.
Kingsolver took a great step in the foundation of the Bellwether Prize for fiction in 2000. Through this prize, she intended to appreciate those writers whose unpublished works could cause a social change in life. She wanted to encourage justice, positive change, and goodwill through literary writings. This prize pays USD 25,000 for the chosen work for highlighting social issues and confirms its phenomenal publication.
Furthermore, the PEN American Center in 2011 took charge of the management of the prize and entitled it PEN/Bellwether Prize. Since 1998, the prize helped in emerging lots of talented literary figures and made their successful careers.
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