Seeds of Change: Critical Essays on Barbara Kingsolver

Contents

Contents Preface vii Introduction 1 Priscilla Leder Part 1 Identity Gardens of Auto Parts: American Western Myth and Native American Myth in The Bean Trees 27 Catherine Himmelwright To Live Deliberately: Feminist Theory in Action in High Tide in Tucson 47 Maureen Meharg Kentoff Women, a Dark Continent? The Poisonwood Bible as a Feminist Response to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 71 Héloïse Meire Trauma and Memory in Animal Dreams 87 Sheryl Stevenson “Hemmed In”: Place, Disability, and Maternity in Animal Dreams and The Poisonwood Bible 109 Breyan Strickler Part 2 Social Justice “Give Me Your Hand”: Accessibility, Commitment, and the Challenge of Cliché in Kingsolver’s Poetry 129 Meagan Evans Wild Indians: Kingsolver’s Representation of Native America 145 Robin Cohen The White Imagination at Work in Pigs in Heaven 157 Jeanne Sokolowski Imagined Geographies 175 Kristin J. Jacobson Earthbound Rhetoric and Praxis: Authentic Patriotism in a Time of Abstractions 199 Wes Berry Part 3 Ecology Remembering Our Ecological Place: Environmental Engagement in Kingsolver’s Nonfiction 213 Christine Cusick Contingency, Cultivation, and Choice: The Garden Ethic in Prodigal Summer 233 Priscilla Leder Celebrating a Lively Earth: Children, Nature, and the Role of Mentors in Prodigal Summer 251 Susan Hanson Together at the Table: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Thoreau’s Wild Fruits 263 Gioia Woods Works Cited 277 Contributors 293 Index 297 ...