Harpercollins First-Year Students Books for Course Adoption

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Harpercollins First-Year Students Books for Course Adoption First-Year www.HarperAcademic.com StudentBooks For SCourse adoption Featured Titles • Big Ideas • American History and Society • Food, Health, and the Environment • World Issues • Memoir/World Views • Memoir/American Voices • World Fiction • Fiction • Classic Fiction • Religion • Orientation Resources • Inspiration/Self-Help • Study Resources HarperCollins First-Year Students Books For Course Adoption Index View Print Exit Books for t He first-YeAr student • • 2 F FEATURED TITLES eatured The Boy Who Harnessed This Is a Soul tHe Mission of riCk Hodes ITLES the Wind Creating Currents of eleCtriCity and Hope Marilyn Berger T William kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer Dr. Rick Hodes is no ordinary doctor. An American, Dr. Hodes has spent most of his life treating serious William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, Africa, a T spinal diseases in Ethiopia, a country with fewer than country plagued by AIDS and poverty. When, in three physicians for every 45,000 inhabitants. Dr. ITLES 2002, Malawi experienced their worst famine in 50 Hodes says of his insistence on sending pictures of years, fourteen-year-old William was forced to drop his subjects to the labs, “Doctors always ask why I out of school because his family could not afford the send photos, why I don’t just send the x-rays and eatured $80-a-year-tuition. However, he continued to think, blood studies . I want them to know this is a human F learn, and dream. Armed with curiosity, determina- being. This isn’t just a back. This is a soul.” This tion, and a few old science textbooks he discovered titular quote exemplifies the deeply humanistic in a nearby library, he embarked on a daring plan to attitude Dr. Hodes takes towards healthcare. build a windmill that could bring his family the Acclaimed journalist Marilyn Berger brings Dr. electricity only two percent of Malawians could Hodes’s work to life in This Is a Soul, a book with the afford. power to inspire students to think outside the normal “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind [is] an autobiography application of their skills and education. so moving that it is almost impossible to read without “There isn’t a living physician whose life and quiet tears. In understated and simple prose, Kamkwamba and Mealer offer readers a tour through one heroism I have admired more than the subject of this extraordinary book. Rick Hodes cares little if the Malawian boy’s inspiring life. The telling of his story is surprisingly levelheaded. As you read this world knows of his work, and yet he has much to teach the world about an empathic civilization, and how book (I’d suggest keeping a box of tissues handy) you can be sure that William Kamkwamba’s future is boundaries and nationhood are meaningless in the face of suffering. This Is a Soul is a powerful, bright. If this tale is any indication, we’ll be hearing his name again in the years ahead.”—Christian Science important book for our age.”—Abraham Verghese, author My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story Monitor Thematic Focus: Science, Medicine, Ethics, Public Policy, Global Health, Humanitarianism Thematic Focus: Science, Engineering, Africa, Ingenuity, Personal Stories William Morrow: 288 pp. Harper Perennial: 320 pp. 2010 • 978-0-06-175954-3 • hc • $25.99 ($27.99/CAN) 2010 • P.S. • 978-0-06-173033-7 • pb • $14.99 ($18.99/CAN) Harper paperbacks: 288 pp. Freshman Common Read: Maryville University, University of Central Florida, Central College, Boise State University, 2011 • 978-0-06-175955-0 • pb • $14.99 ($18.99/CAN) California State University, Chico Paperback available in April 2011 Resources for The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Resources for This Is a Soul Browse Inside the Book Browse Inside the Book Website for The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Rick Hodes’s Website Video of William Kamkwamba discussing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Video of Rick Hodes & Marilyn Berger on Good Morning America Trailer for HBO Films Documentary “Making the Crooked Straight” Marilyn Berger’s Website HarperCollins First-Year Students Books For Course Adoption Index View Print Exit Books for t He first-YeAr student • • 3 F eatured Little Princes A Pearl in the Storm one Man’s proMise to Bring HoMe How i found My Heart in tHe Middle of ITLES tHe lost CHildren of nepal tHe oCean T Conor Grennan t ori Murden McClure Conor Grennan had spent eight years working for During June 1998, Tori Murden McClure set out to T The East West Institute in Prague and Brussels, row across the Atlantic Ocean by herself in a focusing on peace in the Balkan region and serving twenty-three-foot plywood boat with no motor or ITLES as Deputy Director of EWI’s Program on Security sail. Within days she lost all communication with and Good Governance, the Advisor on EU Affairs to shore, ultimately losing updates on the location of EWI’s Worldwide Security Program. On the eve of the Gulf Stream and on the weather. In deep eatured his thirtieth birthday Conor Grennan left his job solitude and perilous conditions, she was nonethe- F with a plan to travel the world. Stopping first to less determined to prove what one person with a volunteer at the Little Princes Orphanage in mission could do. When she was finally brought to war-torn Nepal, Conor’s life changed forever. Conor her knees by a series of violent storms that nearly soon discovered that many of the children with killed her, she had to signal for help and go home in whom he had been playing with were not orphans, what felt like complete disgrace. but the victims of human traffickers, who had Back home in Kentucky she went to work for kidnapped children from their homes and families. Muhammad Ali, who told her that she did not want Shocked and affected by what he learned Conor to be known as the woman who “almost” rowed opened his own orphanage two years later, with the mission of helping to reunite stolen kids with across the Atlantic Ocean—and she knew that he was right. In this thrilling story of high adventure, their families. Tori Murden McClure gives students a true memoir of an explorer who maps her world with rare “Funny, touching, tragic. Conor Grennan’s Little Princes is a remarkable tale of corruption, child trafficking emotional honesty. and civil war in a far away land—and one man’s extraordinary quest to reunite lost Nepalese children with “Unlike Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Tori Murden McClure’s true story of a woman and the sea their parents.”—Neil White, author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts and a boat named American Pearl is one of victory. If you want to be inspired, read this book. You won’t Thematic Focus: Human Slavery, Humanitarianism, Global Culture, Personal Stories stop till you’ve finished.”—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife William Morrow: 304 pp. Thematic Focus: Personal Stories, Determination, Adventure, Survival 2011 • 978-0-06-193005-8 • hc • $25.99 ($33.99/CAN) Harper paperbacks: 304 pp. Available in February 2011 2010 • 978-0-06-171887-8 • pb • $15.99 ($19.99/CAN) Freshman Common Read: Northern Kentucky University, Brescia University, Erksine College, Spring Hill College Resources for Little Princes Resources for A Pearl in the Storm Browse Inside the Book Browse Inside the Book Conor Grennan’s Website Website for A Pearl in the Storm Next Generation Nepal’s Website Video of Conor Grennan’s Message to Teachers and Students HarperCollins First-Year Students Books For Course Adoption Index View Print Exit Books for t He first-YeAr student • • 4 F eatured Double Take The Last Lecture a MeMoir ITLES randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow k evin Michael Connolly T On September 18, 2007, computer science Kevin Michael Connolly is a 25-year-old who has professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an seen the world in a way most of your students never audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon T will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Although he ITLES Games on his mono-ski as a teenager, Connolly has had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, that day been an object of curiosity since the day he was Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, and born without legs. Growing up in rural Montana, he often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed eatured was raised like any other kid. As a college student, invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he F he traveled to seventeen countries on his skate- himself acknowledged. board and, in an attempt to capture the stares of Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, as has strangers, he took more than 30,000 photographs of the bestselling book he wrote based on the same people staring at him. In this dazzling memoir, principles, celebrating the dreams we all strive to Connolly casts the lens inward to explore how we make realities. Sadly, Randy lost his battle to view ourselves and what it is to truly see another pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008, but his legacy person. His remarkable journey will change the way continues to inspire all who read The Last Lecture. your students look at others and the way they see themselves. Thematic Focus: Inspiration, Determination Thematic Focus: Personal Stories, Photography, Disability, Travel Hyperion: 224 pp. 2008 • 978-1-4013-2325-7 • hc • $21.95 ($23.50/CAN) Harper paperbacks: 240 pp. 2010 • 978-0-06-179152-9 • pb • $14.99 ($16.99/CAN) Freshman Common Read: Georgia Institute of Technology, Ramapo College, Cazenovia College, Newberry College, Creighton University, Great Bay Community College, Indiana State University, Louisiana Tech University, North
Recommended publications
  • Reading Group Discussion Questions—The Lacuna the Word “Lacuna” Means Many Things: a Missing Piece of a Manuscript, A
    Reading Group Discussion Questions—The Lacuna The word “lacuna” means many things: a missing piece of a manuscript, a gap in history or knowledge, a tunnel or passage leading from one place to another. What are some of the lacunae in this novel? Several characters repeat the phrase: “The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don’t know.” What does this mean to you, in terms of both public and private life? Are you likely to give this consideration more weight, since reading the novel? Given the unusual presentation of the novel, as diary entries written by a person who does not want to be known, how did you come to know Harrison Shepherd? Which of his passions or dreads evoked a connection for you? The opening paragraph of the novel promises: “In the beginning were the howlers,” and suggests they will always be with us. As you read, did you find yourself thinking of modern occasions of media “howlers” purveying gossip, fear, and injurious misquotes? Why does this industry persist? Has an increasingly rapid news cycle changed its power? Did any historical revelations in this novel surprise you? How has our national character changed from earlier times? How would we now respond, for example, to the universal rationing imposed during World War II? Or to the later events aimed at containing “un-American activities?” What elements shape these responses? What is the value, in your opinion, of the historical novel as a genre? What places or sensory events in the novel appealed to you most? Are you a more visual, auditory, or olfactory sort of person? What sensory impressions stayed with you after you had finished the book? The two important women in Harrison Shepherd’s life, Violet Brown and Frida Kahlo, seem to be opposites at first glance.
    [Show full text]
  • Barbara Kingsolver... Grize¨ Ll a Zar-Luxton Provides Insight Into This Author,Cum Archeologist,Cum Copy Editor
    BOOKWORLD CONTENTS / INHOUD Barbara Kingsolver... Grize¨ ll A zar-Luxton provides insight into this author,cum archeologist,cum copy editor... Barbara Kingsolver... the list is endless 18 The poisonwood Bible A discussion by Franschhoek Reading Circle's archaeologist, copy editor, Marion Marsh 20 x-ray technician, housecleaner, Realms of ice and snow. Some books about biological researcher very cold places An unusual discussion of a wintery topic by and translator of medical documents Margaret Iskander 22 Realms of ice and snowbooklist Margaret Iskander provides a detailed Compiled by booklist 24 GRIZEè LL AZAR-LUXTON Aanbevole prenteboeke vir babas en peuters Lona Gericke se nuttige leeslys 25 arbara Kingsolver was born on Kingsolver has always been a story- April 8,1955. She grewup`in the teller:`I used to beg my mother to let me tell B middle of an alfalfa field', in the part her a bedtime story.'As a child, she wrote biologicalresearcher and translator of of eastern Kentucky thatlies betweenthe stories and essays and, beginning atthe age medicaldocuments. Aftergraduate school, opulent horse farms and the impoverished of eight, kept a journalreligiously. Still, it a position as a science writer for the Uni- coal fields. never occurred to Kingsolver that she versityof Arizona soonled herinto feature Kingsolver was a little girl of seven when could become a professional writer. writing forjournals and newspapers. Her she and her familylefttheir Kentucky home Growing up in a rural area, where work articles have appearedin dozens of news- tospendtwoyearsintheCongo.Whenshe centered mainly on survival, writing didn't papers and magazinesin North America returned, the world looked totally different seemto be a practical career choice.
    [Show full text]
  • Harpercollins Books for the First-Year Student
    S t u d e n t Featured Titles • American History and Society • Food, Health, and the Environment • World Issues • Memoir/World Views • Memoir/ American Voices • World Fiction • Fiction • Classic Fiction • Religion • Orientation Resources • Inspiration/Self-Help • Study Resources www.HarperAcademic.com Index View Print Exit Books for t H e f i r s t - Y e A r s t u d e n t • • 1 FEATURED TITLES The Boy Who Harnessed A Pearl In the Storm the Wind How i found My Heart in tHe Middle of tHe Ocean Creating Currents of eleCtriCity and Hope tori Murden McClure William kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer During June 1998, Tori Murden McClure set out to William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, Africa, a row across the Atlantic Ocean by herself in a twenty- country plagued by AIDS and poverty. When, in three-foot plywood boat with no motor or sail. 2002, Malawi experienced their worst famine in 50 Within days she lost all communication with shore, years, fourteen-year-old William was forced to drop ultimately losing updates on the location of the Gulf out of school because his family could not afford the Stream and on the weather. In deep solitude and $80-a-year-tuition. However, he continued to think, perilous conditions, she was nonetheless learn, and dream. Armed with curiosity, determined to prove what one person with a mission determination, and a few old science textbooks he could do. When she was finally brought to her knees discovered in a nearby library, he embarked on a by a series of violent storms that nearly killed her, daring plan to build a windmill that could bring his she had to signal for help and go home in what felt family the electricity only two percent of Malawians like complete disgrace.
    [Show full text]
  • Taylor's Search for Self-Identity in the Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
    A Self-discovery Voyage: Taylor’s Search for Self-Identity in The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver Amaia Ochoa Herrera Degree in English Studies Department of English and German Philology and Translation and Interpretation Tutor: David Río Raigadas Academic year: 2017/2018 Abstract Western literature has conventionally been concerned with male characters and their lonely journeys, however, Barbara Kingsolver has escaped the constraints of the genre. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyze the main character’s self-identity search in The Bean Trees. In order to accomplish this, first, some background information about Barbara Kingsolver is introduced as well as a general explanation about the ecofeminist theory and its influence in the author. The paper deals with the building process of Taylor’s identity regarding four principal themes: gender, community, ethnicity, and nature. In each section, secondary sources and close reading are combined in order to analyze the role of the main characters of this novel. Lastly, the conclusion rounds up how the previously mentioned themes have influenced Taylor’s self-identity and addresses her development throughout her journey. Key words: self-identity, ecofeminism, The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver 2 Table of Contents 1) Introduction.................................................................................................................4 2) Author: Barbara Kingsolver........................................................................................6 3) Ecofeminist Theory.....................................................................................................8
    [Show full text]
  • Barbara Kingsolver Flight Behaviour
    Flight Behaviour by the same author Fiction The Lacuna Prodigal Summer The Poisonwood Bible Pigs in Heaven Animal Dreams Homeland and Other Stories The Bean Trees Essays Small Wonder High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never Poetry Another America Nonfiction Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver) Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands (with photographs by Annie Griffiths Belt) Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 Barbara Kingsolver Flight Behaviour a novel First published in the US in 2012 by HarperCollins Inc. First published in the UK in 2012 by Faber and Faber Limited Bloomsbury House 74–77 Great Russell Street London WC1B 3DA Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY All rights reserved © Barbara Kingsolver, 2012 The right of Barbara Kingsolver to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Excerpt from “Now Is the Cool of the Day,” by Jean Ritchie, is used by permission. © 1971 Geordie Music Publishing Co., all rights reserved. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978–0–571–29077–2 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 for Virginia Henry Kingsolver and Wendell Roy Kingsolver Flight Behaviour 1 The Measure of a Man A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture. Or so it seemed for now, to a woman with flame- colored hair who marched uphill to meet her demise.
    [Show full text]
  • Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver ______
    Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver __________________________________________________________________________________________ About the author: Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955, and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times in her adult life she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides. Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt (2002), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), and The Lacuna (2009). She served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages, and have been adopted into the core literature curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. She has contributed to more than fifty literary anthologies, and her reviews and articles have appeared in most major U.S. newspapers and magazines. Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest. In 2000, she received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Critical acclaim for her books includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, among many others.
    [Show full text]
  • The Bean Trees the Bean Trees
    Prestwick House AP Literature SampleTeaching Unit™ Prestwick House Prestwick House * * AP Literature AP Literature Teaching Unit Teaching Unit * AP is a registered trademark of The College Board, * AP is a registered trademark of The College Board, which neither sponsors or endorses this product. which neither sponsors or endorses this product. ABarbara Kingsolver’sP ABarbara Kingsolver’sP The Bean Trees The Bean Trees Click here A P RESTWICK H OUSE P UBLIC A TION A P RESTWICKto learnH OUSE P UBLIC moreA TION Item No. 307248 about this Teaching Unit! Click here to find more Classroom Resources for this title! More from Prestwick House Literature Grammar and Writing Vocabulary Reading Literary Touchstone Classics College and Career Readiness: Writing Vocabulary Power Plus Reading Informational Texts Literature Teaching Units Grammar for Writing Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots Reading Literature Advanced Placement in English Literature and Composition Individual Learning Packet Teaching Unit The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver written by Priscilla Baker Item No. 307248 The Bean Trees ADVANCED PLACEMENT LITERATURE TEACHING UNIT The Bean Trees Objectives By the end of this Unit, the student will be able to: 1. explain the significance of the novel title,The Bean Trees, and of the chapter titles. 2. discuss the role of narrative voice and analyze Kingsolver’s use of point of view. 3. discuss the credibility of the narrator and how that is measured. 4. analyze the use of humor and sarcasm in the novel. 5. discuss the function of setting and the role of nature in the novel. 6. examine the impact of the social and political issues present in the novel on plot, character, and theme.
    [Show full text]
  • 'A Critical Literary Analysis of the Fiction of Barbara Kingsolver'
    “The Things That Attach People”: A Critical Literary Analysis of the Fiction of Barbara Kingsolver Ceri Gorton, MA Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy JULY 2009 ABSTRACT This is the first full-length scholarly work dedicated to the fiction of Kentucky-raised feminist activist and trained biologist Barbara Kingsolver. Interrogating the political efficacy of the work of an author who proclaims that art “should be political” and that “literature should inform as well as enlighten”, this thesis explores the ways in which Kingsolver positions herself variously as an environmentalist, liberal, communitarian, feminist and agrarian. It unpacks the author’s issues-based approach to writing fiction and its effect on her commercial popularity and through close readings of her fiction provides an assessment of this popular and critically acclaimed contemporary American writer. This study maps the oeuvre of a writer who has achieved critical success in the form of Pulitzer nominations, American Booksellers Book of the Year awards, a National Medal for Arts, and commercial success in the form of bestselling novels and even non-fiction works – not to mention the populist accolade of being selected as an Oprah’s Book Club author. It analyses tropes, techniques and tensions in Kingsolver’s novels and short stories published between 1988 and 2001, namely The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland and Other Stories (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Pigs in Heaven (1993), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), and Prodigal Summer (2001). Rather than act as an introductory survey, this assessment posits that there exists a difficult but fruitful tension between writing fiction for readers and writing to a political agenda.
    [Show full text]
  • FROM: Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
    I . CALLED HOME This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market. It was our family's last day in Arizona, where 1'd lived half my life and raised two kids for the whole of theirs. Now we were moving away forever, tak­ ing our nostalgic inventory of the things we would never see again: the bush where the roadrunner built a nest and fed lizards to her weird­ looking babies; the tree Camille crashed into learning to ride a bike; the exact spot where Lily touched a dead snake. Our driveway was just the first tributary on a memory river sweeping us out. One person's picture postcard is someone else's normal. This was the landscape whose every face we knew: giant saguaro cacti, coyotes, moun­ tains , the wicked sun reflecting off bare gravel. \Ve were leaving it now in one of its uglier moments, which made good-bye easier, but also seemed like a cheap shot- like ending a romance right when your partner has really bad bed hair. The desert that day looked like a nasty case of prickly heat caught in a long, naked wince. This was the end of May. Our rainfall since Thanksgiving had mea­ sured less than one inch. The cacti, denizens of deprivation, looked ready to pull up roots and hitch a ride out if they could. The prickly pears waved good-bye with puckered, grayish pads. The tall, dehydrated saguaros stood around all teetery and sucked-in like very prickly supermodels. Even in the best of times desert creatures live on the edge of survival, get­ ting by mostly on vapor and their own life savings.
    [Show full text]
  • Diplomarbeit / Diploma Thesis
    DIPLOMARBEIT / DIPLOMA THESIS Titel der Diplomarbeit / Title of the Diploma Thesis The roles of nature and the narrative situation in three selected novels by Barbara Kingsolver verfasst von / submitted by Lena Kusebauch, BA angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Magistra der Philosophie (Mag. Phil.) Wien, 2016 / Vienna, 2016 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 190 333 344 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Lehramtsstudium UF Deutsch UF Englisch degree programme as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Emer. O. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz Declaration of Authenticity I confirm to have conceived and written this diploma thesis in English all by myself. Quotations from other authors are all clearly marked and acknowledged in the bibliographical references and within the text. Any ideas borrowed and/or passages paraphrased from the works of other authors have been truthfully acknowledged and identified. Lena Kusebauch Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude towards emer. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Zacharasiewicz for raising my interest in Southern literature and enabling me to explore this interest in my thesis. I am grateful that he was a patient, yet supportive supervisor who always had valuable advice when I needed it. I further want to thank my parents for their unconditional support during all ups and downs of writing this thesis. Table of content 1. Introduction ................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Book Groups @ B Lue Mou Ntain S Library the Lacuna Barbara
    The Lacuna Barbara Kingsolver Author Background • 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 Book Groups @ Blue Mountains Library 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.
    [Show full text]
  • Critical Insights: Barbara Kingsolver Table of Contents
    Critical Insights: Barbara Kingsolver Table of Contents BARBARA KINGSOLVER About this Volume, by Thomas Austenfeld Career, Life, and Influence On Barbara Kingsolver, by Thomas Austenfeld Biography of Barbara Kingsolver, by Marilyn Kongslie and Karen L. Arnold The Paris Review Perspective, by Katherine Ryder Critical Contexts The Political Is Personal: Sociocultural Realities and the Writings of Barbara Kingsolver, by John Nizalowski Barbara Kingsolver and the Critics, by Rosemary Canfield Reisman The Gothic and the Ethnic in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees, by Matthew Bolton Cultivating our Bioregional Roots: An Ecofeminist Exploration of Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, by Christine M. Battista Critical Readings Gardens of Auto Parts: Kingsolver's Merger of American Western Myth and Native American Myth in The Bean Trees, by Catherine Himmelwright The Loner and the Matriarchal Community in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven, by Loretta Martin Murrey Trauma and Memory in Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, by Sheryl Stevenson Exploring the Matrix of Identity in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, by Lee Ann De Reus Luna Moths, Coyotes, Sugar Skulls: The Fiction of Barbara Kingsolver, by Amanda Cockrell The Missionary Position: Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, by Elaine R. Ognibene The Neodomestic American Novel: The Politics of Home in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, by Kristin J. Jacobson The Revelatory Narrative Circle in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, by Anne Marie Austenfeld Barbara Kingsolver and Keri Hulme: Disability, Family, and Culture, by Stephen D. Fox The Southern Family Farm as Endangered Species: Possibilities for Survival in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, by Suzanne W.
    [Show full text]