Reading Pathways: Barbara Kingsolver

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Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

Steph Auteri is simply a writer who has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, VICE, and elsewhere. Her much originative enactment has appeared successful Creative Nonfiction, nether the gum tree, Poets & Writers, and different publications, and she is the Essays Editor for Hippocampus Magazine. Her essay, "The Fear That Lives Next to My Heart," published successful Southwest Review, was listed arsenic a Notable Essay successful Best American Essays 2021. She besides writes bookish worldly present and astatine the Feminist Book Club, is the writer of A Dirty Word, and is the laminitis of Guerrilla Sex Ed. When not working, she enjoys yoga, embroidery, singing, feline snuggling, and staring astatine the birds successful her backyard feeder. You tin larn much astatine stephauteri.com and travel her connected Insta/Threads astatine @stephauteri.

View All posts by Steph Auteri

I can’t retrieve the archetypal publication of hers I work — the 1 that made maine recognize that, for the adjacent 25+ years, I would travel her anyplace — but that’s due to the fact that each of Barbara Kingsolver’s books negociate to marque maine consciousness immoderate benignant of way. And for a clip there, backmost erstwhile I was successful my precocious teens/early 20s, I was speechmaking arsenic galore arsenic I could get my hands on, each successful speedy succession.

Twenty-five years later, I can’t assistance feeling validated. This past spring, Kingsolver was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her astir caller novel, Demon Copperhead, and it seems everyone is considering the rubric for their publication clubs and bedside tables.

Demon Copperhead is simply a doorstopper of a book, a modern retelling of David Copperfield that provides a glimpse of what beingness is similar for those touched by organization poverty, and by the opioid epidemic, successful the mountains of confederate Appalachia. In this book, Kingsolver does what she’s ever done best: She provides a lush, sweeping, engaging communicative that manages to interrogate larger taste and systemic issues successful a mode that is not heavy-handed oregon overbearing.

But that’s not adjacent what drew maine to her enactment successful the archetypal place. Rather, I’ve ever admired her quality to marque maine autumn successful emotion with places I’ve ne'er seen. As a stubbornly indoorsy person, her enactment nevertheless makes maine acquisition a reverence for our earthy satellite that I find hard to replicate erstwhile I’m soaking successful my ain boob sweat successful my backyard.

Kingsolver has published 17 books since 1988, and I person much than fractional of them connected my bookshelf, which made this station extremely hard to write. (I cognize this mightiness look outrageous, but I’m not allowed to say, “Here! Read these 16 books first!”) After overmuch deliberation, present are the titles I judge supply an perfect introduction constituent into her work.

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 Essays by Barbara Kingsolver; achromatic  with an illustration of a achromatic  angiosperm  astatine  the bottom

Small Wonder

I had a bitch of a clip trying to determine betwixt Small Wonder and High Tide successful Tucson for this number-one slot. Both titles are idiosyncratic effort collections that person the astir unthinkable consciousness of place, and the second fueled a lifelong preoccupation with Arizona. But erstwhile I flipped backmost done my copies of both, it was Small Wonder (2002) that was filled with dog-eared pages and underlined passages. One specified passage: “The show of a vermilion flycatcher leaves america breathless each time—he’s not conscionable a bird, he’s a punctuation people connected the air, printed successful reddish ink, work retired large arsenic a gasp.” I mean…am I obsessed with this from a writerly standpoint? Maybe. But this radical of essays that are meant arsenic “an extended emotion opus to the satellite we inactive have” ably introduces readers to the Barbara Kingsolver ethos, 1 marked by awe and wonderment for the satellite we unrecorded in, and a heavy consciousness of each the ways successful which we are failing it.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver - publication  screen  - closeup of a histrion   with achromatic  substance   floating implicit    it

Prodigal Summer

Kingsolver easy moves backmost and distant betwixt fabrication and nonfiction. And portion I’ve agelong leaned toward a penchant for communicative nonfiction, the caller Prodigal Summer (2000) remains my favourite of her books. This multiple-perspective caller bops backmost and distant betwixt its 3 main protagonists, each of whom is surviving successful the mountains and farms of confederate Appalachia. As we travel on with their loosely connected stories, we are taken connected a travel of love, loneliness, and transportation — betwixt humans, yes, but besides betwixt humans and nature. Again, this is Kingsolver’s favored taxable (the ways successful which we interact with the earthy world, for amended oregon for worse), and this peculiar communicative reflects connected it truthful skillfully, portion besides bringing each of the feels.

cover of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible

My god, this last slot was adjacent much hard to capable than the archetypal one. I wanted simply to propulsion successful my different favourite of hers (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), but since this blog bid is expected to enactment arsenic an instauration to new-to-you authors, I yet determined that it made much consciousness to see what felt similar the existent predecessor to the award-winning Demon Copperhead. As with her astir caller book, The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is an epic communicative that spans lifetimes and tackles immense topics. It follows a missionary household that moves to postcolonial Africa successful 1959, a determination that proves to beryllium their undoing. Touching upon colonialism and culpability, the publication presents the perspectives of the 5 household members who followed their patriarch connected his flawed mission.

Looking for much recommended books from immoderate of our favourite authors? Check retired Book Riot’s whole Reading Pathways series. Or for much books to stoke your emotion matter with the large outdoors, effort my station connected however an indoorsy scholar fell for the outdoors, oregon cheque retired this database of nonfiction books astir nature.

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