Arizona - The Bean Trees

“In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.”  

When I was first putting this list together, I assumed that for Arizona I would be reading some iconic western novel that was later adapted into a movie starring John Wayne and then recently remade once again into a box office flop. Like Kansas and flat prairies, Florida and white beaches, and Idaho and potatoes, there's no denying that Arizona has a cultural image of being a vast, barren landscape that's nothing but deserts and tumbleweeds. This conception has made it the prime setting for gritty westerns for decades, which reinforce that image to someone who's never seen the state.

It wasn't until I got into college and met someone from Flagstaff that I learned there were certain areas in the state with mountains and hills covered in towering pines. A few years later, Jessica and I drove through Flagstaff ourselves and actually encountered a sudden ice storm that shut down stretches of the highway. It even snowed while we were at the Grand Canyon, and heavily. Did you know that nearly 29% of the country's lettuce supply comes from Arizona alone, and 95% of that lettuce is grown in only one county?

The Bean Trees is a story that's made to be set in Arizona, but not in the clichéd way that we might expect from decades of Hollywood storytelling. There are no gun fights, no campfires, and no important trains to catch or hold hostage. Instead we get a heartwarming, and often bittersweet, story about individuals who rely on a strong group of friends that become more of a family to get by.

Originally published in 1988 by Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees is told from the perspective of a young woman named Taylor Greer. Born and raised in eastern Kentucky, she realizes that if she doesn't get out of her town and soon, she's likely going to end up like the other girls she knows and the women who came before them; that is, pregnant and married (in that order) at a young age. She saves some money and buys a worn out Volkswagen, setting her sites west for Oklahoma and Cherokee Nation. Based on her grandfather's stories, Taylor should have enough Cherokee blood for her to join the reservation and start over there, but after seeing the barren flatness of the Oklahoma prairies she decides to drive as far west as she can until the car breaks down. She makes it to Tucson before the car gives out from two flat tires.

Of course, the road trip isn't without major events. In the parking lot of a bar in Oklahoma, before leaving to head further west, Taylor is followed to her car by a woman. The woman opens the passenger door and lays something on the seat, then turns to go. Taylor realizes that the woman has left a baby girl behind. She attempts to stop the woman, who only says that the baby's mother is dead and she would like Taylor to care for it. Taylor drives away with the baby girl, effectively becoming her foster mother. Later on, the baby earns the nickname "Turtle" given her clinginess and strong grip, similar to how strongly a snapping turtle will latch onto something.

Taylor and Turtle's arrival to Tucson kicks off by meeting a woman named Mattie, who owns and runs an auto shop with a huge mural of Jesus Christ on the side, humorously named "Jesus Is Lord Used Tires." Mattie and Taylor foster a relationship when she gives Taylor a job at the store, and introduces her to a couple named Estevan and Esperanza. Taylor lands a roommate named Lou Ann, another native Kentuckian with a baby, and meets some of Lou Ann's more eccentric neighbors. Throughout the novel the backstories and the developments of these characters are fleshed out; Taylor goes from being a feisty individual to one who begins to appreciate and rely on her new community, while Lou Ann's self-doubt following her husband's abandonment is replaced by a new sense of self-empowerment. Most of these changes come from the shared experiences and encouragement of this group of strangers that eventually become more of a family.

The central conflict of the novel involves Estevan and Esperanza, who Taylor eventually learns are political refugees from Guatemala. Both were educators who had connections to the teachers union, a target of the government. Rather than disclose the names of their fellow union members, they fled, ensuring that they would be assassinated if they ever returned. The other focal point of the novel regards Taylor's efforts to raise Turtle, who has been diagnosed with "failure to thrive" due to her history of being both physically and sexually abused, and her efforts to adopt her legally. Both conflicts are resolved towards the end of the book, with Taylor becoming Turtle's legal mother, and Estevan and Esperanza making their way to a safe house and legal aide in Oklahoma.

The plots mentioned above, along with interactions with other characters, are a period of great growth for Taylor and what drive her character to be developed. Right from the start, she experiences a mix of painful irony and coincidences that shake up her expectations she had of how her life would be when she left Kentucky. Her main reason for leaving is to avoid the trend of becoming pregnant, only to be saddled down with a baby before she even arrives to her final destination. She wanted to settle in Oklahoma, but had to keep going once she realized it wasn't what she expected. Due to a traumatic event from her childhood, she experiences great discomfort and anxiety around tires, but gets a job in Tucson at an auto shop (this particular savior being Jesus Is Lord Used Tires.) As briefly mentioned above, Taylor moves from having expectations of going alone to realizing the importance and benefits of having a strong network of friends and family by her side, especially when it comes to the health and well-being of Turtle. This kicks off one of the first major themes of the novel: the struggle between maintaining individuality and community.

“We do have some strong traditions of community in the United States, but it’s interesting to me that our traditionally patriotic imagery in this country celebrates the individual, the solo flier, independence. We celebrate Independence Day; we don’t celebrate We Desperately Rely on Others Day. Oh, I guess that’s Mother’s Day. It does strike me that our great American mythology tends to celebrate separate achievement and separateness, when in fact nobody does anything alone.”  

All characters rely on the efforts of others in some form or capacity throughout the novel. Taylor takes advantage of the mall's free daycare while she works her day job, stopping by occasionally to give the impression that she's actually shopping. Lou Ann benefits from a sense of sisterhood with Taylor and her neighbors which, along with getting a new and exciting job, helps her move on from her husband's abandonment. Mattie, who uses her tire shop as a safe haven for refugees, including Estevan and Esperanza, eventually relies on Taylor to help move them into Oklahoma. I think this is an important part to point out; throughout much of the book, Mattie is the character most shown to have everything together, but still has a moment where she depends on others.

Of course, Estevan and Esperanza rely on this community most of all given their asylum status, and Kingsolver uses their situation to bring up the plight of immigrants that are seeking refuge from political violence but feel as if they have nowhere to go without volunteered compassion. But the novel also draws some parallels between those scenarios to Taylor's life in her new city. Kingsolver makes it a point in the novel that she and Turtle are more or less refugees, arriving with no prospects or connections, who were just so lucky to have their car breakdown in front of the shop of a very kind and helpful woman who takes on the role of their "sponsor." Without Mattie, Taylor would likely have struggled to find her footing in Tucson. Maybe there's a possibility that she would have eventually given up and tried to return to Kentucky. It's the kindness and generosity of the strangers that she meets and later befriends that give her new life and home meaning.

This isn't to say that Taylor completely loses her sense of individuality. She still has the feisty personality that she left Kentucky with, especially when she's talking with Lou Ann and trying to build her self-esteem. There's a rather humorous exchange where she compares her thoughts on men to something she read in an toilet installation manual:

"Here’s what it said on the package; I kept it till I knew it by heart: ‘Please Note. Parts are included for all installations, but no installation requires all of the parts.’ That’s kind of my philosophy about men. I don’t think there’s an installation out there that could use all of my parts.”  

There's also a theme in The Bean Trees about the importance of the environment which, if you weren't really sitting down to think about, could be pretty easily overlooked. The reason this might be is because it's not your traditional environmentalist message of "everything is being destroyed and we have to save it," but rather "everything that might seem ugly has beauty in it." The back of Mattie's tire shop is cluttered with used car parts, but also has a space for a quaint little garden. Taylor and Lou Ann often bring their children to a park that's known by the kids as "Dog Doo Park," but is also full of wisterias that flower and then develop pods, which captivate Turtle (Turtle confuses these pods for beans, explaining the novel's title.) One scene of the novel involves Mattie driving Taylor, Estevan, and Esperanza out into the desert to witness the first storm of the year and to "smell the rain," which Taylor describes as remarkable. Where there is literally nothing, all of a sudden something incredible happens.

Red, surrounded by bean trees (Note: not actually bean trees)

I loved reading this book. The bonds that the characters develop with each other are all very heartwarming, and the more explicit details of Estevan and Esperanza's backstory are devastating but in a way that makes you care for them and appreciate the other characters' efforts to help them even more.

The one major complaint I have is that despite being the catalyst to Taylor's new life, Turtle almost seems like a forgotten character. To be fair, there's only so much story you can make out of a character that for most of the book can't even speak. On the other hand, we learn at one point in the book that Turtle was almost kidnapped at a park while her baby sitter was distracted, which causes Turtle to enter a state of shock and lose progress in her speech development. This just about ends as soon as it begins, because Turtle snaps out of it rather quickly and goes back to being herself as if nothing had happened. There's an argument you could make here that Turtle now knows that she's surrounded by people that love her and this gives her the courage and strength to return to normalcy, but the whole incident comes off as an afterthought made to add more drama to an already good story.

Despite this criticism, The Bean Trees packs a great amount of story into a relatively short book, clocking in at around 230 pages in hardcover print. It's a book well worth reading and experiencing for yourself rather than from someone else's perspective, much like the state of Arizona.