What I can find is this, and so it has to be: conquering my own despair by doing what little I can. Stealing thunder, tucking it in my pocket to save for the long drought. Dreaming in the color green, tasting the end of anger. Don't ask me for the evidence. The possibility of a kinder future, the existence of God--these are just two of many things that fall into the category I would label "impossible to prove, and proof is not the point." Faith has a life of its own.
Maybe the cynics are on top of the game, and maybe they're not. Maybe it doesn't cost anything to hope, and those of us who do will be able to live better, more honest lives as believers than we could as cynics. Maybe God really is just a guy on the bus. Maybe those really are his wife's measuring spoons hanging up there on my garden trellis, waiting to dole me out a pinch of grace on the day I need it. Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.
Acknowledgments
The first person who believed this book should be assembled in some form, by me, was David Csontos. Frances Goldin and Terry Karten quickly agreed, and in turn convinced me, though I was at best the fourth person to get behind the project. (None of them but me, however, is responsible for any problems you may find with the result.) It took me a while to understand how lucky I was to have been handed a task to help keep me reasonably sane and focused through a frightening time. My friends and extended family also provided sanity and focus--especially Steven, my bedrock of solace and partner in both the practical logistics and the improbable dreams. I thank him, and thank my children, for being brave when we've all had to be, and inspiring me to take the necessary risks for what we believe in.
Fenton Johnson provided helpful comments on the manuscript, as did Sydelle Kramer, David Csontos, and Matt McGowan. Terry Karten was an author's best dream of an editor; Dorothy Straight's copyediting was precise and inspired. Emma Hardesty showed loyalty and courage beyond the call of duty for an office manager, but if you knew her you'd expect nothing less. Frances Goldin, as always, guided me safely through the storms.
Most of my information on world poverty and other international humanitarian concerns came from various agencies of the United Nations. The quote from Barry Commoner, and information about the failure of the central dogma underlying genetic engineering, came from his excellent article "Unraveling the DNA Myth" in Harper's, February 2002. Natsuki Gehrt and David Csontos advised on matters Japanese, and for what I may still have gotten wrong, sumimasen! Larry Venable and colleagues at the University of Arizona provided information about seed banking for "Called Out." Information about cats and songbirds in "Setting Free the Crabs" came from R. Stallcup, "A Reversible Catastrophe," in the Observer, 1991. Other sources of information are listed in the foreword.
Paul Mirocha worked beside me, sometimes literally, to provide the illustrations and cover art for these essays as I was writing them. My book's mind gained its face, and a lovely new sense of itself, through his remarkably thoughtful collaboration.
To the organizations that will receive royalties from this book, I give my thanks for your supportive presence in my own life and your important work in the hopeful reconstruction of a better world. I urge every reader to maintain that gentle reconstruction in your own communities, as well as supporting these and many other national organizations doing similar work: Physicians for Social Responsibility (www.psr.org), Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org), Heifer International (www.heifer.org), and Environmental Defense (www.environmentaldefense.org).
I'm deeply indebted to the readers, booksellers, librarians, and friends who stood by me through the months when a handful of ultraconservatives sliced part of a sentence from my essay in defense of the flag, reversed its meaning, and paraded it across the country to revile me as Patriotically Incorrect. My readers, who understand patriotism to be a far nobler vocation than gossip-mongering, responded to the attacks by buying my books in great numbers. I will never forget this, or cease my effort to live up to your faith in me.
Finally, my mother never once told me not to stick my neck out. She gets the Maternal Medal of Honor.
About the Author
BARBARA KINGSOLVER's ten published books include novels, collections of short stories, poetry, essays, and an oral history. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. In 2000, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country's highest honor for service through the arts.
Ms. Kingsolver grew up in Kentucky and earned a graduate degree in biology before becoming a full-time writer. With her husband, Steven Hopp, she co-writes articles on natural history, plays jazz, gardens, and raises two daughters. Their family divides its time between Tucson, Arizona, and a farm in southern Appalachia.
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FICTION
The Bean Trees
Pigs in Heaven
Animal Dreams
Homeland and Other Stories
The Poisonwood Bible
Prodigal Summer
NONFICTION
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never
Holding the Line:
Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
POETRY
Another America
Copyright
Some of the essays in this book appeared previously in slightly different forms in the following publications: "Seeing Scarlet" in Audubon and The Best American Science Writing 2001, E. O. Wilson, ed., Houghton Mifflin; "The Patience of a Saint" in National Geographic; "Called Out" in Natural History; "Saying Grace" in Audubon; "Letter to My Mother" in I've Always Meant to Tell You, Constance Warloe, ed., Pocket Books, 1997; "Going to Japan" in Journeys, PEN/Faulkner Foundation, 1996; "Life Is Precious, or It's Not" in the Los Angeles Times; "Knowing Our Place" in Off the Beaten Path, Joseph Barbato and Lisa Weinerman Horak, eds., North Point Press, 1998; "What Good Is a Story?" in Best American Short Stories 2000, Barbara Kingsolver, ed., Houghton Mifflin; and "Taming the Beast with Two Backs" (under the title of "A Forbidden Territory Familiar to All") in the New York Times.
"Stealing Apples" originally appeared as the introduction to Another America/Otra America, poems by Barbara Kingsolver, Seal Press, 1998.
Brief portions of the essays "Flying," "And Our Flag Was Still There," "Lily's Chickens," "Marking a Passage," and "God's Wife's Measuring Spoons" first appeared as op-ed pieces in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Arizona Daily Star, and New York Times.
The quote from Emma Goldman is from "The New Year," Mother Earth magazine, January 1912, used with permission, The Emma Goldman Papers Project, https://sunsite.Berkley.edu/Goldman.
Excerpts from "Mending Wall" and "The Death of the Hired Man" from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1930, 1939, 1969 by Henry Holt and Co., (c) 1958 by Robert Frost, (c) 1967 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Epigraph from Life Is a Miracle, by Wendell Berry, (c) 2000 by Wendell Berry. Used by permission of Counterpoint Press.
SMALL WONDER. Copyright (c) 2002 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition (c) MARCH 2007 ISBN: 9780061868641
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Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder
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