Barbara Kingsolver’s writing addresses many social injustices. She explores political issues, cultural imperialism, disappearing cultures, class and economics, nature and ecology, and race and gender. Her writing asks vital questions of her characters, and answers those questions through some conflict or crisis.
Kingsolver sees the world from the eyes of a scientist. “In school I studied nearly everything except writing, with degrees in science. Afterward I found myself in demand as a freelance writer because editors knew they could send me into a biotech lab or epidemiology office, where people seemed to be speaking in tongues, and I’d come out with a printable story in lay-person’s English.” Her training in school gave her an “underestimated source of knowledge” for writing and a true understanding of details. She incorporates these details in creating the settings for her novels.
Some writers rely on a second hand source, but not Kingsolver. She thoroughly researches the setting for her stories. She uses first hand experiences to create the setting. She chooses real settings but places them off the map to “preserve the illusion of truth, and the substance of privacy. “Fiction is an accumulation of details, and if they’re wrong, it’s an accumulation of lies.”
