Animal, Vegetable, Miracle By Barbara Kingsolver

Knowing this, she takes her experience and uses it to write this piece and uses it to spread her message and her feelings toward the topic.

heart when it comes to important topics. She emphasizes the values of family, God and

After realizing that all of the food and water consumed by their family was either piped, shipped, or driven to them in the middle of the desert, novelist Barbra Kingsolver and her family decided to pick up their lives and move from Tucson, Arizona to to her childhood home of tobacco and dairy farms in southern Appalachia. Kingsolver and her family intended to spend the next year living in a more connected way to their food and where it comes from, and this book is the result of that experience. Part journal, part academic inquest, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, tells the story of their project to live sustainably in a place “where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground” (p. 3). Their year would consist

| | |as and now she can learn to be strong for herself and gain |

In Michael Moss’ article, “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Food,” he discussed multiple methods food industries used to attract consumers to buy more of their products. He mentioned how multiple CEO’s of food companies discussed the health epidemic. He revealed, “Today, one in three adults is considered clinically obese, along with one in five kids, and 24 million Americans are afflicted by type 2 diabetes, often caused by poor diet”(476-477). Basically, Moss is stating that millions of Americans are at risk of or have type 2 diabetes because of the unhealthy choices in their diet. Similarly, in David Zinczenko’s article, “Don’t Blame the Eater,” Zinczenko blames food industries for the health epidemic. He stated, “But where, exactly, are

Families are different today than they were fifty years ago. Not just regarding the social changes with gay couples, divorced couples, and single parents, but other changes around us have caused the family to evolve. The invention of the television, the internet, and even freezers and microwaves have changed how the family functions. Compounding changes in the world around us, the treatment of women as equals has also adjusted the dynamic in households. In the novel Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, the author pins the changing of our family culture, with regards specifically to mealtime, on the women’s liberation movement from the sixties. (126) Family mealtime has changed over the years, but there are multiple reasons for its perceived demise. The women’s liberation movement gave women the chance to leave the kitchen and enter the workforce, but changes to the family meal began before women started taking up careers alongside men. Food processing, personal electronics, and the way our society raises children, have all changed how we eat together.

to a less her father taught her, or a moment of weakness he helped her overcome. It is undeniable

In order to change the way the United States food system is operating at the moment, a change needs to be made in the education that people are receiving about the way their food is produced, manufactured, distributed and consumed. The U.S. food system has become increasingly reliant on mass production factories and multinational retail corporations while local farms and family owned food markets diminish. Economies of scale and opportunity costs represent barriers to change of the current food system because of the many different paths available, each creating different outcomes for consumers, sellers, large corporations and small farms, determining their profit, prices, capital and value. Educating the American people about the benefits of local food production and the downsides of large scale food production, such as nutritional value, disease and safety concerns, and economic advantages, will help to move our food system from “point A” to “point B”.

essay will explain the way she successfully persuades her audience in a detailed and specific

Everyone has someone they consider family. Sometimes people bond solely with their blood relatives, but more often than not we choose who we consider to be our family as we grow older. This happens most often when people find a spouse, but many also adopt children as their sons and daughters, peers as their brothers and sisters, and role model figures as aunts and uncles. The Bean Trees is written by Barbra Kingsolver and is set in the early 1980 's. It tells the story of a young woman named Taylor, and the life she builds in Tucson Arizona. Far from home, she meets many great people and finds a place where she belongs. Kingsolver shapes her message of the importance of families both blood and found through her use of character archetypes

Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, which revolves around reverence for the natural environment, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, about the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, by Anna Deavere Smith, present different sides of human behavior. Animal Dreams is a novel about Codi, a woman who returns to her hometown and helps the townsfolk protest peacefully against a mine that damages their water supply. The preservation of nature and the ability to make a difference by protesting peacefully are major themes in the novel. Twilight is a play that consists of edited interview transcripts of various people who observed and experienced the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The riots began in response to the acquittal of a group of white police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King, an unarmed black man who had been driving under the influence at dangerously high speeds. Violence escalated among the people of Los Angeles until it was declared a disaster area only a few days later. Thousands of businesses were damaged, and dozens of people died. Twilight and Animal Dreams have contrasting major themes when it comes to how people will act in response to having their lives threatened. The people of Twilight and Animal Dreams have similar motives but opposite responses. Twilight shows the brutal nature of humanity when motivated by injustice, while Animal Dreams highlights the peaceful nature of people even when faced with powerful, oppressive institutions.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is written as sets of essays that very from investigative journalism to memoirs. Each section of the book is unique and alternates the reader’s emotions between laughter, sadness and curiosity. Kingsolver is an excellent

surroundings. The main character in the story, Phoenix Jackson, is an old black woman who

The TED talk, “Seeds of Our Ancestors, Seeds of Life,” by Winona LaDuke was really sad. Thinking about how many types of foods of gone extinct, and that there are companies that keep trying to patent and genetic engineer our food. Food is more than something we just buy, it keeps us living, yet we don’t seem to put much thought into it anymore. The statement about only about 30 different varieties of food giving us our calories makes sense, but I can see why it’s so sad. It’s depressing that species of food are going extinct, we think about animals going extinct, but we don’t often think about our food. I’m curious about all of the types of food that I will never be able to try because they have gone extinct.

Though she has to lose many people and make numerous sacrifices on this journey, she never gives up. In a way, she becomes victorious even in her most difficult times. She never accepts her defeat in her quest for a dignified life.