The Bean Trees
Taylor (born Marietta) grew up in Pittman, Kentucky, a small rural town where families "had kids just about as fast as they could fall down the well and drown," and a boy with a job as a gas-meter man was considered a "high-class catch." She needs to get out to get ahead and to avoid pregnancy. She succeeds on both counts when she buys a '55 Volkswagen and heads west. She leaves almost everything behind, including her name. (Taylor is the name she adopts when she runs out of gas in Taylorville, Illinois.) When her steering fails somewhere in central Oklahoma, in country owned by the Cherokee nation, she stops for repairs at a roadside service station. A Cherokee woman looks at Taylor and ...
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political refugees from Guatemala, and who gives Taylor a job. Taylor and Turtle find a room with Lou Ann Ruiz, a self-described "ordinary Kentuckian a long way from home," and her newborn baby Dwayne Ray. The relationship between these two single mothers, one never married, one divorcing, and their relationships with the people around them are the focus of the story. After a few months, Taylor needs to rent an apartment. She ends up sharing an apartment with Lou Ann and her son, Dwayne Ray. Together Taylor, Turtle, Mattie, two refugees, Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray learn about friendship and belonging. Their lessons are learned through many experiences, including confrontations with Lou Ann's ex-husband, Angel, Dr. Pelinowsky, and others they meet along the way. Ties of family, friends, blood and love are what sustain the characters through hard times and heartbreaks. The supportive connections between people are likened to a symbiosis, interdependency in the most positive sense. ...
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CITE THIS PAGE:
The Bean Trees. (2005, November 27). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Bean-Trees/37095
"The Bean Trees." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 27 Nov. 2005. Web. 28 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Bean-Trees/37095>
"The Bean Trees." Essayworld.com. November 27, 2005. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Bean-Trees/37095.
"The Bean Trees." Essayworld.com. November 27, 2005. Accessed November 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Bean-Trees/37095.
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