High Tide in Tucson

“This is elemental mortality, the root of all passion.”

The rain in Arizona reminds Kingsolver that despite what we think, humans are still dependent on the rhythms of nature. When we are in a harsh landscape, we are reminded of our own mortality. When the rain comes, passion erupts, the humans dance and the frogs croak endlessly.

“Ownership is an entirely human construct.”

Kingsolver contends that no matter what humans claim, no one can own a tree. No other animal, even highly territorial species, claims to own land in the same way that we do. She becomes happier when she relinquishes her need to hold on to her land against the javelinas and allows the animals to dictate how she plants things.

“It’s a curious risk, fiction.”

Kingsolver wrote her first novel without realizing anyone would read it. She considers all fiction a risk since it naturally exposes truths about the author’s mind, but she is particularly worried about her own newfound exposure because her novel is a realistic account of a town much like where she grew up.

“It’s well known, though, that when humans reach a certain age, they identify precisely what it is their parents want for them and bolt in the opposite direction like lemmings for the cliff.”

Kingsolver dreamed of rebellion as a teenager, imagining herself riding into the sunset with a gangster on a motorcycle. However, Kingsolver references this dramatic fantasy ironically, as her real-life rebellion involved reading less intellectual books that those provided by her parents.

“Fashion nearly wrecked my life. I grew up beyond its pale, convinced that this would stunt me in some irreparable way.”

Kingsolver was not popular in school, which she often blamed on her parents’ unwillingness to buy trendy clothing. She never does become fashionable, but she slowly realizes that she is not stunted by her lack of trendiness—rather, her eventual self-acceptance is the source of real glamour.

“Sometimes, when I’m trapped and have to listen to such stuff, I hear men of an evangelical bent explain that all our problems would end if women would just tend to housework and children as they have for two thousand years.”

Kingsolver argues that women have not, in fact, tended to the housework and children for thousands of years: Most women throughout history have had work beyond cooking, cleaning, and playing with kids. In the 1950s and 1960s, housework became an elaborate art form because the booming American economy allowed most families to have a stay at home parent for the first time in history.

“Unquestionably, things like loyalty and territorial attachment are situational, from Candlestick Park to the Halls of Montezuma and in places far more ordinary.”

Kingsolver returns to the topic of humans’ animal nature, arguing that loyalty is not a static quality, but is instead highly dependent on circumstances. The grand sweep of this passage, which unites the lower-stakes domain of sports (Candlestick Park was a baseball stadium in San Francisco) to the much higher stakes Mexican American War battle referenced by the place name “The Halls of Montezuma,” shows the universality of her point.

“Standards of beauty in every era are things that advertise, usually falsely: ‘I’m rich and I don’t have to work.’”

Kingsolver uses this argument to explain the changing standards of beauty throughout history. In the past being fat was considered beautiful because leanness and muscularity suggested a life of hard labor. Today, the opposite is true, and toned muscles often mark someone as having enough free time to work out for pleasure.

“The way of a parent’s love is a fool’s progress, for sure. We lean and we lean on the cherished occupation of making ourselves obsolete.”

Raising a child ultimately means letting that child become an adult. In her discussion of different parenting styles, Kingsolver concludes that there is no one correct methodology, because ultimately a well raised kid will become independent, and think differently than their parents.

"Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.”

Kingsolver believes that the way children are treated by the larger community around them often shapes the adults they eventually become. In Spain, she sees people treating children inclusively as part of the larger community, which helps them grow up to value community and the people in it. In the United States, people often treat children as burdensome and extraneous, leading children to become selfish adults.

“There was nothing at all for me to do about history but write down the wonders that passed over. I felt my mind lift up from its center, unhinge, cast out its months-old plague of despair like locusts into the wind.”

On top of a mountain in the Canary Islands, a place steeped in history both good and bad, Kingsolver suddenly realizes that she does not have an effect on how the world will progress. She has felt depressed about the Gulf War, but once she realizes she can’t do anything about it, she is free.

“We’re supposed to have one main thing we do well, and it’s okay to have hobbies if they are victimless and don’t get out of hand, but to confess to disparate passions is generally taken in our society as a sign of attention deficit disorder.”

When she finds herself in a rock band, Kingsolver sees that the notion of one career for each person is ridiculous. Many people have multiple passions, and she wishes for a society where those passions can be embraced more freely, and where career changes are not viewed with suspicion.

“Families change, and remain the same. Why are our names for home so slow to catch up to the truth of where we live?”

This passage occurs during a discussion about “broken” and “traditional” families, and the value that American culture assigns to different family types. As families become more diverse and more complex, Kingsolver hopes that culture will eventually embrace all families as different varieties of normal.

“Other people’s stories—those are the ones I crave.”

Kingsolver has been told at times that she cannot write characters with different life experiences than herself. She argues that she can, as long as she remembers that she is writing from the outside and does not have any direct experience other than her own. After all, she became a writer because of a lifelong love of inventing stories, not because she wanted to share her own life with the world.

“A craving for adventure afflicts my restless bones like some mineral they are missing.”

This quote is used ironically, as it opens a story about travel as the opposite of adventure—a book tour that is mostly an endless headache. It also highlights Kingsolver’s tendency toward nature-based metaphor, even when discussing topics outside the natural world; here, the literal content of the human body and its needs.

“In our passion to protect the last remnants of virgin wilderness, shall we surrender everything else in exchange?”

While nature conservation organizations rush to preserve “untouched” wilderness, Kingsolver worries about the small, local tracts of nature that most people have access to. They are equally as important as wild landscapes in terms of ecosystem preservation and biodiversity. They are also available to a wider array of people, and she believes that allowing them to be destroyed will further separate humanity from the rest of the world.

“Now these tribes, as different as stone, paper, and knife, are crowded into a single national domicile and expected to behave like family; to speak French, agree upon a president, and consider themselves ‘Beninois.’ It’s a nice theory. The truth is far more interesting.”

Colonialism has attempted to shape Africa to its will, and Benin is an example of how this has not worked. Ancient tribal rivalries still supersede national identity, and people who live very close to each other still practice different ways of life and speak unrelated languages. This passage sets a somewhat hopeful tone for the essay; Kingsolver believes that Benin shows how cultures can survive even through centuries of attempted erasure.

“The first tragedy I remember having really understood in my life was the extinction of the dodo.”

Kingsolver is a lifelong naturalist. She wonders how the human race can be so unwilling to prevent further extinctions, as each one is a tragedy on a grand scale. In most cases, she argues, economic desperation leads populations to think that preserving nature is not possible, as their livelihoods often depend on not worrying about it.

“One match in a gasoline-filled room is too many. I don’t care a fig who is holding it.”

The essay about Kingsolver’s trip to the Titan missile plant shows her strong anti-war stance. She listens to the tour guide argue that atomic weaponry is necessary to protect the United States against perceived enemies. Her response here mirrors an analogy made by Carl Sagan, who compared countries amassing ever greater nuclear arsenals to standing in a gas chamber, fighting to be the one that holds the most matches.

“A country can be flawed as a marriage or a family or a person is flawed, but ‘Love it or leave it’ is a coward’s slogan. There’s more honor in ‘Love it and get it right.’ Love it, love it. Love it and never shut up.”

When a man yells “love it or leave it” and flips Kingsolver off during her Gulf War protest, her first response to this type of reflexive patriotism is to leave the country. By the end of the essay, she realizes that she needs to return, because change can only be made by people who love the United States enough to want it to change for the better.

“If only we could recover faith in a seed—and in all the other complicated marvels that can’t fit in a sound bite.”

Kingsolver believes that the modern, fast paced world is largely to blame for humanity’s lack of concern about the environment. This passage references Henry David Thoreau’s Faith in a Seed, a work that exhibits the type of slow, methodical observation that Kingsolver thinks is necessary to gain real knowledge about how we are irrevocably changing nature.

“I will not argue for censorship, except from the grassroots up: my argument is for making choices about what we consume.”

This passage is Kingsolver’s response to criticism for including a violent murder in one of her novels. She ponders the idea of violence in media, ultimately concluding that it is not a problem inherently, but that consumers should choose to read and watch things that present violence in a sensitive way, rather than just for shock value.

“Write a nonfiction book, and be prepared for the legion of readers who are going to doubt your facts. But write a novel, and get ready for the world to assume every word is true.”

There is an inherent irony in fiction, which is a medium of lies that often reveals deep truths. Kingsolver believes that because of this, the world should be more comfortable with harmless lying. Lies can be destructive, but encouraging people to make up stories can enhance creativity and ultimately help people learn more about the world.