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77e6493
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From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.
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men
sexism
women
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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900c170
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Writing, which was both painful and palliative for me, turned out to be my own way of giving blood in a crisis. I can only hope this unit of words will have a longer shelf life than the forty-two days of a unit of blood, as this critical time blends seamlessly into the next one.
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timelessness
writing
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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72c7525
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His wife was approximately a hundred years younger than him
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ec92c82
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In our darkest hours we may find comfort in the age-old slogan from the resistance movement, declaring that we shall not be moved. But we need to finish that sentence. Moved from where? Are we anchoring to the best of what we've believed in, throughout our history, or merely to an angry new mode of self-preservation? The American moral high ground can't possibly be an isolated mountaintop from which we refuse to learn anything at all to pro..
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resistance
self-preservation
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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71eae4a
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Well, Hallelujah and pass the ammunition. Company for dinner! And and eligible bachelor at that, without three wives or even one as far as I know. Anatole, the schoolteacher, is twenty=four eyars of age, with all his fingers still on, both eyes and both feet, and that is the local idea of a top-throb dreamboat. Well, naturally he is not in my color category, but even if I were a Congolese girl I'm afraid I'd have to say thanks but no thanks..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c62eb1e
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Red on! Depends much. So?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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48869bc
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Until that moment I'd always beloved i could still go home and pretend the Congo never happened
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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36c8d04
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What a revelation, that I could carry my own parcel like any woman here!
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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bf98445
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I believe I'm very happy.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f571a6c
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Who else could make the colors of the aurora borealis rise off my skin where he strokes my forearm? Or send needles of ice tinkling blue through my brain when he looks in my eyes?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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52ae392
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We probably started painting our nails Immoral Coral after everybody sensible had already gone on to pink, but heck, at least we were all behind the times together.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5e96eb7
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Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony. Well, I put up with him anyway.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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51cf236
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But mother wanted to consume me like food. I needed my won room. I needed books, and for the first time in my life I needed schoolmasters who would tell me each day what to think about.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5725e3d
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There was room in Adah for nought but pure love and pure hate. Such a life is satisfying and deeply uncomplicated.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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8cd5806
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Bears and wolves are our fairy-tale archenemies, and in these tales we teach our children only, and always, to kill them, rather than to tiptoe past and let them sleep. Maybe that's why I'm comforted by the image of a small child curled in the embrace of a mother bear. We need new bear and wolf tales for our times, since so many of our old ones seem to be doing us no good. Now we're finding that it takes our every effort of will and imagina..
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imagination
new-stories
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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a77806f
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What is new is that we now know so very much about the world, or at least the part of it that is most picturesquely exploding on any given day, that we're left with a desperate sense that all of it is exploding, all the time.
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news
television-news
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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f7cdba6
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What's with everybody always trying to get rid of the Indians?" I said, not really asking for an answer. I thought again of the history-book pictures. Astronomers and brain surgeons. They should have done brain surgery on Columbus while they had the chance." --
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immigrants
indians
native-american
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ee3fd45
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Mother says I never practiced anything but always watched Leah, letting her make the mistakes for both of us, until I was ready to do it myself with acceptable precision. Mother is kind to me, probably because I've stayed nearer at hand than her other children. But I disagree. I made plenty of my own mistakes. I just made them on the inside.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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1870b18
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The back of my scalp and neck prickled. It's an involuntary muscle contraction that causes that, setting the hair follicles on edge; if we had manes they would bristle exactly like a growling dog's. We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts. There's no sense pretending.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5e86720
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But Mama has this certain voice sometimes. Not exactly sassing back, but just about nearly.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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d9744b9
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On the verbal portion I missed four questions, all having to do with choosing a word in a series that doesn't belong. I have always had trouble with that line of questioning. Given my own circumstances, I find that anything can turn out to belong nearly anywhere.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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049c41e
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Mother, you had no life of your own.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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45a5dbc
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Their tail feathers ticked like weeds and one of them crowed nonstop, as if impatient. But impatience implies consciousness of time and a chicken is existential. I know that much about birds.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5a9279d
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If I eat one more egg omelet I think I"ll turn over easy and cluck."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b96125c
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Am I the only one getting shocked to smithereens here?
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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e54e57c
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I'm just a plain hillbilly from East Jesus Nowhere with this adopted child that everybody keeps on telling me is dumb as a box of rocks.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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47701c5
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Remy, my third husband, was very devoted. He was an older man. My life has been 101 Calamities with at least half of them in the marriage department, but finally I got lucky in love, with Remy Fairley. He at least had the decency to die and leave me the Equatorial... the nicest hotel for business men
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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9086190
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LISTEN, don't believe in fairy tales! After that happy-ever-after wedding, they never tell you the rest of the story. Even if you get to marry the prince, you still wake up in the morning with your mouth tasting like drain cleaner and your hair all flat on one side.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c94cb43
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We could see early on that all grown-ups aren't equally immune to damage. My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's foot soldiers, while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c121b0e
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But you could run out of gas on boyish, that was the thing. A message that should be engraved in every woman's wedding band.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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48cdd41
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Estevan took off his shirt and lay back against the front of the boat, his hands clasped behind his head, exposing his smooth Mayan chest to the sun. And to me. How could he possibly have done this, if he had any idea how I felt? I knew that Estevan had walked a long, hard road beyond innocence, but still he sometimes did the most simple, innocent, heartbreaking things.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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edab9ce
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Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't, but we wear it all the same.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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2d890be
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the minute they put down the teething ring and found the Internet, you were useless as a source of anything but shoes and a winter coat.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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69e242e
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Thousands of ordinary people were part of this metropolis, but their homes would have been perishable wattle and thatch, stuccoed with lime and mud. Every trace of their living has returned to the earth now, except for the limestone temples of art and worship. The things made of ambition, which rise higher than daily bread.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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09630b4
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If fight or flight is the choice, it's way easier to fly.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b460c46
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Every Man has the Right to make a Kite from his Pants.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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36caffe
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How strange that a boy could make a kite of his pants, fly them around the world, and somehow arrive back at the house where everything began.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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cf144e9
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My stenographer would say, 'Fairly warned is fair afeared.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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5ccba69
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The devil here is a boy with too much imagination," he usually said."
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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c9f3a3c
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I went a day. Spent that evening standing at the window lighting one cigarette off the last, after she'd gone, to keep myself from sitting and writing out the scene as freshly recalled. One week, thirty packs of cigarettes. Weeks. Without spooling out more of a tale, creating more to burn, knitting away at the front of the long knotted scarf that will have to be unraveled at the back. How helpless I feel before this flood of words, how ridi..
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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007755c
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Enrique felt a successful man needed no imagination at all.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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b7547c0
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of people: if the shark comes, they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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24f7a84
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A thousand fishes make the school, but they always move together: one great, bright, brittle altogetherness.
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Barbara Kingsolver |
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ca5ba41
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But Pascal quickly forgave me, and it's a good thing, since friends of my own age and gender were not available, the girls of Kilanga all being too busy hauling around firewood, water, or babies. It did cross my mind to wonder why Pascal had the freedom to play and roam that his sisters didn't. While the little boys ran around pretending to shoot each other and fall dead in the road, it appeared that little girls were running the country.
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gender
life-and-living
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Barbara Kingsolver |