The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver is about a girl named Taylor who wants to leave home. So she saves up a little bit of money to by a car (that doesn’t run very well). She heads west, planning to stop whenever her car breaks down. However, her car breaks down somewhere in the middle of the Cherokee Nation (which is in Kansas somewhere) so she gets it fixed and keeps going.
Then one day, Taylor goes into a bar to grab a bite to eat, and as she is leaving, a lady comes over to her and hands her a baby. The lady tells Taylor to keep the baby, she doesn’t want it. Before Taylor can protest, the lady is gone. So she takes the baby and drives west still, and gets to Arizona. There she gets a job at a burger joint. She names the baby Turtle, and leaves her at the mall daycare while she is working, going back every two hours to check on her and convincing the workers there that she really is still shopping. However, Taylor eventually gets fired from her job and has to find a place to stay.
She finds an ad in the newspaper for someone looking for a roommate, so she goes to check it out. The owner of the house turns out to be a girl named Lou Ann, an ex-wife with a son named Dwayne Ray. Her husband had left her while she was still pregnant. So Taylor moves in with Lou Ann, and she gets a job at the tire place, Jesus Is Lord, where she first got her tires fixed when she arrived. Lou Ann stays home with Dwayne Ray and Turtle. The owner of the tire shop, Mattie, spends a lot of time with Taylor and Lou Ann, along with their kids. Mattie has these plants that make bean trees, and they came all the way from China. So the beans kind of represent the cycle that Taylor has gone through, traveling that long way. Mattie also keeps illegals safe by hiding them in her sanctuary.
Two of these illegals are Esperanza and Estevan. They are Mayan and lost their daughter. They end up needing to go to the Cherokee Nation, where they will pretend to be Cherokee, because their skin color is similar. Estevan and Esperanza pose as Turtles real parents and go to a place where Taylor adopts her finally as April Turtle Greer.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Tunes on the Sand
People everyday want more and more, and no amount of money can please them enough. It doesn't matter what the personal value of an object or feeling is to you is, the only thing important is the price tag attached. Do you really need that $1000 outfit that you're going to wear once? Is the most expensive thing always the most important? Or is it how much you care for it that you should pay attention to?
As we depart from the driveway at 5 in the morning, the sun is just coming up. Packed in between coolers and blankets, I am just comfortable enough to be able to drift off to sleep. The familiar stores and houses come to an end as we pass from town to town. We get on the highway, and I can hear the high pitched screeching of the wind coming through the opened window. Someone presses the automatic window button and the squealing ceases. I know we are getting closer; the streets are becoming smaller and the houses closer. The roads are the same as last summer, and they start to get sandy as we near the beach.
Whether we are camping or staying at a hotel, the routine is always the same; drop our bags and head for the beach. We all take off our shoes as we race down the sand infested cement stairs. The reminiscence of cigarette butts and old soda cans block our path as we step into the cool smooth sand. It will heat up as the day wears on, and we will be hopping to save the soles of our feet from burning. But now we run towards the water, passing the different textures of sand, as it turns hard with rocks and then to mud as the waves brush against the shore. We stand far away from water, not wanting to interfere with the pattern of brushing and falling, folding and falling. As we slowly creep forward, we wonder who will be first to dip their toes in the chilly water.
I move carfully at first, then bolt towards the water, freezing my feet. I run out as fast as I had gone in, getting my feet dirty as the sand connects with the water. As we walk back once more towards the sandy steps, the cigarette butts, and empty soda cans, I don't worry, because I know we will be back again tomorrow.
We walk on the sidewalk feeling every crack of the cement with our sandy feet. We pass stores selling tie-dyed t-shirts and painted seashells. All of the huge extravagant hotels that we will never stay in catch our eyes as we keep going, glancing into all the stores. We walk deeper into the town where all of the houses are and the more affordable hotels were we will be rooming are. The cheaper hotels are more comfortable anyways. The expensive ones feel as if you can't move anything and everything has it's specific place. I can't wait to unpack and go back to the warm sand with our penguin blanket.
I plug in the earplugs and press play. What will come first I don't know, and I don't care. I turn up the volume to high and listen for the beginning *beep* to know the song is about to start. I am able to let the beat sweep me away and I begin to sing as loud and obnoxiously as I can. My door is shut and nobody will hear me.
I am swept away by the rhythms and lyrics. The beats pull me deeper and deeper out of the real world. The song overtakes me, and I am no longer even singing the correct words. I spin around my room and clash into the mound of clothes that have captured my room for their own. As the song ends, I can already guess which song will come next. I have memorized the song order over the course of millions of times hitting play.
All of the songs come to a close, and I push the button on my MP3 up to turn it off, knowing I have loads of homework to be done. I pull out the earplugs and rap it around the small black music player. It may have only been about $30, but it is worth so much more to me, and does so much more than make noise when I plug it in to my speaker and turn up the volume as high as it will go.
Both my MP3 and trips to the beach take me to another place. My MP3 brings me away from everything mentally, and it allows me to cool down from the stress of the day. Trips to the beach lets me relax physically in another area. I enjoy listening to my music because I like to have my own times, and no matter how loud and out of tune I am singing, nobody can laugh at me because I am usually all alone.
I love to go to to the beach because I am spending time with my family, which we don't often get a chance to do at home with my parents working and my brother and I in school Monday to Friday. It gives me a different view than the same houses and the same people I see everyday. I can relax and have fun without anyone judging me, because I usually don't see anyone I know at the beach. I love being able to shove my feet in the sand and feeling the grains between my toes.
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