High Tide in Tucson

The second essay begins with an exploration of rain, especially as it relates to the Arizona desert and its residents. The Navajo people call the light, regular sprinklings that come throughout the winter and spring “female rain,” and the huge storms that appear in late summer “male rain.” Although the “female rain” is necessary to sustain life throughout much of the year, the “male rain” is an epic celebration. All Arizona residents—human, plant, and animal—wait for it through the dry heat of early summer.

Kingsolver describes her first experience of “male rain” in the middle of a long summer “hot enough so that the neighborhood, all of it, dogs and broken glass on the sidewalks included, had murder in mind” (18). She hears what she thinks are frustrated kids pummeling her house with rocks, but when she goes outside, the sky is black and an intense rainstorm is making its way across the desert. She runs into the street, along with most of her neighbors, and dances in the rain.

Shifting several years forward, Kingsolver describes living outside of town in a community of writers. They have all been drawn to the Southwest because it is a cheap place to live and because of the ruggedness of people who live in “a prickly land where mountain lions make bets with rabbits, and rabbits can win” (20).

She describes the various landscapes she drives through on her trips to the post office, first the “neighborhood of jackrabbits and saguaros” (20), and then a neatly manicured group of condominiums with irrigated lawns, where transplants from other states attempt to hold on to the greenery of their past. She crosses the Santa Cruz River, which usually appears dry and sandy but can become a raging flood with “male rain.” After crossing Interstate 10, she enters the Pascua Yanqui neighborhood, home to a group of Yanqui people, who combine Catholicism with Indigenous religion for elaborate Easter pageants. Next is a Mexican American neighborhood, where “brown dogs lie under cherry Camaros and the Virgin of Guadalupe holds court in the parking lot of the Casa Rey apartments” (21). Despite wide differences in worldviews and experiences, everyone here is bound together as a community because of their ability to live in such a harsh environment.

Kingsolver describes a growing acceptance of annoyances beyond her control. In her first Tucson neighborhood, a crowded downtown area, she loved her neighbors but was constantly bothered by their unruly teenagers. They would blast music at all hours, draw penises on her driveway, and destroy her flower pots. After attempts to talk to their parents, the high school, and even the police, Kingsolver and her husband decided to move out of the city to the desert, where they assumed they would find more peace and quiet.

While the music and lurid artwork stopped with their move, the flowers remained under siege, this time from javelinas, wild, pig-like creatures native to the Southwest. Before the javelinas arrived, Kingsolver imagined building a garden oasis on her desert land. She details her many unsuccessful attempts to separate the javelinas and her plants, characterizing the animals as a relentless, angry mob bent on eating or trampling whatever she planted. After several months, Kingsolver reframes her view of her land. She questions the idea that it is “hers” at all—after all, the javelinas were there long before she or any other human was.

At this point, the essay becomes a reflection on private ownership. For most of human history, the concept of private property did not exist. Anthropological and Marxist theories posit the idea developed with the advent of agriculture, which made agricultural products, especially farm animals, tradable. The possibility for those who succeeded in agriculture to become wealthy led to the desire to accumulate more wealth and pass it down to future generations. Thus, private property was born, as early agrarians with the means to trade products for land quickly adopted the practice. Over time, the concept that land could be privatized became so ingrained in human culture that today it is very rarely questioned. Kingsolver grows skeptical about the concept of land ownership, which does not exist in any other species. Many animals are territorial when it comes to breeding or resource competition, but only humans put up “no trespassing” signs.

Ultimately, Kingsolver chooses to view her land as a territorial niche rather than a private domain. She designs a small garden within the adobe courtyard of the house and abandons the idea of having decorative flowers out front. She leaves the world outside her house and courtyard to the javelinas, and enjoys watching them when they, for example, roll her jack-o-lanterns away to devour before Halloween. While her garden still gets eaten regularly by birds and squirrels, she chooses to view it as sharing with her fellow desert animals, not the animals invading her land to steal her personal property.

Kingsolver writes her first novel during bouts of insomnia while pregnant with her first child. She gets the call that it is to be published on the same day she brings the baby home. At first, the idea that other people will read the book causes her to panic, since the novel is a “compulsive verbal intercourse with my own soul” (37). She also worries that her friends and family back home in rural Kentucky, where the novel is set, will see versions of themselves in the book and be upset with her.

She comforts herself by thinking that since her hometown does not have a bookstore, no one there will read her book. Her hopes are dashed when her town puts on a book release event and invites her to come to Kentucky to sign copies of the novel. She is surprised even more when everyone, from her oldest acquaintances to her first-grade teacher to the former popular kids who teased her in school, are ecstatic about the book.

This sudden recognition is unfamiliar to Kingsolver, who reports being an outcast during her childhood. Her parents were very academically focused and averse to trends and wastefulness, having dedicated their lives to helping people in need. She was given cruel nicknames and bullied. The protagonist of her novel, Lou Ann, shares many characteristics with the young Kingsolver.

Suddenly, as the author of a successful book, Kingsolver finds herself transformed into Homecoming Queen. People are eager to find references to themselves, their cars, and their businesses in the work, pointing out parallels that Kingsolver did not even intend. Many classmates she viewed as popular and confident in school discreetly ask her if Lou Ann is based on them, citing their own childhood insecurities. She concludes that her deep love of her hometown comes through the book, even if she does not always represent it lovingly. She believes that as long as she concentrates on conveying the truth in her writing, the truth will shine through in the final product.

In the 1960s when Kingsolver was in high school, Kentucky’s school system was severely underfunded, and her rural district was worse off than most. There were not enough resources to offer a full range of classes, so students like Kingsolver, who did not become pregnant or face any long suspensions, would finish their graduation requirements well before actually graduating, confined to endless hours of Study Hall. The only class she had all four years was Home Economics.

Kingsolver is grateful that at one point, the school librarian noticed her boredom and invited her to help with a project, organizing the books in the school library according to the Dewey Decimal system. Kingsolver suspects that the teacher had ulterior motives, as the project allowed her to explore the full breadth of literature available in the library and to read books that she otherwise never would have discovered. Though she is a lifelong reader who grew up with book-loving parents, the Dewey Decimal project allowed her to expand her horizons. She read novels like Gone with the Wind, which her mother would have considered trashy. Ultimately, the project sparked Kingsolver’s interest in being a writer. She became particularly interested in novels set in far off places that allowed her to vicariously live unfamiliar lives. She was especially taken with the book Martha Quest, set in southern Africa, which “jarred open a door that was right in front of me. I found I couldn’t close it” (51)—so much so that as an adult, Kingsolver lived in Africa for a time.

The essay now becomes a criticism of book banning, as Martha Quest has faced censure over the years. Kingsolver worries that censorship has created in the US a narrow minded culture that does not fully value education, life experience, or critical thinking. While censorship often happens on a small scale, it is always happening, and sometimes the scale becomes larger. As an example of this, Kingsolver turns to the Christian concept of creationism. She condemns the idea that schools should abandon teaching evolution for the sake of creationist parents’ sensibilities—comparing this to her demanding that schools not teach capitalist economics because of her opinions about capitalism. Just as she teaches her daughter alternative economic theories at home, creationist parents have the right to teach their offspring whatever they like, outside a school setting. Parents should trust their faith in their ideals to overcome alternative ideas, and they should not be afraid of their children expanding their understanding of the world.