''Small Wonder'' is a collection of 23

essay An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...

s on environmentalism and social justice by American novelist and biologist

Barbara Kingsolver Barbara Ellen Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include '' The Poisonwood Bible'', the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and '' Animal, Vegetable, Mira ...

, published in 2002 by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

. It reached number 3 in the ''New York Times'' non-fiction paperback best seller list in May 2003. The cover shows two

scarlet macaw The scarlet macaw (''Ara macao'') also called the red-and-yellow macaw, red-and-blue macaw or red-breasted macaw, is a large yellow, red and blue Neotropical parrot native to humid evergreen forests of the Americas. Its range extends from south ...

s, the subject of one of the essays, in flight against a tropical forest.

Context

Kingsolver wrote the book in response to the

9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

, with the theme of 'reclaiming' patriotism for Americans who did not agree with the current direction of the country. The essay "And Our Flag Was Still There" was first published in the ''Los Angeles Times'' and her views such as "In my lifetime I have seen the flag waved over the sound of sabre-rattling too many times for my comfort" received an angry response from many US commentators. Some of the essays were co-written with Kingsolver's husband Steven Hopp, an ornithologist.

Reception

Rosemary Canfield-Reisman noted that the book was not as well-received as her other work and that it was "labeled unpatriotic by some reviewers and naive by others." The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' said that "Kingsolver is admirably humane and intellectually consistent. Her economy of language is a genuine asset in the often overwrought genre of expository writing. But the book, which tackles such weighty issues as the Kyoto environmental agreements and social injustice, is too self-referential to be effectively persuasive."

Natasha Walter Natasha Walter (born 20 January 1967) is a British feminist writer and human rights activist. She is the author of a novel, ''A Quiet Life'' (2016), three works of non-fiction: ''Before the Light Fades: A Family Story of Resistance'' (2023, Vi ...

in ''The Guardian'' wrote that "although I was rooting for these essays from the first page, over and over again, just as Kingsolver was heating up the rhetoric, I would find myself turning cold".

Lisa Schwarzbaum Lisa Schwarzbaum (born July 5, 1952) is an American film critic. She joined ''Entertainment Weekly'' as a senior writer in 1991, working as a film critic for the magazine alongside Owen Gleiberman from 1995 to 2013. Early life Lisa Schwarzbaum w ...

of ''Entertainment Weekly'' argued that "A reader in the wrong mood might impatiently brush away some of the flakier granola crumbs that come with the territory ut itglows with Kingsolver's honest literary language of enchantment, and with an eye for details of the living planet that Gerard Manley Hopkins might admire." The ''New York Times Laura Ciolkowski concluded that "''Small Wonder'' has a lot to say, but its heavy-handed wisdom is unfulfilling."

References

External

*
Harper Collins reading guide
{{Portal bar, Books, Environment 2002 non-fiction books Essay collections by Barbara Kingsolver Books about the September 11 attacks HarperCollins books American essay collections Books about environmentalism

Context

Reception

References

Further reading

External