Major American novelist Barbara Kingsolver visited the Writers Institute in the spring of 1992, and was also interviewed by the late Tom Smith, Institute Director, for the WAMC Book Show, April 16, 1992.
Here's an excerpt from that interview:
Kingsolver:
People also have asked the question if I write women’s books or to put it in
the way a student asked me, “Is The Bean Trees a chick book?” I guess it is
because most of the characters seem to be women but the thing is I’ve read so many
white guy books in my life and it had never even occurred to me that those
people in the books were white men. Lawrence
of Arabia, the film, comes to my mind. I remember after I saw the film, a
friend said, “Did you notice that there were no women in that movie?” We get accustomed
to what literature is and literature is about a man and a great white whale.
But it seems to me that what happened between two women in a kitchen can be
just as interesting and just as heroic in its way as what happens between a man
and a great white whale. It just happens that I know much more about what
happens between two women in a kitchen than I do about whales. I think I’m on
safer territory writing about the people I know.
