''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, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s on environmentalism and social justice by American novelist and biologist

Barbara Kingsolver Barbara Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the Univers ...

, published in 2002 by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

. It reached number 3 in the ''New York Times'' non-fiction paperback best seller list in May 2003. The cover shows two scarlet macaws, 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, 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 Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; h ...

, an ornithologist.

Reception

Rosemary Canfield-Reisman ''Salvia rosmarinus'' (), commonly known as rosemary, is a shrub with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves and white, pink, purple, or blue flowers, native plant, native to the Mediterranean Region, Mediterranean region. Until 2017, it was kn ...

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), two works of feminist non-fiction: ''Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism'' (2010, Virago) and '' ...

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 film critic in the 1990s and remained there until February 2013. Career She has been featured on CNN, co-hosted '' Siskel & Ebert at the Mov ...

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 Laura may refer to: People * Laura (given name) * Laura, the British code name for the World War I Belgian spy Marthe Cnockaert Places Australia * Laura, Queensland, a town on the Cape York Peninsula * Laura, South Australia * Laura Bay, a bay on ...

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