Book Review: Pigs in Heaven

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Pigs in Heaven

Author: Barbara Kingsolver

Author's web site: http://www.kingsolver.com/

Date: 1993

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 0-16-016801-3

Length: 343 pages

Quote: “You can’t adopt an Indian kid without tribal permission.”

In The Bean Trees, teenage Taylor Greer came of age by adopting an abandoned baby on a road trip. The baby didn’t look like Taylor and the novel was also about the refugees who eventually agreed to stand in for the baby’s unknown parents so that Taylor could legally adopt the baby from them. The baby had a vaguely Native American look. Taylor, being from Kingsolver’s part of the world (eastern Kentucky), was lucky enough to have some verified Cherokee ancestry. Her friends were South American but, a thousand miles away from Cherokee country, they could pass as Cherokees for adoption purposes. Taylor was all set to tell baby Turtle, when Turtle started talking, “I’m part Cherokee, too, although I look White; your father had more of a typical Cherokee look, like you.” And that, she and Kingsolver imagined, was as far as it needed to go. Ethnicity—where we came from—is interesting; individual identity—where we’re going—is what matters. Right?

Wrong, it turned out, legally. Kingsolver was urged to write a novel about how much of a commitment Taylor would really have to take on, to rear Turtle as a Cherokee.

In Pigs in Heaven, Turtle is six years old when she witnesses an accident, makes the TV news shows, and gets into trouble. A character called Annawake (yes, that’s an old Cherokee name) notices that Turtle not only has a Cherokee look but was adopted around the time a Cherokee baby went missing. With a little neighborly snooping, Annawake finds out Turtle’s real name and origin. Baby Dear really did come from Heaven, which is, like Hell, the name of a town in the United States, and the Cherokee community in Heaven, Oklahoma, want Turtle back.

At times the Cherokee characters in Heaven act like real “pigs,” which is not entirely without real-world basis, but The Bean Trees was a feel-good story and so is this sequel. Everybody turns out to be related and they all end up well enough supplied with money, relatives, and other worldly benefits that Taylor and her mother, too, feel a bit like “pigs in heaven.”

The Bean Trees was a fresh, delightful novel partly because it affirmed that a young woman can find her mature self through mother love rather than romance. Taylor had a vague idealistic crush on someone else’s husband; his marriage was solid, boys her own age had vague idealistic crushes on Taylor, but Taylor ended up on her own, enjoying single motherhood so much that dating seemed almost superfluous. That’s one half of a coming-of-age story. (Yes, it happens. I came of age as an asexual adoptive mother-substitute myself.) In the second half the young person rejoins the community; Pigs in Heaven fits that pattern. Taylor might not have thought she’d need a husband, a stepfather, and dozens of cousins to help raise Turtle, but she does. As a Cherokee Turtle is entitled to know all her cousins back to the seventh generation—and know them well. To keep her, Turtle’s adoptive mother and grandmother have to become active members of the tribe.

How do you reclaim your Cherokee identity, if any? “Just show you come from people on the Census Rolls from back in the 1800s,” if you do. “It’s not a country club,” a character says in this novel.

Meh. Membership in a tribe is about sharing the experiences of a group of people; at this point in world history, usually a disadvantaged group. Membership entails duties. The Cherokee are one of the few groups that can still be described as “tribes” that have become rich enough to attract would-be members looking for benefits more than obligations. Banished from the woods and hills they loved, they were ironically vindicated by the discovery of oil on the Oklahoma reservation. Thanks to the tribal ethic of sharing wealth they are well-off (though not necessarily rich). Because of this, lots of people thought they’d like to be Cherokee. Because Cherokees were more resistant to European plagues than other Native Americans due to an old Cherokee custom of systematic outbreeding, lots of people outside the tribe are part Cherokee. As a result the Cherokee Nation have to ask more and harder questions of the Wannabee Tribe than some other established “tribes” do. “If you want to have Cherokee Elders, why? What do you have to offer them, and why aren’t you offering it to the elders with whom you grew up?” The process can feel like joining a country club.

For practical purposes...well, all the family names in Dad’s family tree are on the Census Rolls from the 1800s, but those people weren’t my direct ancestors. They were my ancestors’ cousins. Arguably those Cherokee crossbreeds who accepted dual citizenship in the 1700s, lived in White settlements, spoke English at home, belonged to Christian churches, and weren’t ordered to leave east Tennessee in the Van Buren administration, were sellouts whose descendants have no right to reclaim their Cherokee identity. My home town is full of such descendants, I’m one of them, and I grew up comfortable with being legally White, except now and then when I run across a White bigot and want to make sure the bigot knows I am biracial. There’s a whole town of us here, many with blue eyes and some even with red hair. More of the people I know prefer to be biracial allies who are loyal to some, not necessarily all, Native American causes, rather than try to join any tribe. I can believe Taylor would be willing to reclaim her Cherokee identity because Turtle is still a clingy six-year-old, but if a mere boyfriend were urging her to do that I’d expect her to replace the boy.

And even for Turtle’s sake...is Taylor the sort of character who can live in a tribe? Taylor has enjoyed being alone with Turtle all those years, and her mother was starting to worry that too much independence can lead to a lonely old age. By the end of Pigs in Heaven I can believe that Taylor’s happy with all those new-found relatives and obligations, for now, and her aging mother really seems to need a lot of relatives to grow old with, but I’m still wondering whether Taylor’s restless young soul will be ready to burst out of Heaven before Turtle is in high school.

Well, that was part of the purpose of this novel. The Wannabee Tribe should shrink. 

Along the way, this being Barbara Kingsolver, we get vivid scenery, interesting dialogues, memorable characters, generally a full package of entertainment. There's a top-heavy waitress who collects Barbie dolls and tries to look like a living one, a tired woman who justifies making second-rate beadwork because she's only part "Indian," a boyfriend who adores Taylor but, when he cheats...

The book is PG-rated, by the way. By U.S. standards Kingsolver is often considered a relatively clean mainstream novelist, but there are bedroom scenes; the one where Taylor's boyfriend cheats to block out his worries about Taylor and then tries to justify what he's done by telling the Other Woman that of course he's going to tell Taylor covers several pages. There's also some low-key violence, mild to moderate use of Formerly Unprintable Words, and some immoral behavior. I would not diiiie of embarrassment if The Nephews found this book in my home, but then they're old enough to know that sometimes novels show us people behaving in ways authors have observed that real people do behave--and regret it afterward.

To buy it here, send $5 per book, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment, from which we'll send $1 to Kingsolver or a charity of her choice. The Bean Trees would fit nicely into that $5 package.