Barbara Kingsolver’s Superficial View of the American Family in the Trump Era
NOVEMBER, 2018
Unsheltered, by barbara kingsolver, is about a middle-class family struggling to make ends meet as the 2016 presidential primaries unfold. “One underemployed breadwinner, five dependents,” Kingsolver writes of the Knox-Tavoularis family, whose members are designed to represent variously aggrieved members of the white American electorate. At the center of the novel is Willa, a magazine editor turned freelance writer. In her orbit are her husband, Iano, a tenure-track professor turned adjunct instructor; her son, Zeke…