Barbara Kingsolver '77 Weighs in on US Retaliation in LA Times

October 18, 2001

October 18, 2001, Greencastle, Ind. - Barbara Kingsolver, a best-selling author and 1977 graduate of DePauw University, continues to make her voice heard in the wake of the September 11 attacks on America. An essay in the October 14, 2001 edition of the Los Angeles Times, entitled "No Glory in Unjust War on the Weak," is her take on the beginning of American air strikes on Afghanistan.

"I cannot find the glory in this day," Kingsolver writes. "When I picked up the newspaper and saw 'America Strikes Back!' blazed boastfully across it in letters I swear were 10 inches tall -- shouldn't they reserve at least one type size for something like, say, nuclear war? -- my heart sank. We've answered one terrorist act with another, raining death on the most war-scarred, terrified populace that ever crept to a doorway and looked out."

Later she writes, "The issue is, people are getting hurt. We need to take a moment's time out to review the monstrous waste of an endless cycle of retaliation. The biggest weapons don't win this one, guys. When there are people on Earth willing to give up their lives in hatred and use our own domestic airplanes as bombs, it's clear that we can't out-technologize them. You can't beat cancer by killing every cell in the body -- or you could, I guess, but the point would be lost. This is a war of who can hate the most. There is no limit to that escalation. It will only end when we have the guts to say it really doesn't matter who started it, and begin to try and understand, then alter the forces that generate hatred."

You can read the entire text of Kingsolver's latest essay by clicking here.

The author of best-sellers that include The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer and The Bean Trees, Kingsolver wrote two other essays in late September for the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. You can read a summary of those writings here.

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