How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The Indian child was a girl. A girl, poor thing. That fact had already burdened her life with a kind of misery I could not imagine. I thought I knew about every ugly thing that one person does to another, but I had never even thought about such things being done to a baby girl. (1.150)
The sexual abuse of children is one of the clearest targets of the novel's criticism. Taylor's horror at the abuse Turtle has suffered is what inspires her to keep the child for good.
Quote #2
Signatory to the United Nations something-something on human rights, Mattie was saying, and that means we have a legal obligation to take in people whose lives are in danger. (7.104)
Although Mattie argues that the U.S. has a legal obligation to take in refugees, she also believes that every individual has a moral obligation to assist those who are suffering, and whose lives are threatened by danger. She makes the legal argument because she knows it has broader appeal: it's harder to convince someone of their moral responsibility than it is to prove their legal obligation. And even if Taylor can barely can wrap her head around the legal side of the argument, she sure gets her chops as far as the morality stuff's concerned.
Quote #3
A man with a microphone clipped to his tie asked her, What about legal means? And something about asylum. They were standing against a brick building with palm trees in front. Mattie said that out of the some-odd thousand Guatemalans and Salvadorans who had applied for this, only one-half of one percent of them had been granted it, and those were mainly relatives of dictators, not the people running for their lives. (7.105)
In the face of a bureaucratic system that perpetuates injustice rather than helping to stamp it out, Mattie and others like her are willing to do things that the state calls "criminal." In The Bean Trees, justice isn't defined by law: it's defined by basic principles of right and wrong. Even if it's still questioned by people who are in power or have microphones clipped to their bodies.
Quote #4
Then the TV showed both Mattie and the interview man talking without sound, and another man's voice told us that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had returned two illegal aliens, a woman and her son, to their native El Salvador last week, and that Mattie "claimed" they had been taken into custody when they stepped off the plane in San Salvador and later were found dead in a ditch. I didn't like this man's tone. I had no idea how Mattie would know such things, but if she said it was so, it was. (7.106)
By getting to know, love, and trust Mattie, Taylor's eyes are opened to the unjust ways of the world. Even more than Taylor's Mama, Mattie provides the young woman with the kind of role-modeling it takes to make Taylor see that she can make a difference in the world. Even if she doesn't always understand how the news on TV works.
Quote #5
"What program did you want to see?" Edna asked. "I hope we haven't spoiled it by coming late?"
"That was it, we just saw it," I said, though it seemed ridiculous. Thirty seconds and it was all over. "She's a friend of ours," I explained.
"All I could make out was some kind of trouble with illegal aliens and dope peddlers," said Mrs. Parsons. (7.109-111)
Virgie Mae's reaction to the television interview is represented as a typically prejudiced response. Like Granny Logan, Virgie Mae's presence in the novel serves to highlight how prejudice and bigotry contribute to social injustice. Thanks a lot, Parsnip.
Quote #6
Mrs. Parsons muttered that she thought this was a disgrace. "Before you know it the whole world will be here jabbering and jabbering till we won't know it's America."
"Virgie, mind your manners," Edna said.
"Well, it's the truth. They ought to stay put in their own dirt, not come here taking up jobs." (7.131-133)
Here we go again. To Virgie Mae, immigrants and refugees are all the same: "aliens" and "foreigners" who don't belong, and who don't deserve to take up space in the country she calls home. Although The Bean Trees sets up women like Virgie Mae and Granny Logan as particularly clear examples of bigotry and xenophobia, the novel suggests that opinions like theirs are widespread.
Quote #7
"Really, I don't think she knew what she was saying, about how the woman and kid who got shot must have been drug dealers or whatever."
"Oh, I believe she did. This is how Americans think." He was looking at me in a thoughtful way. "You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it."
"I wanted to tell him that this wasn't so, but I couldn't. (8.90)
When Taylor tries to apologize to Estevan on behalf of Virgie Mae, Estevan refuses the apology. His reasoning helps Taylor to understand something that she's never considered before: that blaming and fearing victims rather than perpetrators of injustice lets people feel "safe."
Quote #8
Then out of the clear blue sky he said, "In Guatemala City the police use electricity for interrogation. They have something called the 'telephone,' which is an actual telephone of the type they use in the field. It has its own generator, operated by a handle." [...] "A crank? Like the old-fashioned telephones?" "Operated with a crank," he said. "The telephones are made in the United States." (9.28-30)
Getting to know Estevan and Esperanza changes Taylor's view of the world fundamentally. The things that Estevan tells her about his life in Guatemala are things she would have once ascribed to the realm of fiction. Through them, she begins to understand the extent of her own ignorance and, most importantly, the way that ignorance contributes to the deep injustice underlying the status quo. Including the fact that a normal telephone made in the U.S. can be used as a torture device. Does that mean that American phone producers are helping out the torturers?
Quote #9
I didn't want to believe the world could be so unjust. But of course it was right there in front of my nose. If the truth was a snake it would have bitten me a long time ago. It would have had me for dinner. (11.72)
As Taylor begins to understand more about the injustices of the world, the knowledge is overwhelming. Coming to terms with her inability to change the world as one single, solitary human being is one of the most important steps she makes in the novel; learning to do whatever she can is another.
Quote #10
But of course there was more to the picture. Police everywhere, always. Whole villages of Indians forced to move again and again. As soon as they planted their crops, Estevan said, the police would come and set their houses and fields on fire and make them move again. The strategy was to wear them down so they'd be too tired or too hungry to fight back. (14.50)
By now, Taylor can draw connections between state treatment of Indigenous peoples in Guatemala and state treatment of Indigenous peoples in North America. What is the take-away here, for her? What about for the novel overall?