In the section "Called Home" by Barbara Kingsolver she begins by describing the landscape of Tucson, AZ which they are moving from. Kingsolver and her family had lived there for years but have recently decided to move to Virginia. She explains the difficulties of living in the desert where the majority of their goods are imported from far away sources from water to food. She had made many memories in the Arizona landscape and offers instances of nostalgia that made Tucson her home.
Later into the text she begins to explain the reason why her family had decided to leave Tucson. It wasn't to find work or to move their children to a better school district. They felt a disconnect to the land "vitrually every unit of food consumed [in Tucson] moves into town in a refigerated module from somewhere far away. Every ounce of the city's drinking, washing, and goldfish-bowl water is pumped from a nonrenewable source..."(p.3). Not only did she express guilt for living a unsustainable lifestyle but also sense of fear that this lifestyle may not be able to sufficiently provide for her family. Forcing the arid land to produce goods that are not suited for that environment takes endless inputs and adds additional stresses to the land.
She blames the society that has been created in the U.S. She believes that many people have lost their connection to the land and as a result the world has been treated with less care and respect as it was in the past. Many children are no longer given the opportunity to learn about agriculture or the origins of their food. The majority of the US population is now consumer based "it's good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough to serve the rest of us with all we need to each, each day of our lives"(p.9).
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