Quote 34
"That's not fair. You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that, shiploads of telephones to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? [...] Half the time I have no idea what's going on around me here." (9.36)
Estevan suggests to Taylor that Americans find it easiest not to know about their own complicity in violence and injustice. Taylor refuses to accept this. Do you think her counterargument is valid? In cases like this, does ignorance mean the same thing as innocence?
Quote 35
Try as I would, I couldn't understand this. I was no longer so stupid as to ask why they didn't call the police, but still I couldn't see why they hadn't at least tried to get her back if they knew the police had taken her, and where. "Don't be upset with me," I said. "I know I'm ignorant, I'm sorry. Just explain it to me." (9.48)
Through Estevan, Taylor learns more about the world than she knew previously. Does this knowledge change her in any way? If so, how?
Quote 36
I thought of the color pictures in my grade-school history books: Columbus striding up the beach in his leotards and feathered hat, a gang of wild-haired men in loin clothes scattering in front of him like rabbits. What a joke. (14.32)
As Mayans, Estevan and Esperanza are Indigenous people whose culture has been misrepresented by colonial forces for centuries, so much that it appears as factual knowledge in grade-school history books young American children read as gospel. By the end of The Bean Trees, Taylor's friendship with Estevan and Esperanza has taught her to be much more critical of her own formal education. Is your state one that has renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day? That ongoing debate still can tell you a whole bunch about the state of education in the given states of our mighty country.