Quote 52
We crossed the Arizona state line at sunup. The clouds were pink and fat and hilarious-looking, like the hippo ballerinas in a Disney movie. The road took us through a place called Texas canyon that looked nothing like Texas, heaven be praised for that, but looked like nothing else I had ever seen either. It was a kind of forest, except that in place of trees there were all these puffy-looking rocks shaped like roundish animals and roundish people. (3.1)
The Arizona landscape tickles Taylor as pink as a Disney hippo, and inspires her to live there for good. Nothing like picturing stacks of rocks as petrified dinosaur turds and clouds as cartoon ballerinas to inspire a big move.
Quote 53
We got out of the open car and stood under the concrete wings to stay dry. Turtle was looking interested in the scenery, which was a first. Up to then the only thing that appeared to interest her was my special way of starting the car.
"This is a foreign country," I told her. "Arizona. You know as much about it as I do. We're even steven." (3.9)
This is the first of many instances throughout The Bean Trees when Taylor describes herself as a foreigner in a new country. Coming from the relatively self-contained Pittman County, she finds it hard to think of America as a unified nation. To her, individual states seem much more like unique and foreign lands.
Quote 54
Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner too. I come from a place that's so different from here you would think you'd stepped right off the map into some other country where they use dirt for decoration and the national pastime is having babies. People don't look the same, talk the same, nothing. Half the time I have no idea what's going on around me here. (9.36)
Taylor's sense that Tucson is a foreign country compared to Pittman County helps her to identify with refugees like Estevan and Esperanza. However, although she means well, Taylor sometimes forgets that, unlike her friends, she can travel throughout America without fear of being arrested and deported back to where she came from. When it comes right down to it, Taylor's citizenship gives her fundamental privileges that her friends may never have.