"STONE SOUP' BY BARBARA KINGSOLVER

While this essay was written some ten years ago, the insistence by the political right on "family values" makes "Stone Soup" as valid and contemporary as if it were written yesterday. Surely there will be some who see this as a middle-aged woman's rant against those who cannot understand that sometimes the best-planned marriages end in divorce. One needs to read between the lines as well as re-read the lines and thoughts themselves. For Kingsolver, writing is a form of political engagement" (Anon 1).

This so-called "engagement" in this essay deals with trying to dispense with the narrow view of morality. "àwe aren't a family of Dollsà.And if not, even though you are statistically no oddity, it's probably been suggested to you in a hundred ways that yours isn't exactly a real family, but an imposter family, a harbinger of cultural ruin" (Kingsolver 1).

The idea is that there are truly very few "perfect" families. There is too much divorce, too little compassion, and also too much "contempt (for) the straw-broken home"(Kingsolver 2). Kingsolver goes after those who come up with what to them might seem a generic and even innocuous term when a family breaks up. She attacks the term "irreconcilable differences." She will have none of that: "I resent the phrase 'irreconcilable differences,' which suggests a stubborn refusal to accept a spouse's little quirks. This is specious. Every happily married couple I know has load