In this story “The Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingslover we meet Taylor Greer, an average teenager from Pittman, Kentucky. Even though Taylor has never experienced anything truly horrible in her life, how can she truly understand how unpleasant the world can be? Taylor's personal growth in "The Bean Trees" is part of an uncertain journey as Taylor is thrown into motherhood and forced to see the bad experiences people go through in life. At the beginning of the story we see that Taylor is an average teenage girl living with a single mother. She says: “But I stayed in school. I wasn't the smartest or even particularly great, but I was there and I stayed out of trouble” (3). She was called "Missy" for much of her childhood, but when she was three years old she said, "I stomped my foot and told my mother not to call me Marietta but Miss Marietta" (2). From Taylor's childhood I learned that he had a sense of personal pride and knew how to stand up for himself. These are really great attributes and we really see them grow and mature throughout the story. Taylor only had two goals in her life at the beginning of this book and those were to not get pregnant and to one day leave Pittman, Kentucky. He fulfills one of these by leaving the only home he's ever known and drives west with little money and no real plan for what he'll do. Taylor is determined to avoid being tied up. She says, "I knew the scenery of Greenup Road, which we called Steam-It-Up-Road, and I knew what a bird looked like, and none of these sights had yet inspired me to get stuck in a future as a tobacco farmer's wife " (3). She is full of ambition and determination. Taylor wants more than Pittman offers. Taylor leaving Kentucky shows... middle of paper... that it's her normal family and she doesn't want to ruin anyone else, especially the people she cares about. Taylor's courage shown in this novel and her risk-taking attitude make her truly independent, but the relationships she has formed in her new life, the maturation and empathy she shows towards them make her truly strong. Taylor truly has a genuine and good heart. I really liked her character despite the confusion at first in dealing with her reaction to being abandoned as a child. At first she seemed to calm down, but by the end of Bean Trees I understand her more and I think she has truly become an extraordinary woman. She is a great mother, an amazing friend, a risk taker full of compassion for others and her courage completely shines through. Her journey began as a normal teenager and ended as a loving mother.