The chief question Kingsolver poses in “Pigs in Heaven” is who wins in “a conflict between individual and community values.” But she also explores what it’s like to be poor in America. “Fiction creates empathy, and empathy is the antidote to meanness of spirit,” she says. “Nonfiction can tell you about the plight of working people, of single mothers, but in a novel you become the character; touch what she touches, struggle with her self-doubt. Then, when you go back to your own life, something inside you has maybe shifted a little.” Kingsolver’s empathy will extend all the way to west Africa for her next novel. " We all have so much common ground. We belong to the same species, have pretty much the same dimensions, the same food-chain position. When you reduce it, we all need the same things to survive.
