When you think about it, this book is about a dreadful piece of history, people in misery, political mistakes – and I throw in poisonous snakes. Barbara Kingsolver
I’ve been teaching this book since it came out in 1998, and I still think it’s terrific.
Bruce Schauble
Last week I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, a book I enjoyed reading immensely, and over the last week I’ve been mulling over its effect upon me. So! I’m going to throw down some thoughts here now, before I forget them. If you are not familiar with the book, it’s the story of a Baptist preacher from Georgia, Nathan Price who, lit with missionary zeal, drags his reluctant wife and four daughters out to the Belgian Congo in 1959. Over the following thirty odd years (and 614 pages) his wife and daughters tell the story of their family, of the brief flowering of an independent state in the Congo and of various tragedies and joys on both a familial and greater more national and even global scale. It’s a very meaty read, with lots of nutritious politics, history, international intrigue, poetry, philosophy, romance and social awareness to get your teeth into. It’s also beautifully written and among other points Barbara Kingsolver pulled off quite a feat in giving each of the narrators such distinctive voices; Orleanna the wife and mother frozen with guilt, Rachel the materialist, Leah the social activist, Adah the analytical scientist and Ruth-May who seems ultimately to be a creature born of the spirit. Oh, there’s lots to get involved in with this book. But what gave it added weight for me was the lessons of history it taught me. Kingsolver herself has said on her website: This novel is asking, basically, “What did we do to Africa, and how do we feel about it?”
Although I follow the news around the world, I didn’t really know much about the background to the Congo’s current deleterious situation, rife as it is these days with civil conflicts, occasional invasion from it’s neighbours (it unfortunately has a lot of neighbours) and more recently endemic rape. It always seemed like such an indecipherable mess, (especially as one of it’s neighbours also confusingly bears the name Congo). However this book has taught me a lot and well. The roots of the current “mess” are entirely (and sadly) predictable. There was a part in the book where I felt like weeping “Oh, no not America again! I’m tired of being angry with America!” as I learned of the CIA’s involvement in the murder of the Congo’s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and in the installation and continued propping up of the brutal dictator and arch-kleptocrat Joseph Mobutu. Here’s what Kingsolver says on her website:
I live in a country that has done awful things, all over the world, in my name. You can’t miss that. I didn’t make those decisions, but I have benefited from them materially. I live in a society that grew prosperous from exploiting others. England has a strong tradition of postcolonial literature but here in the U.S., we can hardly even say the word “postcolonial.” We like to think we’re the good guys. So we persist in our denial, and live with a legacy of exploitation and racial arrogance that continues to tear people apart, in a million large and small ways.
This book is also in large part about identity and how the choices we make pretty much define the people we become. A lesson for all of us there on both personal, national and yes even global levels. Anyway, I recommend this book. I was hooked from the first page by the intial description of the forest simply dripping with life in all it’s teeming forms and variations and then the author quietly telling us “I want you to be its conscience”.
If you want to learn more and do something about the rape crisis in the Congo there’s a link here: What You Can Do To Help.
