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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
been reading Patrice Lumumba and came across Kingsolver’s book as a fictional interpretation of the ongoing US/Belgian colonization and control of the Congo. POWERFUL!!!
“Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call ‘civilization’ “
“Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call ‘civilization’ “
'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver is an important book, one which should be on everyone’s TBR list. On Goodreads there are 666,825 ratings and 23,525 reviews. The novel was a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, the Orange Prize, the Book Sense Book of the Year Award for Adult, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Independent Publisher Book Award for Audio, the Exclusive Books Book Prize, the Puddly Award for Novel, the International Dublin Literary Award - and it won several of the above. There are also thousands of book reviews online written by professional literary critics.
In my more humble opinion, it is a magnificent novel. It is Kingsolver’s magnum opus, her [b:Les Miserables|36377471|Les Miserables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509394980l/36377471._SY75_.jpg|3208463] contender. It is a multi-dimensional statement about Human Folly. It also has many other literary themes, with perhaps the one main one of spirituality and its many faces, which makes it perfect for book clubs and other discussion groups.
Some readers believe the novel is anti-missionary or anti-religious, but I think her book was more nuanced and Big Picture than that. I think Kingsolver was demonstrating the uselessness of a certain type of Christian missionary. She was not condemning the entire group, only those self-proclaimed religious messengers who have no real religious training or cultural expertise, or who are focused on a single aspect of an organized religion to the exclusion of all other considerations.At one point, it is revealed Nathan Price, the keystone character who sets in motion the tragedy of the Price family’s disillusionment with their father, and more, went to Africa and took over the small Kilanga mission without sanction of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Service.
The Service did give Price a small monthly stipend of $50 a month, but they did it reluctantly because he had refused to attend the classes he needed on living in the Belgian Congo in 1959. He never learned any African language. He knew nothing of what supplies he needed. He dragged his family of wife and four daughters to a village in the middle of a jungle without having done a single thing (except for a few vaccines) to prepare them for an African country very different from Bethlehem, Georgia, their previous home. As the story unfolds through the alternating narratives of Nathan’s wife, Orleanna Price, and of his four daughters, fifteen-year-old Rachel, fourteen-year-old twins Leah and Adah, and five-year-old Ruth May, three years of hell pass.
The things Nathan cannot accept are legion. He doesn’t recognize the physical needs, like food, of anyone, including those of his family. He does not recognize that the concept of God comes in many packages around the world. To Nathan, spirituality exists only in one face - that of the Old Testament God of the Christian Bible. Although he is Baptist, he rejects the approved Baptist Bible which does not include the Catholic books called the Apocrypha. He is focused, to the exclusion of all other expressions of spirituality, only on the ritual of baptism no matter what environment he finds himself. He cannot convince the people of Kilanga being baptized is more important than being eaten by crocodiles.
Nathan is clearly deranged, but it takes his family a long time to understand this. Eventually, Nathan’s monomaniac interest on baptizing African polytheists costs him his family, his honor, and his sanity. The question of survival becomes the issue. Will Orleanna, Rachael, Leah, Adah and Ruth May get out of Africa alive? What caused Nathan’s monomania? How is it that Orleanna married such a man, and even more puzzling, continued her support of his view of Christianity to the point of endangering the lives of her children?
Poisonwood is a local plant which kills unwary people. Touching it burns the skin, and using it as firewood or food will kill. The family has a painful run-in with the plant since they have no clue about local flora or fauna.
The Price family assumes they can plant Georgia crops in African soils, but of course, that ends up a disaster. Besides the fast-growing native jungle environment, there is the different seasonal environment of the Congo. It is has two seasons - rainy and dry. The Price family had never heard of rainy and dry seasons. They also didn’t know Kilanga had no refrigeration, no electricity, no indoor or outdoor toilets except bushes, no water except that from streams or rivers. The streams are used as a bathroom, to wash the few articles of clothes people had, and to drink. Only the Price family boils the water. They didn’t know about the crocodiles, the snakes, the bugs, and other wildlife which attack the people of the jungle. They didn’t know how diseases affect the people who must live with them without remedies except that provided by “witchdoctors.” With wonder, they observed many of the people of Kilanga had missing limbs and eyes.
The poverty of Kilanga and other surrounding villages amazed them. The Price family was poor, and they had lived in poverty in America, but they discovered they were wealthy compared to the Africans. Children were mostly naked. Those who wore clothes walked about with holes in the seats of their pants. Only men were allowed to wear pants. Boys finished their education at age twelve. Men hunted, women grew manioc and cooked it. Manioc was the main food, and it did not provide many of the necessary minerals and vitamins for good health. The Price children mistook the bloated bellies of African children for obesity. Two hundred languages were spoken by the various tribes in the Belgian Congo.
Nathan believed the answer to all of the problems of the Congo was baptism. His sermons consisted of the hellfire-fright teachings of the Bible. He threatened eternal damnation and living under the Devil for anyone not accepting Jesus. He denigrated their local gods.
His words had to be translated since Nathan didn’t speak the local language at all. He learned a few words eventually, but he never got the hang of the tonal qualities of a word. In mispronouncing bangala, a word that could mean both ‘most precious’ or poisonwood, he continuously preached a message to his small congregation which was confusing. His other messages of ‘love’ were already being understood with outrage. By insisting the villagers throw their kids into a crocodile infested river for baptism, he chased away most of the people who went to his church at least once. In telling them their doctors, whether those of their deities who they had worshipped for pain relief for generations, or the local ‘witchdoctor’ who also provided remedies for pain, grief and fear, were evil, the villagers waited for learning how worshipping Jesus would alleviate their physical sufferings while alive. Of course, Nathan had nothing concrete for that.
Each of the women in the Nathan’s household believed in Nathan, except for Adah. Adah had been born with a crippled right side. Her family was told she had only half of a brain. Later, she mentions polio, but I noticed this sentence is missed by many readers. Adah and Leah are geniuses, and were placed in accelerated learning classes while they lived in America. However, Adah mystifies her family and they ignore her. She never talks. She cannot keep up with the rest of the family when they walk around or work. Her nicknames involve the word “crooked” in all languages. But her narrations make clear she not only is an atheist, she is the only one who realizes Nathan is not ok.
Rachel is unknowingly amusing, and self-centered. She is not a genius. Her mirror is her most precious object. She hates doing anything which will mess up her hair.
Leah is daddy’s girl. She follows him about like a dog in heat. She wants to be him when she grows up. She thinks prayer will solve everything, and she believes if people accept Jesus, their starvation and diseases will be cured. She is also the outdoor kid, accomplished at hunting and living in the woods, strong and fit.
Ruth May is cute, charming and completely accepting of everybody and everything. She walks into neighboring huts full of curiosity and friendliness, and easily makes friends. Her ability at picking up languages is phenomenal. Adah also can do languages, but her family does not pay her much attention as I mentioned before.
Orleanna. She is the character that most interested me. How did she get to be the kind of person who follows a deranged man to Africa, putting her children at risk from horrible death and suffering by local deadly flora and fauna, starvation, disease, racism and civil war? In the beginning the answer is the Baptist religion did it along with extreme ignorance, but later? She slowly decides to trust her own eyes and ears, but omg. It takes a dreadful tragedy to do it. Before then, religious mores blind her and bind her into submission. Nathan beats them all as well. She does nothing about it.
Africa. What is wrong with Africa? The book has so much information about the Congo during the years the family is there. The author gradually reveals the horrors of colonialism. The White world of Europe and America robbed Africa of its resources while promising education, the building of infrastructure and food. Food and educational resources were provided - temporarily, without continuing maintenance. Through bribery of African leaders, White governments killed legitimate African leaders and installed corrupt governments. This, from the same White race which also came to Africa preaching Christianity.
Between wrong-footed Christianity and White promises of wealth, Black Africa was kneecapped by corruption. White people took everything of value and left only an impoverished hell of suffering on the African continent, ultimately only giving the ordinary African the intangible reward of a love from an invisible god after Death.
The novel is wonderful. I highly recommend it. It only misses being a classic with the stature of Great Literature, imho, because one of the characters does not quite measure up - Rachel. Nonetheless, it definitely is great, small g, literature. Some readers thought it prejudiced against Christianity, but I think they didn’t read the book closely enough. Others thought it too supportive of communism, but many African nations and its people believed communism held the answer to redistribution of wealth issues which beset Africa. An author cannot do a history of Africa without including the infatuation with communism many African countries had. At the time (and currently) only the communist states of Russia, Cuba and China offered tangible resources that they followed through on. They provided doctors, roads and dams - practical solutions to practical problems. The help came with strings and racism, along with a lack of consistency and maintenance too, but that came later. The principles of Communism in its teachings definitely appeared a thousand times more attractive than that of gaining a heavenly existence only after one has followed religious rules designed for a desert culture of millennia ago and preaching people must live and die suffering agonies while alive.
There is a bibliography in the back. Plus, the author lived in Africa as a child.
In my more humble opinion, it is a magnificent novel. It is Kingsolver’s magnum opus, her [b:Les Miserables|36377471|Les Miserables|Victor Hugo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509394980l/36377471._SY75_.jpg|3208463] contender. It is a multi-dimensional statement about Human Folly. It also has many other literary themes, with perhaps the one main one of spirituality and its many faces, which makes it perfect for book clubs and other discussion groups.
Some readers believe the novel is anti-missionary or anti-religious, but I think her book was more nuanced and Big Picture than that. I think Kingsolver was demonstrating the uselessness of a certain type of Christian missionary. She was not condemning the entire group, only those self-proclaimed religious messengers who have no real religious training or cultural expertise, or who are focused on a single aspect of an organized religion to the exclusion of all other considerations.
The Service did give Price a small monthly stipend of $50 a month, but they did it reluctantly because he had refused to attend the classes he needed on living in the Belgian Congo in 1959. He never learned any African language. He knew nothing of what supplies he needed. He dragged his family of wife and four daughters to a village in the middle of a jungle without having done a single thing (except for a few vaccines) to prepare them for an African country very different from Bethlehem, Georgia, their previous home.
Spoiler
The stipend is stopped when the Belgian Congo won its independence in 1960. Nathan refuses to leave despite recommendations of fellow Baptist missionaries, despite the breaking out of civil wars, and despite the threat to the lives of all White people in the Congo, many of whom are murdered after the Congo’s declaration of independence.The things Nathan cannot accept are legion. He doesn’t recognize the physical needs, like food, of anyone, including those of his family. He does not recognize that the concept of God comes in many packages around the world. To Nathan, spirituality exists only in one face - that of the Old Testament God of the Christian Bible. Although he is Baptist, he rejects the approved Baptist Bible which does not include the Catholic books called the Apocrypha. He is focused, to the exclusion of all other expressions of spirituality, only on the ritual of baptism no matter what environment he finds himself. He cannot convince the people of Kilanga being baptized is more important than being eaten by crocodiles.
Poisonwood is a local plant which kills unwary people. Touching it burns the skin, and using it as firewood or food will kill. The family has a painful run-in with the plant since they have no clue about local flora or fauna.
The Price family assumes they can plant Georgia crops in African soils, but of course, that ends up a disaster. Besides the fast-growing native jungle environment, there is the different seasonal environment of the Congo. It is has two seasons - rainy and dry. The Price family had never heard of rainy and dry seasons. They also didn’t know Kilanga had no refrigeration, no electricity, no indoor or outdoor toilets except bushes, no water except that from streams or rivers. The streams are used as a bathroom, to wash the few articles of clothes people had, and to drink. Only the Price family boils the water. They didn’t know about the crocodiles, the snakes, the bugs, and other wildlife which attack the people of the jungle. They didn’t know how diseases affect the people who must live with them without remedies except that provided by “witchdoctors.” With wonder, they observed many of the people of Kilanga had missing limbs and eyes.
The poverty of Kilanga and other surrounding villages amazed them. The Price family was poor, and they had lived in poverty in America, but they discovered they were wealthy compared to the Africans. Children were mostly naked. Those who wore clothes walked about with holes in the seats of their pants. Only men were allowed to wear pants. Boys finished their education at age twelve. Men hunted, women grew manioc and cooked it. Manioc was the main food, and it did not provide many of the necessary minerals and vitamins for good health. The Price children mistook the bloated bellies of African children for obesity. Two hundred languages were spoken by the various tribes in the Belgian Congo.
Nathan believed the answer to all of the problems of the Congo was baptism. His sermons consisted of the hellfire-fright teachings of the Bible. He threatened eternal damnation and living under the Devil for anyone not accepting Jesus. He denigrated their local gods.
Spoiler
Clearly Nathan was a nihilist except for fundamentalist Christianity, although he would have denied this. He wasn’t interested in the problems of staying alive or in suggesting ways to ease grief, pain and suffering of physical bodies while breathing, only in sending people to heaven after death. He preached only the supposed consolation of being loved by Jesus after the pain of living along with the horrors of eternal damnation. He isn’t the only Christian who believes in preaching Death as the only answer to starvation, poverty, disease and suffering because of the future of being in Heaven. They can’t hear themselves, I think.His words had to be translated since Nathan didn’t speak the local language at all. He learned a few words eventually, but he never got the hang of the tonal qualities of a word. In mispronouncing bangala, a word that could mean both ‘most precious’ or poisonwood, he continuously preached a message to his small congregation which was confusing. His other messages of ‘love’ were already being understood with outrage. By insisting the villagers throw their kids into a crocodile infested river for baptism, he chased away most of the people who went to his church at least once. In telling them their doctors, whether those of their deities who they had worshipped for pain relief for generations, or the local ‘witchdoctor’ who also provided remedies for pain, grief and fear, were evil, the villagers waited for learning how worshipping Jesus would alleviate their physical sufferings while alive. Of course, Nathan had nothing concrete for that.
Each of the women in the Nathan’s household believed in Nathan, except for Adah. Adah had been born with a crippled right side. Her family was told she had only half of a brain. Later, she mentions polio, but I noticed this sentence is missed by many readers. Adah and Leah are geniuses, and were placed in accelerated learning classes while they lived in America. However, Adah mystifies her family and they ignore her. She never talks. She cannot keep up with the rest of the family when they walk around or work. Her nicknames involve the word “crooked” in all languages. But her narrations make clear she not only is an atheist, she is the only one who realizes Nathan is not ok.
Rachel is unknowingly amusing, and self-centered. She is not a genius. Her mirror is her most precious object. She hates doing anything which will mess up her hair.
Leah is daddy’s girl. She follows him about like a dog in heat. She wants to be him when she grows up. She thinks prayer will solve everything, and she believes if people accept Jesus, their starvation and diseases will be cured. She is also the outdoor kid, accomplished at hunting and living in the woods, strong and fit.
Ruth May is cute, charming and completely accepting of everybody and everything. She walks into neighboring huts full of curiosity and friendliness, and easily makes friends. Her ability at picking up languages is phenomenal. Adah also can do languages, but her family does not pay her much attention as I mentioned before.
Orleanna. She is the character that most interested me. How did she get to be the kind of person who follows a deranged man to Africa, putting her children at risk from horrible death and suffering by local deadly flora and fauna, starvation, disease, racism and civil war? In the beginning the answer is the Baptist religion did it along with extreme ignorance, but later? She slowly decides to trust her own eyes and ears, but omg. It takes a dreadful tragedy to do it. Before then, religious mores blind her and bind her into submission. Nathan beats them all as well. She does nothing about it.
Africa. What is wrong with Africa? The book has so much information about the Congo during the years the family is there. The author gradually reveals the horrors of colonialism. The White world of Europe and America robbed Africa of its resources while promising education, the building of infrastructure and food. Food and educational resources were provided - temporarily, without continuing maintenance. Through bribery of African leaders, White governments killed legitimate African leaders and installed corrupt governments. This, from the same White race which also came to Africa preaching Christianity.
Between wrong-footed Christianity and White promises of wealth, Black Africa was kneecapped by corruption. White people took everything of value and left only an impoverished hell of suffering on the African continent, ultimately only giving the ordinary African the intangible reward of a love from an invisible god after Death.
The novel is wonderful. I highly recommend it. It only misses being a classic with the stature of Great Literature, imho, because one of the characters does not quite measure up - Rachel. Nonetheless, it definitely is great, small g, literature. Some readers thought it prejudiced against Christianity, but I think they didn’t read the book closely enough. Others thought it too supportive of communism, but many African nations and its people believed communism held the answer to redistribution of wealth issues which beset Africa. An author cannot do a history of Africa without including the infatuation with communism many African countries had. At the time (and currently) only the communist states of Russia, Cuba and China offered tangible resources that they followed through on. They provided doctors, roads and dams - practical solutions to practical problems. The help came with strings and racism, along with a lack of consistency and maintenance too, but that came later. The principles of Communism in its teachings definitely appeared a thousand times more attractive than that of gaining a heavenly existence only after one has followed religious rules designed for a desert culture of millennia ago and preaching people must live and die suffering agonies while alive.
There is a bibliography in the back. Plus, the author lived in Africa as a child.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Taking another nerdy pass through the somewhat silly 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list this week. Now with Goodreads-friendly spreadsheet.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Quite near the top of my need-to-reread list. I bought this the week it came out, when I was in high school. I don't think I've read it in full since then.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Quite near the top of my need-to-reread list. I bought this the week it came out, when I was in high school. I don't think I've read it in full since then.
adventurous
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Lovely descriptions of the country. I particularly enjoyed the different connections the mother had with her children.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No