| Title | The Poisonwood Bible |
| Author | Barbara Kingsolver |
| Copyright | 1998 |
| Type | Fiction |
| Length | 543 Pages |
| Finished Reading | December 5, 2023 |
| Notable | Oprah Book Club Selection: June 2000 Winner: 2000 Boeke Prize Finalist: Pulitzer Prize in Fiction |
| Ratings | Personal: 4 Stars Goodreads: 4.1 (743,331 ratings) Amazon: 4.5 Stars (15,972 ratings) |
Nathan Price is a Baptist preacher from Georgia in the early 1960s who decides to become a missionary and drag his wife, Oreleanna and four daughters – Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May – to the (then) Belgian Congo. It starts off poorly, gets worse, then much worse. They were utterly unprepared for the country they moved to. They were restricted on how much weight they could bring and brought all the wrong things.
His hammer turned out to be a waste of two or three good pounds, because there appear to be no nails in the mud-and-thatch town of Kilanga.
Page 32
Similarly, Oreleanna brought a Betty Crocker cake mix in order to make a sweet 16 birthday cake for the eldest daughter Rachel. The mix became hard as a rock in the humidity.
We later find out that not only did the Baptist organization not think the Price family was suitable for the post, they later stopped their support altogether. Nathan plunges forward without regard for the villagers nor the details of managing day-to-day life in the village of Kilanga, leaving that to Oreleanna and the girls. If the results weren’t so damaging it could be a comedy of errors. The community thinks he is crazy because he is so insistent on taking children to the river to be baptized. He is so focused on baptizing children he pays no attention to why the villagers won’t go. The village keeps the children as far from the river as possible because of crocodiles.
Many words in Kilangese sound similar but have different meanings depending on how is it said (think of the English word “live”. It can mean two different things depending on how it is pronounced). A type of tree, the Poisonwood tree, grows in the area. Mama Tataba is their cook and guide to Kilangese living. She warns Nathan
“That one, brother, he bite,” she said, pointing her knuckle hand at a small tree he was wresting from his garden plot. White sap oozed from the torn bark. My father wiped his hands on his trousers.
Page 39
“Poisonwood,” she added flatly, emphasizing the descending syllables as if she were equally tire of all three.
Getting his pronunciation wrong, Nathan tells his congregation Jesus is poisonwood instead of Jesus is precious.
In addition to taking the Kilangese for granted, Nathan also has a condescending attitude toward women
He warned Mother not to flout God’s Will by expecting too much for us. “Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,” he still loves to say, as often as possible. “It’s hard to say which is worse, seeing run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.”
Page 56
He ultimately runs off Mama Tataba, leaving Orleanna and the girls to run the house – tasks that they are in no way prepared for. It’s no wonder Nathan has such a hard time. But, as Rachel says:
Father would sooner watch us all perish one by one than listen to anybody but himself.
Page 169
During their stay the village suffers through drought, an invasion of army ants, and an illness that causes severe diarrhea and kills many of the village children. As if poverty, lack of nutritious food, and preaching Christianity to a village that has little use for it isn’t bad enough, the democratic movement in the Belgian Congo in the early 60s adds another element of danger – which of course Nathan ignores. The backdrop of the independence movement is similar to Nathan Price’s approach. The major powers – United States and the USSR – made decisions based on what they want – namely the precious mineral and other raw resources – with no consideration of what would work for the country.
Lest you think the story is unrelentingly bad, The women do eventually find their way out of Nathan’s influence. It takes quite a long time, but hunger and other events finally drive Orleanna to lead her children out of the Belgian Congo where they have more difficulties due to the weather, health and the political turmoil in the larger cities they have to get to in order to go back home.
The chapters are written from the perspective of Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, and Adah. This approach gives us the opportunity to see him through the eyes of the five very different women. Barbara Kingsolver writes stories of the people society ignores. This beautifully written book highlights the poverty and need of the Congolese and how blind and ill-prepared the Western world is to help. Solving the problems requires much more than trying to glue a Western Patina on their society.
This novel earns every one of my 5 stars. In addition to a riveting plot moving the action forward there is depth in the characters and exquisite depiction of the Congo jungle. This book was published over 25 years ago; if you are a fan of Barbara Kingsolver, you’ve undoubtedly read it. If you aren’t familiar with her work, this is a great place to dive in. You may be spellbound like I was by the first chapter where Orleanna looks back and summarizes their journey.
Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened
Page 5
