The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four
daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family
and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they
believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden
seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows
is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable
reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
At first I didn’t think I would like it. The father is a
uncaring zealot from the word go. On the outside the mother is a wimp who
loyally follows her idiot of a husband to the entire families near destruction.
On the inside she is naturally full of anger which finally leads to a dangerous choice. . The daughters are a seeming strange lot at
first, very confusing and hard to follow. Then their role as victims and narrators brings the
whole story into focus.
The book follows the family as they try to bring their way
of life, and their religion, to the village of Kilanga. They come carrying all
the wrong things - seeds that cannot grow in the jungle, packages of birthday
cake mix that will never become cakes, and a religion that puzzles and scares
the villagers. Words have many meanings there, depending on how you say them.
When Nathan talks about baptism, he is also saying ‘to terrify.’ To say ‘Tata
Jesus is Bangala’ may mean ‘Jesus is poisonwood’, or he is divine. The
villagers are also afraid of baptism as they don’t go into the river; too many
of their children have been killed by crocodiles. The arrogance of Western missionaries is hardly news, but Price's blinding pride makes for a story that's often comic despite its tragedy. After months of incomprehensible sermons, the minister fails to lure even one soul down to the river for baptism. The natives have no interest in rushing toward salvation in the next life by bathing with crocodiles in this one.
The history of the Belgian Congo’s unprepared lurch to
independence is particularly tragic. The new “nation” becomes entangled thru no
doing of its own in Cold War politics.
The net result is a murdered freely elected leader and a Western propped
up military dictator who ruled and robbed the country for over thirty years. I can see why this book has been a popular
course selection in many colleges and discussion instigator in book clubs. If you have a strong
heart and stomach I’d definitely recommend it…I use the word stomach in the previous sentence very carefully based on personal experience for example both my wonderful grandchildren from Africa's survival was mad possible by the Catholic nuns whos orphanage fed and cared for the till my son and his wife adopted them and brought them to t America where the are now thriving as students and Americans.
