I have had this book on my shelves for years. I purchased it for probably 50 cents from the used books cart at our local library. About 20 years ago, I read two other books by Kingsolver; Animal Dreams and Pigs in Heaven. Although I don't remember them, I remember loving her work. I picked this book up a few times, wanting to give it a try. However, reading about a Baptist family in the Belgian Congo of 1959 just did not appeal to me. Not long ago, I read Stephen King's On Writing (a MUST READ!). It concludes with a reading list. On that list was The Poisonwood Bible. It was then I committed myself to reading it.
I began this journey on October 18, 2021 and finished on October 31. WOW. I'm sad to not have read it sooner, but firmly believe I read it at just the right time for me. This book tells the story of a family of five. The Price family. Father Nathaniel, mother Orleanna, and daughters Rachel, Adah, Leah, and Ruth May. The majority of the book takes place in the Congo and spans the timeline of 1959-1986. It is written in first person and rotates from the points of view of the mother and the daughters. The father's point of view is not given at any point.
Nathaniel was a Baptist preacher and courted Orleanna at a young age. Both seemed mostly happy. Until Nathaniel was drafted into the war. He was injured by a shell fragment and was collected to receive medical aid. He later found out his entire company died on the Death March from Bataan. He returns home a different man. It's easy to see he suffered from PTSD. He shames his wife for beaming with happiness for her pregnancy, because the men from his company would never get to see a child of theirs be born.
Rachel was the firstborn, followed by twins Adah and Leah, and youngest Ruth May. Nathaniel decides to take his family to the Belgian Congo as missionaries. The children range in age from five to mid-teens. They were plucked abruptly from their lives in the states, to a completely new way of life. The story follows the mother and daughters for the span of 25 years from the time the father forcefully removed the family from their home, and placed them in a dangerous place at a dangerous time.
The accounts given are beautifully and masterfully told by Kingsolver, giving a genuity to the speaker of each section. When you read each section, you become the five year-old Ruth May, or the 16 year-old Rachel. You can feel their sorrow, their confusion, their frustration, and their helplessness. The accounts of the daughters are told in real time. The accounts from the mother is told after the fact. The story is told through the eyes of children, and that is all you need. What is more raw and unblemished than the words and thoughts of innocent children?
Adah, toward the end of this story, tells us the reason for this book title. As an adult, she begins to collect old books that have become famous for their misprints; mainly, bibles. She gives the example of one misprint that says "Rebekah arose with her camels" instead of "Rebekah arose with her damsels." This came to be new known as the Camel Bible. As for the Poisonwood Bible, it got it's name from her father's mispronunciation of the word bangala. Her father ended each of his sermons with the following: Tata Jesus is bangala. The word bangala has more than one meaning, depending on how it is pronounced. He means to say "Father Jesus is precious and dear." However, given his incorrect pronunciation, he is telling the church "Jesus is poisonwood."
As Orleanna Price recounts the day that impacted her life the most, she says:
"I had to keep moving. I didn't set out to leave my husband. Anyone can see I should have, long before, but I never knew how. For women like me, it seems, it's not ours to take charge of beginnings and endings. Not the marriage proposal, the summit conquered, the first shot fired, nor the last one either.... Let men write those stories. I can't. I only know the middle ground where we live our lives.... Don't dare presume there's shame in the lot of a woman who carries on. Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.... Maybe you still can't understand why I stayed so long.... Is my sin a failure of virtue, or of competence? I knew Rome was burning, but I had just enough water to scrub the floor, so I did what I could."
As a woman who was abused violently by my mother and by my ex-husband, that last sentence means a lot to me. Any mother will wonder what she could have done better. I know of countless things I could have done better. But I did what I could.
Kingsolver ends the story from the perspective of a grown and matured Ruth May. No longer alive, Ruth May speaks to her mother. She offers her mother forgiveness. Though, the forgiveness that Orleanna needs is that of self-forgiveness.
A Poisonwood tree.
No comments:
Post a Comment