The Poisonwood Bible | Barbara Kingsolver
The pious Price family leaves their home in 1950s rural Georgia to embark upon a one-year mission in Africa. Zealous Pastor Price plans to convert the natives in droves via mass baptisms in the wild rivers; Mother Price and her four young girls prepare to continue their sweet domesticity in the heart of the jungle. They board their plane wearing layers of pretty dresses, pockets stuffed with vegetable seeds, cake mixes, and a highly coveted hand mirror. Father brings his bible. And so they stride into village life in the heart of the Congo, confident that they are prepared for every possible contingency.
Ha.
At turns both tragic and hilarious, the story unfolds in chapters narrated in turn by Orleanna and her girls: self-obsessed Rachel, headstrong Leah, quirky Adah, and little Ruth May who may just have an ability to see the future in surprising ways. Set against the political backdrop of mid-twentieth century African politics, the family's fortunes are affected by historically accurate events. Over the decades, each Price pursues his or her own path of redemption, and works to find a measure of peace within themselves.
Barbara Kingsolver writes with power and sensitivity and hilarity and wit. Each of the five narrators tells her story with a unique voice; charming patterns of speech and idiosyncratic vocabulary reveal to the attentive reader who is speaking at any time. In Kingsolver's competent hands, this unlikely story of an arrogant evangelical extremist caught up in corrupt colonial politics sings with excitement, hope, and love.
* * * * *
In 1926, fresh from college with the ink still wet on their marriage certificate, my grandparents boarded a steamer, traveled to South Africa, and launched themselves straight into the bush where they planned to live as missionaries for the rest of their lives. A year or two passed happily; their eldest daughter was born on the continent, but events soon conspired to quash their dreams and bring them back to a family business in Michigan where they lived out the rest of their days. Bitterly, my grandmother told me this story over and over again; for the rest of her life, she deeply lamented the dream she'd lost.
"If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites."
Nowadays, our culture often casts a cold eye on international missionaries, likening them to colonial oppressors if not outright racists. I see and hear that point of view.
But I also know that in my grandparents' day, mission work was viewed as a generous act of service toward those with fewer perceived advantages and opportunities in life. It was only through actually living side by side with African tribespeople that my grandparents - and the fictional Prices - learned that they perhaps had a thing or two to learn from the natives as well.
"Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place."
Decades after she returned home from Africa, my grandmother tutored immigrants to the United States; her small town became home to a considerable number of freshly transplanted Cambodians, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Laotians. One by one, she welcomed these strangers into her home, studied English with them at her dining table, then served them coffee as they presented her with small gifts of food that they shared together.
And while I am sorry that my grandmother felt that life had denied her dreams, I'm thrilled that her passion for serving others found a different outlet, one human being to another, in a climate of mutual kindness and respect.
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