Name: Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible
ISBN: 9781586638597

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Fisher

Barbara Kingsolver's national bestseller The Poisonwood Bible paints an intimate portrait of a crisis-ridden family amid the larger backdrop of an African nation in chaos. Critics and readers alike have acclaimed the novel as the greatest achievement of one of America's foremost living authors. Examine how the tragedy of the Price family mirrors the political unrest in the Congo, how the novel views religion and marriage, and how Kingsolver reconciles the demands of art with her belief that writing should support a political cause.

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible

Abby

Evie Sprite

‘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 it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.’

Once in a great while we just have to protect her. Even back when we were very young I remember running to throw my arms around Mother's knees when he regaled her with words and worse, for curtains unclosed or slips showing - the sins of womanhood. We could see early on that all grown-ups aren't equally immune to damage. My father wears his faith like the bronze breastplate of God's foot soldiers, while our mother's is more like a good cloth coat with a secondhand fit. 

(Not having noticed, for a wife is beneath notice, that this is exactly what our mother did when she killed all the chickens.)

She excused herself to go boil the dishwater. Unable to work either the dishwater or Methusel- lethuselah' long memory into a proper ending for his parable, Our Father merely looked at us all and heaved the great sigh of the put-upon male. Oh, sucha sigh. It was so deep it could have drawn water from a well, right up from beneath tho floor of our nitwit household. He was merely trying, that sigh suggested, to drag us all toward enlightenment through the marrow of our own poor female bones.

I felt confusion and dread. I sensed that the sun was going dowr on many things I believed in.

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 it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.'

But no. In a burst of light Methuselah opened his wings and fluttered like freedom itself, lifting himself to the top of our Kentucky Wonder vines and the highest boughs of the jungle that will surely take back everything once we are gone.

You've played some trick on the dividing of my cells so my body can never be free of the small parts of Africa it consumed. Africa, where one of my children remains in the dank red earth. It's the scent of accusation. It seems I only know myself, anymore, by your attendance in my soul.

Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways: to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What con- ceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do perish at the hands of our own righteousness. I was just one more of those women who clamp their mouths shut and wave the flag as their nation rolls off to conquer another in war. Guilty or innocent, they have everything to lose. They are what there is to lose. A wife is the earth itself, changing hands, bearing scars.

We would all have to escape africa by a different route. Some of us are in the ground now and some are above it, but we're all women, made of the same scarred earth. I study my grown daughterS now, for signs they are resting in some kind of peace. How did they manage? When I remain hounded by judgment?

Oh, little beast, little favourite. Can't you see I died as well?

Are we lost right now without knowing it? It had already happened so many times in my life (my wedding day comes to mind) that I thought I was out of the woods, not realizing Id merely paused on the edge of another nar- row nrecinice in the midst of a long long fall.

The last third really saved it for me. Helped me to appreciate the beginning 2/3 a lot more. Perhaps I will read another Barbara Kingsolver? Adah I like you girl.  

deacon

truly a masterclass in showing that a book can be both politically charged, and emotionally moving. 10/10