The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Couldn’t put this book down once I opened it’s covers. Maybe because I am a product of American and Belgian missionaries, just like the Africans whose story is told in the book. And yes, it’s not exactly an eye-opener for me. A theme of the book is that of the Christian God and the Bible--that Christianity does not hold the sole Truth in this multicultural, multiperspective, multiple-Truths world. It is one truth that I have learned a long time ago, but one that many people still have to come to terms with.

Kingsolver's novel is an eye-opener in many ways.

It talks about American politics in the diamond-rich Congo, where children starve. It’s about missionary girls who realize the oppressive power of a Christian God as interpreted by their missionary father. It’s about being different from the common definitions of beauty, normality. It’s even about God the dictatorial father-figure coming face-to-face with God whose essence is found in the trees that provide shelter, and in the ravenous black ants that eat and destroy.

Christian missionaries from the US, believing that the Africans are condemned to hell unless they learn about Jesus and his offer of salvation, enter the Congo with their holy mission. A preacher and his wife and four daughters arrive in the forest village called Kilanga. Reverend Nathan Price,like all zealous preachers who listen to no one but to the Christian God (through the Bible of course), does not bother to truly encounter the people he plans to baptize and convert. It is his wife and daughters, all in fear of him, who tell the story of the consequences of his beliefs.

The story is told from the perspectives of the wife, and the four daughters, each having her own unique encounter with the Africans. The story comes in multiple perspectives, the African experience viewed in different angles. In this way, the story comes out fuller and richer.

In one way, it is saying that the Christian zeal is misdirected with its intention to save the world. It is the arrogance of claiming that it is the sole religion that holds the spiritual truth and all those who have not encountered Jesus will go to hell. And it’s their fault if they did not come to know Jesus before they die, because they lived in the farthest parts of the earth where the missionaries could not reach them on time.

Why Poisonwood Bible?

While clearing the ground to set up their backyard garden, the Reverend Price wrestled with a small tree, the Poisonwood. The African woman househelp warned them about the tree, but the self-important Reverend ignored her as he does to the other Africans, his wife and his four daughters who, in his mind, are lesser in wisdom than him.

It’s named Poisonwood because anyone who comes in contact with its bark and branches and white sap will soon suffer welts and inflammation of the skin. The Reverend Price soon learned about this as he himself felt his skin burn, to his dismay. It was just the first lesson not learned in this side of Africa, for the Reverend went on to commit the same mistakes.

The missionary kept telling the Africans that Jesus is Balanga, the local word for precious, but pronounced in a different way this same word means the poisonwood tree.The missionary who did not care enough to know the difference between balanga Jesus and balanga poison kept saying the poisonwood word, and thus preached the gospel of Jesus the poisonwood tree.

To the Africans in Congo, the Christian Bible is indeed poisonwood. It is poison to them who are forced to accept a foreign god and give up their local gods who have been guiding them and their ancestors.