Customer Rating: 
Summary: An Eye Opener
Comment: Certainly a great book exposing how one culture whether miles apart or continents apart do not understand one another. I have a son who has an austism spectrum disorder, and although this book is not even close to anything to do with autism or any other kind of disability...this book somehow made me able to "see" how one set of people does not understand another and for no particular reason, other than they are different from one another in such a way that one cannot possibly comprehend. I'd say if you arent reading it for the actual story, and you know of someone with a disorder, try to think of that person as a 'native' and you as the 'colonist' as in this story and you may have your answer or be able to pass it along to someone else.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A book for the Colonialists, not the colonised: for Westerners, not Africans
Comment: It is easy, in the (politically) post colonial world of modern Africa to descend into limp wristed European angst.
This book teeters on that edge.
It is a book written for colonials and the colonialists.
It has very little to say to those of us whose birthright is Africa, of whatever colour, creed, nationality (or tribe).
It charts that moment in time when direct political subjugation was replaced by economic subjugation through local proxies.
Alas, this is a human tendency that has persisted through all of the history of humanity.
It uses the brief period in the history of Zaire (then Congo) immediately prior to, then after the death of Patrice Lumumba and the dictatorship that followed as the locus for it's message. Thereafter it rambles on to the ends of days of it's narrators.
What I liked about this book outweighs my dislikes, so here are some of them ...
Some things I liked about the book ...
- The different voices giving perspectives on the same events. The truth is a secret garden and we all look into the garden from a different vantage point. Each bush and shrub is a cultural, personal or similar impediment to seeing the complete picture, and Barbara Kingsloveruses her device to good effect.
- The political, social, economic and cultural drivers are well brought out, and their implications on the outcomes of everyday life is thoughtful and so well constructed
- The writing itself is evocative and moving
Some things I did not like about this book ...
- It is too long. The last "books" could quite easily have been replaced by an epilogue, and would (imo) have carried more weight. The later stories of the women would have been better served in follow up books, as a series maybe.
- It is too euro-centric. This has the (unintended?) consequence of transmogrifying it into a polemic against Western culture, values and mores. Sketchily decrying western consumerism and the avariciousness of big business allied to political expediency does not reflect the reality of the world's steady drift into exactly that milieu. In the final History of the World as seen by Mankind, will it matter that we rape and pillage our societies and geographies by proxy or through our own efforts?
- For a work of such high ambition, it does not answer the "so what?" test, nor does it point a way forward: it drifts to its own conclusion, flotsam and jetsam washed up by a high tide of introspection.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Poisonwood bible
Comment: This powerful novel by Barbara Kingsolver charts the lives of a missionary family and portrays the interplay of good intentions and motives warped by dogma. One ends up with an aching wonder ... what was changed, by whom and who or what prevailed!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Gem of Postcolonial Literature
Comment: "Jesus is Bangala!" declares Reverend Nathan Price to his ragtag congregation deep in the Congolese jungle. The exclamation is full of irony; in the villagers' native Kikongo, "bangala" means either "precious and dear" or "poisonwood tree," depending on the pronunciation. Rev. Price blithely uses the latter pronunciation, characteristically misunderstanding his would-be flock as he blunderingly tries to superimpose Christianity and American customs onto their culture. The consequences of Price's ignorance (and arrogance) are grave, playing out alongside the exploitative history of Belgian colonialism, the struggle for independence, and the subsequent CIA coup that replaced the Congo's first elected leader.
Kingsolver's engrossing novel is narrated by the five Price females, each coping in her own way with what they have been part of. Orleanna is a missionary wife who, as a woman in the late 1950s, has little choice but to obey her husband, but who later struggles with her complicity in Nathan's--and America's--interventions in the Congo. Rachel, the eldest daughter, is vain and superficial (when the house is besieged by army ants, Rachel rescues not one of her weaker siblings, but her mirror), with an attitude of pure condescension toward the villagers she lives among. Then there are the twins: Leah, a tomboy who tries in vain to win her father's love, and the dark, poetic Adah, who was crippled in the womb. The youngest daughter, Ruth May, is most beloved by Orleanna, who struggles to protect her from the dangers of the jungle. Some make it out of the Congo; others do not, whether by tragedy or by choice. In the latter half of the book, the surviving members come to terms with their time in the Congo in different ways: becoming part of the machinery of exploitation, shunning whiteness and assimilating into Congolese culture, entering the healing profession, or turning inward.
Only Nathan remains essentially untransformed by the Congo, although he does evolve into a more grotesque version of himself. Unlike the (mostly) dynamic Price females, he is a one-dimensional character with no redeeming qualities, quick to anger and incapable of seeing past his rigid views. While he is a poignant symbol of colonialism and post-colonial intervention, trying to baptize the village children in crocodile-infested waters, the flatness of his character makes him seem inhuman.
"The Poisonwood Bible" is beautifully written, and the story of Price family is absorbing, as is the history of Western intervention in the Congo. A brilliant novel.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Retrospective
Comment: Simply wonderful reading. I could kick myself for not paying enough attention to my wife's recommendation several years ago, but she was exactly right: this is a story well worth the amount of time in your life you sacrifice to read it. In fact, it is many stories interwoven and they each grow as a vine of their own before interlacing themselves through each other. For me, most good books take quite a few pages before the hook is set but the author had me with the first paragraph.
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