B.tch Book Club

A “woman’s place,” religious guilt, Christian imperialism, and the perils of translation are the central themes of this month’s book by Barbara Kingsolver.

We continue our second meet and bitch at Cosmic Saltillo, on the third Sunday of April at 6 pm, to discuss the beloved and soon-to-be film adaptation, The Poisonwood Bible.

“The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil.

The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.”
-- Moon Palace Books

“He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down, for all time, the Poisonwood Bible.”

“If God had amused himself inventing the lilies of the field, he surely knocked His own socks off with the African parasites.”

“As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.”

“With no men around, everyone was surprisingly lighthearted.”

-- Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible is available at the library, of course,
on Overdrive, as well as in audiobook format on YouTube!

Additionally, you can always sign up for a trial membership at Audible, Audiobooks.com, and Everand.com to get that sweet free read.

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