The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 1998)

When I was very small, I created my own Africa in my mind. I dreamed of traveling the world, discovering the unknown. Of all my fantasy destinations, Africa was the most compelling. I yearned for what I felt was her strange beauty, an otherness unlike my pedestrian white middle class American childhood.

I had three muses for my explorations. First there was my mother, who had traveled little, but was (and is) an avid reader and had toured the globe in her imagination. Then there was my Uncle Paul, who directed oil refineries on the West Coast of Africa for 20 years, brought treasures from his travels, and offended me even in my innocence with his prejudice and disdain of Africans. And finally there was our treasured library of National Geographic magazines from whose pages Africa emerged, a world of lush jungles and rich cultures. In this Technicolor Africa, men, women, and children wore dramatic, colorful, and mysterious costumes and decorations, and beckoned a world filled with the alluring unknown.

This winter, Barbara Kingsolver transported me to her own Africa created in the compelling novel, The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver's continent resembles the Africa residing in my adult mind, one introduced by research and reflection, and the truths related by African friends. Through this engaging fictional journey, I experienced a world of violence and violation, a people of endurance and energy.

Kingsolver's Congo
In her novel, Kingsolver depicts the Congo of the 1960s, as perceived and experienced by four small girls, the children of fanatical and obsessed Baptist missionary Nathan Price. Unlike my childhood fantasies, the author's Africa grew from her own firsthand experience, and that of her public health professional parents. Through Kingsolver's pungent prose the reader immigrates to an Africa that is both vibrant and vicious, an Africa struggling to survive ubiquitous invasions, of army ants, jungle vines, colonizers and politics.

Accompanying the Price daughters to the Congo, I flew the cargo jumper to the Congo village of Kilanga on the Kwilu River. I felt the weight of the boxes of birthday cake mix hidden below the girls' Sunday school dresses. I viewed the survival-eclectic fashion of village women through the adolescent eyes of the chauvinistic and self-involved teenage Rachel. I agreed with the politically and socially precocious Leah, as she reflected on the strength and wisdom of Kilanga neighbor, Mama Tataba. I applauded Leah's appreciation for this matriarch of the proud tribal community as she begrudgingly takes care of the entire Price clan, recognizing the blind ineptitude of these pale invaders.

Adah the Oracle
But it is Kingsolver's Adah, the twin who does not speak but hears all, who serves as the novel's voice for the tragic and violent repercussions of Nathan Price's "mission'"and its relentless spiritual and cultural imperialism. Adah learns and interprets for the reader the many meanings of the tribal dialect Kilango. Her unique gift for language reveals the meaning of her father's message as he tries to "save" the village by preaching in their own tongue. It is Adah the oracle who exposes the ultimate irony of Kingsolver's metaphorical title, the "Poisonwood" Bible.

Adah and Leah are the politically progressive voices in this saga of invasion and cultural blindness. Kingsolver's use of these two innocent children as the vehicle for her politics is sometimes effective, sometimes overbearingly transparent. Adah summarizes the politics and the 500-year history of Europeans and Americans in Africa in a brief salient paragraph.

Bingo bango bongo. That is the story of the Congo they are telling now in America: a tale of cannibals. I know about this kind of story -- the lonely look down upon the hungry; the hungry look down upon the starving. The guilty blame the damaged. Those of questionable righteousness speak of cannibals, the unquestionably vile, the sinners and the damned. It makes everyone feel much better.

The Doctor Poet
Adah also introduces the reader to the "doctor poet" in the village, Nganga Kuvudundu.

"... (I) believe he means to protect us really. Protect us from angry gods, and our own stupidity by sending us away... The Nganga Kuvudundu dressed in white with no bone in his hair is standing at the edge of our yard.... He repeats the end of his own name over and over -- the word dundu. Dundu is a kind of antelope. Or it is a small plant of the genus veronia. Or a hill. Or a price you have to pay. So much depends on the tone of voice. One of these things is what our family has coming to us. Our Baptist ears from Georgia will never understand the difference."

Kingsolver's invasion of Africa with the Price family is a painful pilgrimage. The author has done her homework -- hers is the Africa of my Uncle's use and abuse, not the Africa of my mother's romance. It is also the Africa of vibrant color, but not of the Geographic's glossy unreality. By its conclusion, the novel spans 25 years in the lives and deaths of a family, the lives and deaths of a tribal village, the lives and deaths of a nation.

Kingsolver attempts to introduce new voices in a western novel about Africa. In the end, it is still the story seen through eyes of white bantu, Euro-American souls. Heart of Darkness, Out of Africa, I Dream of Africa -- over and over we create an imagined Africa in our minds. Barbara Kingsolver enriched my own expanded dream of Africa through The Poisonwood Bible. I found Kingsolver's Western guilt in Orleana Price, the long-suffering wife and mother, the voice of Africa as everywoman. Intoning the litany of regret: poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels, and promised the Kingdom.

But it is through the voices of Leah and Adah, the Price daughters, I found Kingsolver's interpretation of the African view of existence: the struggle of life is not won or lost, but experienced, endured, survived. Human beings will dominate human beings. Men will kill men. People will live, die, and be born. Through all the human sophistry, the drought, the rains will come, the ants will devour, the jungle vines will grow, the frangipani will blossom again. Leah the unmissionary raises Kingsolver's hymn of penitence for attempting a new look through western eyes: Forgive me, Africa, according to the multitude of they mercies.

Kingsolver has added new dimensions to the Africa of my mind. Should Africa forgive or embrace this author's bold efforts? When I finally get there, I'll ask.

Sally Gabb is a reader who also works at SABES Southeast in Fall River. As a result of her life-long reading adventures, she has traveled this planet and many others. She can be reached at sgabb@bristol.mass.edu