Jim,
She has the novel seen through the eyes of five
women. They are the wife and four daughters of a
fanatic US Southern Baptist minister who goes to
the jungle of the Congo in 1960 as a missionary. He
is a hopeless parody of the worst sort of cultural imperialist,
telling his congregation that "Jesus is bangala" which means
beloved if pronounced correctly but means "poisonwood"
a poisonous tree, if pronounced as he does. He keeps
trying to baptize the village's children in the river, but the
villagers logically do not like this as they would be eaten
by crocodiles.
I will not give away all the plot, but the women gradually
(and in some cases immediately) become disillusioned with
him and react to and with the rising drama of the independence
movement around them. Two extreme reactions are by one
who was most loyal to the father who ends up falling in love
with and eventually marrying a pro-Lumumba school teacher/
revolutionary who is later jailed by the Mobutu regime (the novel
follows the characters all the way up to the fall of the Mobutu
regime). At the other extreme is the pathetically superficial and
racist oldest sister who ends up marrying a CIA agent who is
involved in the plot against Lumumba.
The novel contains vivid descriptions of the Congo and the
culture of the Kikonga peoples, as well as fascinating
characters and dramatic events. The author is clearly pro-
Lumumba and anti-imperialist. The book has been on
best seller lists in recent weeks in the US and was nominated
for the Pulitzer Prize, but did not get it.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, April 21, 1999 2:18 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:5706] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Young Democratic
Socialistsposition onKosovo
>At 01:57 PM 4/21/99 -0400, Barkley wrote:
>> With respect to Lumumba, I would like to
>>recommend to one and all the novel, _The
>>Poisonwood Bible_, by Barbara Kingsolver. It
>>deals with the events in Congo/Zaire at the time
>>of independence and especially the role of the CIA
>>in the death of Lumumba. It is one of those novels
>>that comes with a bibliography and the author lived
>>in the Congo during that period.
>
>Barkley, could you give a quick summary of Kingsolver's perspective?
>
>Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
>http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
>Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
>
>
