Angela Dawn's Reviews > The Poisonwood Bible

Riveting...We read this aloud at home and I found it to be beautifully and movingly written, by turns charming and horrifying. Her articulation of the most subtle nuances of experience, the profoundly different narrative voices she assumes like an experienced character actress, and the way she fluently plays with language, show Kingsolver's love and mastery of her craft.
Having been brought up by ultra-religious Christian parents myself, I found the children's and wife's experience strongly resonant and painfully authentic.
I think you have to have lived it to know how accurate and insightful she is in her exposition of the nature of evangelical authoritarianism, it's effect on character, the power of rigidly imposed gender roles, the monomaniacal aspects of monotheism, the not-so-subtle and pervasive racism and sexism.
I think the comparison to imperialism is smack on, and a valuable association that deserves, even needs, to be drawn, particularly in the world in which we live today, where the confluence of these two rivers of inhumanity threaten more every day to once again overflow with devastating consequences.

It cannot be too boldly stated that these twin terrors have together shaped our world for the worse, anciently and modernly.
As a victim and survivor of both, to greater or lesser extent, Ms. Kingsolver has a natural right to portray them, and does so authoritatively.
Both have an inherent dismissivness toward the dignity and value of individuals, engendering similar resentment, hopelessness, and a sense of helplessness, in their victims.
The conceit and destructiveness inherent in both clearly make them horses of the very same color. We ignore their resemblance and relationship at our peril.
It's important to know that this is Kingsolver's most autobiographical novel. She's writing from personal experience, as well as an impressively large body of knowledge about Africa and it's politics.
She knows these people and places like the back of her hand.
Like her main characters, she carries them wherever she goes.