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August 29, 2003
New
Students Read Kingsolver Best Seller
An airliner touches
down in the Congo in 1959, delivering missionary Nathan Price,
his wife, and their four daughters to that West African nation
on the eve of its fight for independence. Price, an evangelical
Baptist, is determined to convert the natives of a remote village
to Christianity. His daughters, uprooted from their Georgia home,
arrive bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes, Underwood deviled ham,
and Breck shampoo, hoping to transplant their American comforts
to African soil.
So begins The Poisonwood Bible, the acclaimed novel by
Barbara Kingsolver selected as this year’s common reading
for first-year students. Since 2000, Mount Holyoke’s new
students have taken part in a common reading as part of the College’s
orientation program, receiving copies of the selected book during
the summer and participating in discussions after their arrival
on campus.
“The common read assists new students with their transition
into the College community, by enabling them to discover connections
with other students and to the intellectual life of the campus,”
said Rochelle Calhoun, the former acting dean of the college and
new executive director of the Alumnae Association, who was instrumental
in choosing the book. Previous common readings have been Nickel
& Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
(2002), How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia
Alvarez (2001), and Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams
(2000).
Faculty members have been encouraged to incorporate the book into
their courses. John Lemly, professor of English, will moderate
a faculty panel discussion on the book featuring Rachel Fink,
associate professor of biological sciences; Holly Hanson, assistant
professor of history; Elizabeth Young, associate professor of
English, and Pamela Mbabazi, Five College African Scholar and
dean of development studies at Mbarara University in Uganda, on
Thursday, September 4, at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium. This year,
alumnae are being urged to join the incoming class by reading
The Poisonwood Bible in MHC clubs and alumnae book clubs.
The backdrop for the story of Price and his family is the Congo’s
fight for independence from Belgium and the fall of its first
elected prime minister—Patrice Lumumba—at the hands
of rival Congolese politicians, the Belgian government, and the
CIA. The tale is narrated by Price’s wife, Orleanna, and
their four daughters: teenager Rachel, adolescent twins Leah and
Adah, and five-year-old Ruth May.
“The Congo permeates The Poisonwood Bible, and yet this
is a novel that is just as much about America, a portrait, in
absentia, of the nation that sent the Prices to save the souls
of a people for whom it felt only contempt, people who already,
in the words of a more experienced missionary, ‘have a world
of God’s grace in their lives, along with a dose of hardship
that can kill a person entirely,’” wrote Verlyn Klinkenborg
in a New York Times review. “The Congolese are not savages
who need saving, the Price women find, and there is nothing passive
in their tolerance of missionaries.”
“It is a compelling narrative that is relevant to many disciplines;
I enjoyed it very much,” said MHC President Joanne V. Creighton.
“Like most artists, I’m wary about categorizing my
work—particularly this novel,” Kingsolver writes on
her Web site, www.barbarakingsolver.com.
“It’s very large. It’s political and domestic,
symbolic and epic and, I hope, also a heck of a good read.”
The Poisonwood Bible was chosen as the American Booksellers
Book of the Year and as one of the best books of 1998 by the New
York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Village
Voice. It was a Pulitzer Prize runner-up and a selection
of Oprah’s Book Club.
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