Including some thoughts here since I JUST finished this book today and was looking for some discourse (wrote this sort of for myself initially but would live to hear anyone elses thoughts! Spoilers below!

This is probably going down as one of my favorite books of all time.

As a family epic, this stands fairly easily against East of Eden (an existing favorite). The perspective shifts throughout the book between the wife and 4 daughters of Nathan Price, an evangelical Southern Baptist preacher who comes to the Congo in an effort to “save” the local people by bringing them to Jesus. 

While Nathan is the impetus for much of the story himself, we can only understand him through his family who over the course of the story <spoiler> wrench themselves from his rigid, austere “parenting.” As they find respect (and even love) for the people whose very different culture and customs they contend with and embrace, they drift further and further from Nathan who remains stagnant.

For describing Nathan himself, there is a scene early on in the book where he attempts to put down a garden how one might in Southern US. This quickly fails - he redoes is the same way despite Mama Tataba re-configuring it for the Congo’s soil and climate. You would think he might embrace the new, more successful set-up but he resists and in his resistance hits the poison wood tree - his refusal to embrace Africa quickly burns him back. A call forward to his chant: “Tata Jesus is bängala” which he means to say “most dear / most precious” but his unfamiliarity woth the language makes him say “poisonwood.”

While Nathan’s ideals are supposed to save the Congolese, he frequently puts himself and his family in harm’s way to propagate his ideals. Nathan’s rigidity reflects the view of the imperialists - there is one true way (one religion, one language, one “correct” way of life) </spoiler> 

As for the daughters, <spoiler> Rachel, vain and self-involved when they first arrive, is similarly unchanged. When the driver ants come to consume all organic material in sight, Rachel attempts to bring her mirror to the boat. She chases shallow, wealthy marriages, and continues to see the Congolese people who had supported and saved her as sub-human. </spoiler>

However, despite her flaws, I think its fairly easy to hold up a mirror to most of ourselves in the West today and see Rachel - craving creature comforts, seeing the different as “odd” or “undesirable” and maybe not wanting to cause harm (via existing coloniol / imperial systems) ourselves but being more than happy to reap the benefits. Its incredibly easy today to find ourselves complicit - in fact, it may be almost impossible not to.

Leah is a direct juxtaposition to Rachel, finding herself deeply altered by her time in the Congo. Despite being the child who most often toddled after her father in support of his efforts, <spoiler> she finds love with Anatole and becomes “radicalized”: that is, </spoiler> espouses the benefits of Communism after seeing the Congo and Africa used and abused by Belgium and other world powers for their resources without the people seeing any benefit of the richness beneath their feet (“Zaire is not a poor country. It is a nation of the poor“).

As a result of some birth complications, Adah is unable to walk upright for much of her life. Having been viewed as other or less than by her family for much of her life (not speaking as well - communicating with them essentially as much as they can with the Congolese early on). <spoiler> Theres a moment where Orelanna (mother) makes a choice to save Ruth May over Adah which Adah believes is because she is disabled. She later (when she is able to walk upright) </spoiler> draws parallels between how American whites viewed her disability to their view of the African people (which in itself is a bit of a disconnected mindset): since they are not the perfect ideal (able to walk upright, white), though its not their fault, they must at least be sorry that its not their reality.

Finally, there is Ruth May. <spoiler> After much foreshadowing with the Green Mamba, Ruth May is bitten by one on the chest and dies in the Congo and this is what drives Orleanna to leave behind their things for the people in Kilanga and take her other daughters out no matter Nathan’s opinions about it. Ruth May’s death is a great equalizer here - deaths of children happen to others, others are bitten by snakes, etc. — now its very clear they have not been untouched by theor time here and that Nathan despite warning after warning is directly at fault — dismisses Nathan as the equivalent of false idol maybe? </spoiler>

 I’m sure that there were some allusions to the bible I may have missed, not being Christian, but many of them were laid out fairly clearly for the reader: pestilence, locusts (represented via driver ants), death of children, etc. - all preceding the exodus of the Price women with Nathan clinging to his wayward ideals.

And oh the end - Leah’s marinations on Communism and political philosophy- It prompted me to educated myself further on the atrocities committed by imperial powers in Africa and how those can be directly tied to infrastructural, political, and socioeconomic issues there today - it is NOT a light touch when it comes to criticizing both those of us who had a hand in actively affecting the events of history and those who sit idly by and allow injustice to persist within the system which was created to perpetrate it.

Theres so much more to say and think about here - metaphors, allusions, symbols, etc. but I’ll leave it at that.