Race, Racism, and Culture Theme Analysis

One of Poisonwood’s most important themes is race. The Price family is white, and (prior to traveling to the Congo) enjoys all the conveniences of life as a white citizen in the United States. In the Congo, however, the Prices’ new community is defined by black Africans—a novelty for a white American family used to (heavily segregated) 1950s Georgia society. While a few of the Prices (especially Leah, who marries the half-Congolese Anatole Ngemba) make an effort to get to know their African neighbors, racial differences continue to remind the Prices of the broader differences between African and American life, and of the family’s perpetual “outsider” status in the Congo.

Unfortunately, many of the white characters in The Poisonwood Bible treat their black neighbors with contempt, if not outright hatred. Most of the novel is set before the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, when Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and other important African-American leaders fought for equal rights and legal protections. As a result, many of the American characters have been brought up to treat black people of all kinds—whether they’re American or Congolese—as inferior human beings. Nathan Price, the preacher who brings his family to the Congo, thinks of the Congolese as ignorant, “unenlightened” children—a disturbing example of how his Christianity acts as a mask for his racism. But interestingly, the Congolese find the Prices just as strange as the Prices find them. As far as the villagers of Kilanga are concerned, Nathan is a pathetic figure—completely ignorant of how to feed himself or navigate his way through the jungle. In this way, the novel suggests that it’s human nature to judge other people based on stereotypes and prejudices—in short, when the Prices stare at the Congolese, the Congolese stare right back. (Although, of course, the power dynamic between the oppressed Congolese and the Prices, who are inherently aligned with the imperialist oppressor, are still uneven.)

Even when the Prices make an effort to understand the Congolese people, they continue to struggle with the hard, cold facts of a history of racial divides. After Leah Price falls in love with Anatole Ngemba and marries him, she’s constantly reminded of the fact that she’s a white woman living among Africans. Because she’s white, everyone can tell immediately that she has European heritage, meaning that she’s related by blood to the people who have traditionally kept the Congo impoverished, dangerous, and hopeless. In the Congo, Leah is even more conscious of her own whiteness than her neighbors are; she hates herself for belonging to the same race that has caused her husband and his friends so much pain. And yet as she enters middle age, she takes pride in the fact that she’s loved and supported her husband for so many years—and that she’s raised a large happy family of boys, none of whom feel the kind of racism that Leah’s father Nathan once felt.

In the end, Poisonwood suggests that some of the world’s deadliest problems—starvation, poverty, civil war—stem from racism. Due to their racial differences, people make no effort to befriend each other or cooperate with one another, and in the end, these differences add up to the huge gap between the First World and the Third World. One way to fight the effects of racism, represented by Leah Price, is with interpersonal love and friendship. Leah and Anatole’s relationship certainly doesn’t solve the problems of racism that Kingsolver poses in her novel, but it does suggest that one can begin to reverse the effects of racism by starting in the same place where racism begins—two unlike people getting to know one another.