Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible -- also, the tone argument

[hesychasm]

I had a book review written up but not posted for, like, ten months. Mostly because it was more of a rant than a review. But I was talking about this book recently with someone in RL and remembered I'd jotted down actual thoughts about it somewhere

Comments

[dagnylilytable]

I feel using an icon of an angry Winchester is sort of ironic here, given the J2 racefail you mention above, but what the hell. *g*

Thanks for posting the Alexie interview-- I assume his critique is more about Kingsolver's other books, since her first novel The Bean Trees , involves a white girl adopting a Native American child and trying to adopt her rather than sending her back to live on the reservation. This is definitely portrayed as a Good Thing for the kid in question, but I can see how Alexie would have problems with the narrative. She has another novel set in Arizona I haven't read, so he could very well have had that one in mind too

[hesychasm]

Yep, I think his critique is definitely more about her other books, but the Guardian interviewer just brought it up with her as a larger question about cultural appropriation in her work overall. I'm wary of checking out her other work if it's potentially going to bother me to the degree that The Poisonwood Bible did (I basically only read this one because I had a long couple of flights).

I find it interesting that Kingsolver thinks Alexie has to have read her work to think it fits into a problematic canon of writing about people of color

Very good point -- I understand the defensive posture she took, because everyone wants to think their work has something individual and distinguishing about it. She has definitely thought about these issues, which is why I suppose she was surprised to be taken to task. Like, "But wait, I'm one of the good ones! Just read the book and you'll see!"

if she'd talked about the human experience by including the characters of color instead of making them mere tools for transformation

Eeeexactly.

[cofax7]

I'm wary of checking out her other work if it's potentially going to bother me to the degree that The Poisonwood Bible di

I had major issues with TPB, although they were structural more than anything else: to be fair, I read it back when it first came out and wasn't really thinking about racial representation issues. What pissed me off about it was the way it just fell apart at the end.

I had problems with The Bean Trees as well, because of the Native issues: the conflict in the story about the child's Native ancestry is resolved in such a stupid and cliche'd way that even as a non-Native I was offended.

That said, Animal Dreams made me cry. I really really loved it, and now I'm afraid to read it again for fear of finding fail in it

[hesychasm]

She's definitely a technically accomplished writer and knows how to string together a sentence, and I was impressed with the POV play she was doing in TPB among the five women, even though it excluded the Congolese characters. But yes, I completely agree with your assessment that she comes off as someone with a lot of blinders on despite (or perhaps because of?) her real life encounters with people of color. She's a white ally on paper, but how far does it really go?

What's that other book that got made into a movie -- Eat, Pray, Love? OMG, you'd likely have to keep sharp objects way from me if I ever read that.

[arallara]

This was really interesting to read. I know a lot of progressive white women who loooooove Barbara Kingsolver, but even back before I had very much critical consciousness about race as a white woman myself, I just never really wanted to read her. Thanks for putting in the effort to write up such coherent thoughts!

[hesychasm]

She's definitely got skills, and I do think she brings a sense of authenticity to her Congolese setting and characters, which probably lends the impression of "Oh, I just read this great novel about Africa!" And, based only on reading TPB and reviews of it, I get the sense she's one of those writers considered good at portraying the secret inner heart of women (whatever the hell that means).

But yeah, for me, head 'splodey.

[arallara]

I get the sense she's one of those writers considered good at portraying the secret inner heart of women (whatever the hell that means).

Yeah, that's the sense I got too, from both my college friends back in the day and my liberal activist friends later on. Pretty sure that's part of the vibe that put me off. Bleah.

[minnow1212]

Really interesting to read both versions of the review.

[hesychasm]

Thanks! I went back and forth between thinking the original was a fine review in itself, but in the end came to the conclusion that I could and should frame my thoughts in a more approachable way. And then I realized I was pulling the tone argument on myself. But I seem to be a bit more conservative on tone than where public discourse on LJ seems to have settled lately. So it's a bit of an experiment.