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Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver is a world renowned American novelist, poet, and essayist. She has written many literary works including, but not limited to, controversial subjects such as politics, nature, and social issues. Kingsolver’s many unique experiences in life have made her the author she is today and ultimately inspired her to write The Poisonwood Bible; one of the most complex and controversial novel out of all of her works.
Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland on April 8, 1955. Shortly after her birth, Kingsolver’s family moved to an alfalfa farm in Carlisle, Kentucky, where she spent the majority of her early youth. In 1963, Kingsolver’s parents, both prominent healthcare workers, moved the family to Léopoldville, Congo (now Kinshasa, …show more content…

In 1988 Kingsolver wrote and published her first book, The Bean Trees, while pregnant with her first daughter, Camille Hoffman. Due to Kingsolver’s building frustrations with the United States’ involvement in the first Gulf War, she moved with her daughter to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for a year. Soon after she and her daughter returned to the United States, Kingsolver and Hoffman divorced. In 2004 Kingsolver moved to a farm in Washington County, Virginia with her second husband, Steven Hopp, and their teenage daughter, Lily Hopp, where they currently live to this day.
In 1998, Kingsolver published The Poisonwood Bible. The Poisonwood Bible was born from Kingsolver’s long standing fascination with politics, culpability, and her firm belief that what happened in the Congo in 1961 is one of the most significant political conflicts of the 1900’s. Kingsolver wanted to remind the world that every industrialized country, despite their constant denial, has reached their current success through doing horrific deeds to smaller, less fortunate countries by using the Price’s experience in the Congo as an …show more content…

Kingsolver’s first goal of the Poisonwood Bible is proposing how an individual could make peace with the aftermath of their worst mistakes and flaws, as shown through the voices of the Price girls. Kingsolver’s decision to leave Nathan Price voiceless represents the seemingly untouchable arrogance and offensiveness of large powers that drag peaceful innocents into conflict for their own gain. Nathan has no voice because Kingsolver wanted him to be viewed from the outside. Nathan is the uncontrollable darkness that festers in humanity; he is the crimes of a previous generation that are inherited by a new, unsympathetic one that is helpless to change its past and must come to terms with it. Therefore Kingsolver’s main goal of the Poisonwood Bible was for different generations and their individuals to question their preexisting beliefs and spark moral conversations and debates amongst each

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