novel Matthew 28:19 "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . . . and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." (NIV)
1. Discuss the
cultural and superstitious barriers that the Price family encountered as they tried to preach the gospel of Jesus to the Congonese? What, if anything, could they have done to be more prepared? How has preparation for
the mission's field changed in recent decades?
2. The story is told from the perspective of the wife and four daughters, almost as if they were keeping private diaries. Which character did you most relate to, or whose
story caused you to open up your heart the most? How do you think the story would have been different if the father would have been allowed a voice in the story? What might have been his side of things? Contrast the
father (who was moved by guilt, not Christian love) in this story with the loving Jesus.
3. Discuss how the mother's version of the story was told as an extended apology and plea for understanding. Do you think that
younger women might have a difficult time understanding why Orleanna went so passively along with her husband?
4. Do you think this novel placed in a realistic perspective what it would have been like to be a
missionary family to a third world country in the late 1950's? What gives you this opinion? What effect did coming from a post-World War II era--a time of booming prosperity in the United States--have on this family?
Might it in a way have sealed their doom?
5. There are a lot of references to things in this novel--to the things they carried, the things they left behind, the things they lose, and the things they bring back with
them. And when they get there their stuff is useless--they think they have nothing. Meanwhile, their neighbors are looking at them as if they are the wealthiest people they have ever seen, and it is not until they lose
Ruth May that they can finally make that connection. Discuss the way Americans might look at the Congonese as having a great lack or absence of things, and how this attitude could be one of arrogance and
blindness.
6. Discuss the racism evident in this novel by the characters. What significance might there be to the fact that the white characters in this book go from the American South to Africa, and have come
of age in a time of segregation? Even though they arrived in a place where they were an extreme minority, they still carried a sense that they were better people than those around them. Yes or no? Do you think
Kingsolver as an author portrayed the Africans as individuals, or more as stereotypes?
7. This book is about family and an entire nation, and finally it is a story of a mother who loses a child, but who gains a new
perspective from her loss: "Once I'd moved our table outside with my baby laid out upon it, I could see no sense in anything but to bring out the rest...I needed truth and light, to remember my baby's laughter.
This stuff cluttered my way..." As a mother, what did this most powerful scene say to you when you read it? And how did you view Orleanna in the end?
