AP Summer Reading and Writing

All incoming AP English 12 students are required to read The Poisonwood Bible and selected chapters of Writing About Literature prior to the first day of class. A multiple-choice test on the novel will be given on that date. Further information about the reading assignments can be found on the reverse side of this sheet. In addition, all students are required to submit a substantive essay on the topic given below. The essay should be typed, double-spaced in Word or Apple Works format.

Though the general structure of the Poisonwood Bible involves different characters narrating chapters in sequence, the author deliberately chooses not to include the central character, Nathan Price, among them. How does this affect our overall understanding of his character? How might this be altered if Nathan had a chance to share his thoughts and feelings with the reader as the other characters did?

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it--from garden seeds to Scripture--is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters--the self-centered, teenaged Rachel; shrewd adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility. -From www.kingsolver.com