Grace Webb’s Reviews > The Poisonwood Bible > Status Update
Grace Webb
is on page 343 of 546
As Anatole says, if you look hard enough you can always see reasons, but you'll go crazy if you think it's all punishment for your sins. I see that plainly when I look at my parents. God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
— Jun 28, 2026 06:54PM
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Grace Webb
is on page 412 of 546
How can I ever love anyone now but Anatole? Who else could make the colors of the aurora borealis rise off my skin where he strokes my forearm? Or send needles of ice tinkling blue through my brain when he looks in my eyes?
When he’s gone away for a night or two, my thirst is inconsolable. When he comes back, I drink every kiss down to its end and still my mouth aches like a dry cave.
— Jun 30, 2026 06:48AM
When he’s gone away for a night or two, my thirst is inconsolable. When he comes back, I drink every kiss down to its end and still my mouth aches like a dry cave.
Grace Webb
is on page 396 of 546
Until that moment I'd always believed I could still go home and pretend the Congo never happened. The misery, the hunt, the ants, the embarrassments of all we saw and endured-those were just stories I would tell someday with a laugh and a toss of my hair, when Africa was faraway and make-believe like the people in history books.
— Jun 30, 2026 05:56AM
Grace Webb
is on page 317 of 546
I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom.
— Jun 27, 2026 07:29PM
Grace Webb
is on page 288 of 546
Don’t let it get me down? Man, oh man! I always wanted to be the belle of the ball, but, jeepers, is this ever the wrong ball.
But I won’t tell her. I prefer to remain anomalous.
— Jun 27, 2026 04:50PM
But I won’t tell her. I prefer to remain anomalous.
Grace Webb
is on page 258 of 546
Our childhood had passed over into history overnight. The transition was unnoticed by anyone but ourselves.
I’d noticed Congolese men didn’t treat even their own wives and daughters as if they were very sensible or important. Though as far as I could see the wives and daughters did just about all the work.
— Jun 27, 2026 02:39PM
I’d noticed Congolese men didn’t treat even their own wives and daughters as if they were very sensible or important. Though as far as I could see the wives and daughters did just about all the work.
Grace Webb
is on page 205 of 546
He came home with a crescent-shaped scar on his temple, seriously weakened vision in his left eye, and a suspicion of his own cowardice from which he could never recover. His first words to me were to speak of how fiercely he felt the eye of God upon him. He pulled away from my kiss and my teasing touch, demanding, "Can't you understand the Lord is watching us?"
— Jun 27, 2026 10:57AM
Grace Webb
is on page 116 of 546
It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.
He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds. I know he must find me tiresome, yet still I like spending time with my father very much more than I like doing anything else.
Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can’t you see I died as well?
— Jun 25, 2026 06:31PM
He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds. I know he must find me tiresome, yet still I like spending time with my father very much more than I like doing anything else.
Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can’t you see I died as well?
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Jun 28, 2026 06:55PM
In their locked room, these men had put their heads together and proclaimed Patrice Lumumba a danger to the safety of the world. The same Patrice Lumumba, mind you, who washed his face each morning from a dented tin bowl, relieved himself in a carefully chosen bush, and went out to seek the faces of his nation. Imagine if he could have heard those words-dangerous to the safety of the world!-from a roomful of white men who held in their manicured hands the disposition of armies and atomic bombs, the power to extinguish every life on earth.
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I dug my nails into my palms till I'd pierced my own flesh. Where had I been? Somewhere else entirely? Of the coup, in August, Im sure wed understood nothing. From the next five months of Lumumbas imprisonment, escape, and recapture, I recall —what? The hardships of washing and cooking in a drought. A humiliating event in the church, and rising contentions in the village. Ruth May's illness, of course. And a shocking scrap with Leah, who wanted to go hunting with the men. I was occupied so entirely by each day, I felt detached from anything so large as a month or a year. History didn't cross my mind. Now it does. Now I know, whatever your burdens, to hold yourself apart from the lot of more powerful men is an illusion.
"Tata Price, white men have brought us many programs to improve our thinking," he said. "The program of Jesus and the program of elections. You say these things are good. You cannot say now they are not good."
"Á bu, kwe? Where, then?" asked Tata Nguza, standing up boldly. In his opinion, he said, a white man who has never even killed a bushbuck for his family was not the expert on which god can protect our village.
I'm sure Father resented his own daughter being such a distraction. It's just lucky for Father he never had any sons. He might have been forced to respect them.
