Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, is about a missionary family named the Prices who move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. For the Price women, their previous identities consisted of their relationship to their American culture; once they are in Africa, that identity is forced to shift and adapt to the African culture. Homi Bhabha’s concept of “hybridity”, is defined as the result of the interactions of colonizers and colonized. Bhabba writes that colonizing cultures cannot alter a native culture without adapting characteristics themselves. The members of the Price family come into Africa bringing their own American ideologies with the goal to educate the native people, starting with …show more content…
She is very unaware of the cultural stereotypes she takes on, as well as the impact of the actions going on around her. Ruth May mainly talks about her life in the Congo with humorous innocence. Ruth May is the first of the other three daughters to make friends in the village; discovering the truth of white relations in the Congo, and about the native customs, religion, and culture not knowing that all of those traits of a person shift her identity. Before she dies Ruth May starts to recognize the Native ideologies, which shows the power of Bhabha’s hybrid identity. She begins to mix both cultures she knows together and form her own perspective. Unaware of the true meaning of her beliefs, Ruth May knows only what she has been told by others her entire life. When she arrives in the Congo, she both repeats the claims that she previously heard from her father while also taking in Congolese beliefs. The difference is that once Ruth May is given two unique ideologies, she merges them together, creating a new perspective that she firmly believes in up to her death. Her death forces her sisters to see the way they have changed and adapted in the