Paragraph 1 Exile from ones’ home, according to the Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said, is both an “enriching” and “terrible” experience. Though “its essential sadness can never be surmounted,” one that goes through exile may come back a changed person, sometimes for the better. Leah Price, of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Posionwood Bible, is a model example a character that went through this both alienating and enriching journey when she travels with her family to the Congo at the age of 15 to support her father on his missionary trip. Paragraphy 2 The Poisonwood Bible is both a political allegory as well as a personal story of a mother’s guilt. When the Prices arrive in the Congo, everything changed for them. They are now complete outsiders; stared at and whispered about by the natives, as well as now having to live without the material comforts they had in the US. In a country where there is virtually no one that speaks your language, it is easy to feel like an outsider, as Leah soon learns. Back in the US, Leah is already an outcast by social standards (she is in the same class as those years older then her and identifies herself as a tomboy amidst girls who are already wearing make-up and dresses) but in Congo she is excluded for completely different reasons; her race. Among the Congolese, the Price family sticks out like a sore thumb, from their appearance, novelty, and, by Congolese standards, wealth. This is not to say anything bad of standard of Congolese quality of life, but to instead point out how fortunate Americans truly are, even for things we take for granted, like running water and fertile soil. From the Price’s alienation, it says more about America then it does about the setting of the book, the Congo. Paragraphy 3 Through all these differences though is how Leah is able to change and grow, eventually so much that she chooses to stay in the Congo as other members of her family return to the US. By experiencing how the Congolese live, love, eat, learn, and grow, Leah falls in love with the culture and eventually with Anatole, a Congolese man who she eventually marries. By turning her away from the only thing she had known, Leah gets to experience a life no one in Georgia ever thought of living, all from her exile. Much like the Congo itself, Leah has to manipulate herself and her future to seek a force older then the forests themselves, her first, and only, love. Paragraph 4 Though exile from one’s past life is not an option most would choose, wisdom, experience, but also pain can be brought down upon the one who goes through it, in this case Leah. After taking a step back from her own country, she was able to see beauty in foreign lands and even decide to never return to her past home.