Butter Honey Pig Bread - Rambling Readers

Paperback, 368 pages

Published Nov. 2, 2020 by Arsenal Pulp Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-55152-823-6
OCLC Number:: 1140380383

(1 review)

Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye.

Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision.

Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won't be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also …

Spanning three continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread tells the interconnected stories of three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye.

Kambirinachi believes that she is an Ogbanje, or an Abiku, a non-human spirit that plagues a family with misfortune by being born and then dying in childhood to cause a human mother misery. She has made the unnatural choice of staying alive to love her human family but lives in fear of the consequences of her decision.

Kambirinachi and her two daughters become estranged from one another because of a trauma that Kehinde experiences in childhood, which leads her to move away and cut off all contact. She ultimately finds her path as an artist and seeks to raise a family of her own, despite her fear that she won't be a good mother. Meanwhile, Taiye is plagued by guilt for what her sister suffered and also runs away, attempting to fill the void of that lost relationship with casual flings with women. She eventually discovers a way out of her stifling loneliness through a passion for food and cooking.

But now, after more than a decade of living apart, Taiye and Kehinde have returned home to Lagos. It is here that the three women must face each other and address the wounds of the past if they are to reconcile and move forward.

For readers of African diasporic authors such as Teju Cole and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Butter Honey Pig Bread is a story of choices and their consequences, of motherhood, of the malleable line between the spirit and the mind, of finding new homes and mending old ones, of voracious appetites, of queer love, of friendship, faith, and above all, family.

1 edition

crabbygirl reviewed Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

Review of 'Butter Honey Pig Bread' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

the book pretends to be evenly divided between 3 protagonists who head chapters in a rotating manner: mom, 1st born daughter (1D), 2nd born daughter (2D), repeat - but the story of 1D is much more dominant than 2D, with written letters from 1D describing her life in much of the chapters with 2D's headings. And that dominant daughter's narrative contains alot of casual sex, getting high, and over-describing food she's preparing - in short, nothing so pressing that the other sister couldn't get equal time. 1D is also painfully earnest: telling us the history of Africville, educating herself about pronouns and non-binary identities and summing up her first months in Halifax as "salty fogs and gorgeous ocean and monuments to cruel colonizers"(pg179)

speaking of quotes: the author throws a bucket of cold water on a love scene when: "there was a distinct focus on the mouth: …

the book pretends to be evenly divided between 3 protagonists who head chapters in a rotating manner: mom, 1st born daughter (1D), 2nd born daughter (2D), repeat - but the story of 1D is much more dominant than 2D, with written letters from 1D describing her life in much of the chapters with 2D's headings. And that dominant daughter's narrative contains alot of casual sex, getting high, and over-describing food she's preparing - in short, nothing so pressing that the other sister couldn't get equal time. 1D is also painfully earnest: telling us the history of Africville, educating herself about pronouns and non-binary identities and summing up her first months in Halifax as "salty fogs and gorgeous ocean and monuments to cruel colonizers"(pg179)

speaking of quotes: the author throws a bucket of cold water on a love scene when: "there was a distinct focus on the mouth: he sucked my fingers, my nipples, licked my lips, my neck, bit delicious bruises into the soft flesh of my inner thighs, ate me out thoroughly."(pg225) Cripes! is that what passes as erotic now? teenage boy gutter talk? Lastly, the author is fond of using Nigerian pidgin, often without context clues for the non-Nigerian reader, and yet no review mentions this potential for confusion. Perhaps the author intended the reader to feel the alienation she herself felt at times, a new immigrant, but we wouldn't know because no interviewer has brought this up! (It's a pretty big issue considering, as a Canada Reads book; the intention is to unite the country in focused discussion)

as for the mom's story of the novel, she describes herself as a spirit come to earth and I'm not sure if we are meant to take that seriously, or infer that mental illness has plagued her most of her life, excepting a 15 year period when she is stabilized by her husband. I chose the mental illness interpretation, especially since 1D is experiencing hallucinations herself. And here I'd like to make my biggest criticism of the story (while also acknowledging the popularity of this trend): it is 2D that has had a tremendous trauma happen TO her, while 1D is only a witness. Yet the book is more fascinated with the trauma of 1D and its reverberations in her life. how navel-gazing and victimhood-culture can you get? which is precisely the point: our culture has elevated the status of victimhood to the point that everyone wants a piece. If this book had been written 10 or 20 years ago, we'd have followed 2D's journey into healing. instead, we are now 'making space' for 1D because her 'lived experience' is 'valid' (oh yes, I meant all those air quotes)