Feed The Hungry Beast That Is Your Heart

This week focuses on food, which will be a recurring theme in relation to family, home, and belonging.

It is a continuation of the previous post, and the topic of food is central to Butter Honey Pig Bread – even the title is dedicated to food items.

Specifically, this piece investigates the significance of food between the twins and maps out their symbolic meanings. By doing so, this essay will also be filled with spoilers. To respect your preference of finding out the book at your own pace, a list of thesis statements will follow. You can have the choice of obtaining an impression of where this is getting at, or you could proceed further along for elaboration. Taken out of context, these statements may mean little. After all, objects are given symbolic meaning in relation to someone, somewhere, some other things, or specific actions. Here is the list for discussion:

Food is a test of inclusion.
Food is a means of communication.
Food is a key to memory.
Food is vice.
Food – the denial of it – is self-harm.
Food is extravagance.
Food is a piece of home reconstructed with chosen family.
Food is sustenance and self-care.
Food is an invitation to share vulnerability.
Food is a token of making amends
Food is a beginning.

Do these statements mean anything? Are they sweeping abstractions in the absence of context? Can any of these ideas resonate in other stories, or in your own experience?

HOLD IT GENTLY, THIS HUNGRY BEAST THAT IS YOUR HEART. Feed it well.

Ekwuyasi, Francesca. Butter Honey Pig Bread. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020, p. 304

Food is a test of inclusion.
Before Kambirinachi and Taiye met their new brother-in-law, they had this conversation:

“Anyway, I hope he eats normal food.”
“I’m sure he eats normal food.”
“I don’t know.” Kambirinachi raised her shoulders and spread her palms up as if in surrender. “Is he not oyimbo? He might be one of those fussy eaters with all the allergies and special diets, or am I wrong? (Ekwuyasi 51)

There is a moment of teasing and genuine worry of whether the new member of the family can fit in based on the uniting factor of food. Family recipes present themselves as a test – whether a person is one of us, or cast outside of the family circle – a member has to gain an insider status with the acceptance and appreciation of family cuisine.

Food is a means of communication. 
There are many wilful silences and reluctant words of substance between the sisters.

“Taiye hadn’t meant to sound derisive, but that was the tone her words took. She began pouring the rice into the simmering stew and was about to apologize when Kehinde walked in. The small talk that followed felt odd to Taiye. There was so much else to say, so much catching up to do. But then it was decided: they would make mosa. This is how you make mosa with your sister on the day she returns home. You are happy to occupy yourself with this task, as it keeps you from asking if she read the letters you wrote over the years but never intended to send.” (Ekwuyasi 52) In another part of the book, the narrator describes what cooking means for Taiye: “meals she would make to appease – more truthfully, avoid – her sister” (179).

The longer the sisters settle in the comfort of their childhood home, the more this communication pattern sets in. Kehinde observes:

“In the week I’ve been back, she has spent most of her days tending to her beehive or knee-deep in the patch of soil in the backyard, hoping to turn it into something more alive. Also, she cooks. Large feasts that are too much food for the four of us. Sometimes I help her, and she delegates tasks with swift authority […] But we barely speak otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, Taiye is warm. She touches me: a hand on my shoulder, fingers picking fluff out of my hair, hands rubbing my arms when the A/C turns on suddenly and the chill raises goosebumps on my skin. But words are scarce.” (Ekwuyasi 217)

When asked why the sisters turn to food instead of talking to each other, Ekwuyasi makes sense of the placement of food in her story as a punctuation between the words yet to come, as such: “I think for these characters, they were afraid that all the talking would just make things worse. They were afraid that it would be too much to hold at any given moment. And so it had to be passed out slowly. And food is like a punctuation between all the talking.”

Roger Mooking resonates with the author’s intentional focus on food in the sisters’ reconciliation process. In the Canada Reads debate, some panellists challenged how Taiye is passive and lacks agency in coping with the trauma that sends the twins’ relationship downhill. It seems that silence, secrecy, and avoidance between the sisters present challenges to some readers who expect solid action. Mooking proposes at the show: “Whereas [Taiye’s] letter writing is her insular methodology, her external methodology was food. And this is why I love food, ‘cause food is so sensual, it’s so primal, and it is such a point of communication. I don’t even need to talk to you to express to you how much I love you, because I made your favourite things; I don’t even need to say I love you; you know just by the simple act of living through that food and telling that story, making the thing that they love so much, and sharing that with them is her method of outreach.”

Food is a key to memory.
Kehinde recalls:

“That year [when Taiye went away to London for university], our great-aunt visited with massive Ghana must go bags filled with yams, tomatoes, smoked fish – and plantains. She tried to teach me how to make mosa. But without Taiye around to halve the weight of her expectations, they were too heavy for me. I did everything Aunty Akuchi said, and it yieleded glorious puffs. Yet they lacked the lightness of Taiye’s touch." (Ekwuyasi 59-60)

For her, it is an extension of a childhood memory of how Aunty Akuchi used mosa as bait for good behaviour, of how Kehinde counts on this “yeasty plantain puff-puffs” to console difficult times. For this reason, Taiye makes mosa with her twin at her homecoming (60).

Food is vice. 
Taiye makes sense of overeating as her coping mechanism. 

“As an eight-year-old, she quietly consumed helping after helping of beans and dodo, jollof rice, eba and egusi soup. She ate everything, until her stomach stretched well past its limit, and only pain and nausea forced her to stop.” (Ekwuyasi 72)

Food, or the denial of it, is self-harm.
Contrary to Taiye’s eating habits, Kehinde goes through a vicious cycle of fasting and purging in reaction to her poor self-image.

“At the dining hall, in my quest to feel anything else, I swung between ignoring my appetite entirely, and in a dizzying haze of hunger, eating plates and plates of bland cafeteria food. I made a habit of it, and I continued my habit of purging as much of it as I could manage.” (Ekwuyasi 120)

Food is extravagance.
Taiye’s fondness for food, and her gift for cooking is presumably anchored to this memory of his father:

“Even as a young child, Taiye recognized when her father started earning more money because they switched from using margarine, the kind that comes in a yellow plastic tub with a blue lid, to butter imported from Ireland, the salted kind that comes wrapped in gold foil. Kehinde didn’t seem to notice, but Taiye’s palate sang in response to the butter’s superiority.” (Ekwuyasi 132)

Food is a piece home reconstructed with chosen family.
For Kehinde eager to replace haunting memories of home, she discovers a sense of belonging when her new-partner Wolfie cooks deep fried plantain. “I awoke to the smell of fried plantains and, for a very brief moment, forgot where I was.” (159). 
For Taiye, memories of where she belongs is evoked when she and her friend Timi cook up a concoction of “food from home” at a farewell party to her then-partner. (201)

Food is sustenance and self-care.
After binging on drugs and alcohol, for once Taiye properly feeds herself and reconnects with her mother. (188)

Food is an invitation to sharing vulnerability.
The sisters open up to each other’s secrets while cooking catfish vindaloo. Taiye the seasoned cook delegates tasks and uses these instructions as comfortable buffers between confessions. On the receiving end, Kehinde loosens up: “When the fumes sting my eyes, I let the tears run down my face and drip from my chin onto the wooden cutting board.” (319)

Food is a token of making amends.
As Kehinde’s homecoming has come to an end, it has been a long time coming for Taiye to confront her guilt and offer a formal apology to her sister – while doing the same to herself. Having developed her vocabularies through the action of cooking and offering food, she prepares roast chicken for her sister, “because when you need to make amends with your pregnant twin sister, it’s best to have a meal prepared to accompany your apology” (406). To follow through her intent, Taiye offers the meal complete with an apology, braving the hurt and the rage. Kehinde accepts both.

Food is a beginning.

"Their relationship did not transform drastically after that meal of roast chicken and fried yams, but it unlocked a door in both of them. They spent the remainder of Kehinde’s time in Lagos tentatively peering through this new door, stepping in slowly, with questions and arguments, and quiet times together” (Ekwuyasi 414).

Within the context of Butter Honey Pig Bread, the preparation and sharing of food facilitate the twins to confront their past, acknowledge the trauma that drives them apart, and give them the nourishment to go separate ways as wholesome, independent persons who can somewhat make peace with their shared fate.