What compels us to continue leafing through a book?
Surely it is a big feat to suspend disbelief of space and time. It is not unlike arriving at a new neighbourhood, unsure of whether we have a place to be, hesitant to get acquainted with the neighbours…
Case in point: Francesca Ekwuyasi’s debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2020.
Shortlisted in Canada Reads 2021, an annual debate crowning a title that all Canadians should read, this book is especially relevant. The theme of the year is “One Book to Transport Us”, and the result was just out today.
Butter Honey Pig Bread takes on an ambitious task to transport us to Nigeria, Britain, France, and Canada. The first three chapters alternate among the perspectives of Kambirinachi and her twin daughters Taiye and Kehinde, where readers feast on the rich imagery of Lagos, the twins’ childhood home.
Home is where the women gather around a lovingly prepared meal since years of separation and intentional cut off from communication. Family tension is palpable as readers partake of the sights and smells of jollof rice with smoked mackerel, curried chicken and soft-boiled eggs, topped off with a salted caramel cake (14).
The book opens with the line “We are kin”. The voice of kin insists in unison:
“‘I’ is only a temporary and necessary aberration. ‘I,’ ‘Me,’ – such a lonely journey! We separate, single out to ‘I’s and ‘Me’s, only when we traverse between realms, when we take breath and body. Only because we must. But we always return to We, you see? Because we must.” (Ekwuyasi 7)
This opening lends the book a mystic atmosphere, but it also pulls readers closer to a collective sense of being that challenges an individualistic point of view.
Chef and artist Roger Mooking, Canada Reads panellist who champions the book, refers the voice of kin to a unique cultural dimension at the show.
“Ubuntu is a concept in African folklore where they say, ‘I am because we are,’ meaning that I am we, meaning that we are a community of people, […] and we are all connected as a community.”
Canada Reads 2021, Day 3, 29:21-29:45
He translates the idea of ubuntu to the multiple and interlinked perspectives among the kin and the three women in Butter Honey Pig Bread. “One of the major premises of this book is that this is not a singular perspective, because this is about kin; this is about all of us.”
This concept alludes to a broad network of relations in which a nuclear family is situated. The collective mentality is at once specific, but also accessible across cultures.
Butter Honey Pig Bread portrays relatable people and pushes us to work past our initial apprehension treading into the unfamiliar. The characters in question may not be likeable, but their quirks and shining flaws draw us closer to learn more.
Readers are introduced to Kambirinachi, who is marked as an Ogbanje, “a spirit, a child, whose reluctance to be born, and subsequent boredom with life, caused her to come and go between realms as she pleased” (10). Her presence brings misery to her family – especially to her mother who had to mourn for the loss of multiple children. The love of her father breaks the shadow overcast by the curse. Basked in the warmth of the affectionate father, readers send off young Kambirinachi as she leaves the family for boarding school.
In the subsequent chapters, readers are lifted out of the mother’s dusty memory into the present day of her grown children’s homecoming. We learn of Taiye as a calm and composed cook, lavishing her attention in preparing a meal for her estranged twin sister and her new brother-in-law. We meet Kehinde – jet-lagged and weighed down by an emotional burden, a past yet to be confronted.
This cast of characters are flawed human beings with secrets. They have a home to return to, and in spite of the warmth and love of a meal awaiting, there is emotional distance.
This is how we are transported to a story worthwhile to stay. It presents an overlapping world that weaves into our reality. And then the border turns murky.
Yes the border turning murky part is one of the attractive things about learning stories (through reading or by other means). I haven’t properly read anything for a while and your post reminds me the joy of it. 🙂
Yes, the power of immersion, and also the tranformative power of how it changes the way you see and understand your immediate surrounding.
Thanks for the sharing and a very interesting take on something forgotten in a time of heightened individualism. I am not so sure about the ‘all of us’ part though – people remain single and may no longer have any ‘family’ to return to, and for that matter the suggestion that ‘home’ is always a place of return for multiple people (children) assumes fertility and partnership – but I can feel a very strong empathy towards the recuperation of an attachment to a collective.
I do wonder if ‘kin’ could, or should be reinterpreted with a bigger focus beyond the nuclear family. If we need to connect kin to an African understanding, or indeed many other non-western cultures, what can we say about recognising ‘kinship’ in people who are not your immediate ‘family’ members?
I also wish to respond to your question on what “home” means in this story.
I would propose that, since food makes such consistent appearance throughout the book, it seems to play the role of a home. For the twin sisters who live the lives of diaspora, and are emotionally estranged to each other and their mother, home is a place of distress and is met with resistance. The book explores the complexity of home not as a stable, warm, unchanging place as the norm would represent it. It is also important when you mentioned how “home” is a place for return. This book also suggests how a home can be fragile and fractured, a place where families may not see it as a refuge to return to.
Both questions are important and I’m not sure if I have enough understanding of the text and the context to provide a sufficient answer, but I’ll try based on what I know:
In terms of “all of us”, I believe the author acknowledges both family one is born into and chosen family in the dedication of the book, and it is important in a sense that she is not only addressing family in the context of blood relation, partnership, and parenthood. Yes, for a book to resonate with a broader and more diverse readership, it cannot only sustain on a normative notion of family structure; in this sense, the book develops a richer and inclusive understanding of relations that can reflect our times. It is especially poignant in portraying how blood families might not be the closest, Given all the complications in a family, there are many ways to communicate and maintain the relationship other than physical and emotional closeness, whereas one can develop deep, meaningful intimacy (in a broad sense) with chosen families and people chanced upon.
“Kin” would have different and specific cultural meanings depending on where we place the focus. With just one book, I can hardly articulate – let alone speak for – the cultural significance and all its nuances. I think your question raises an important alarm on how readers as outsiders should be cautious about appropriating and sentimentalizing the cultural concept of ubuntu, especially since the concept was raised with little elaboration by Mooking the panellist in the book debate. But I agree and I would reconsider that kin should be placed beyond the binary opposites of nuclear/extended family. This goes back to my response to your first question, which is not so much a clear, definite answer.