Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi

Posted by Nasiba Mbabe Bawa on January 1, 2023

Kambirinachi's grief was permanent.

This sentence sums up the entire plot of Butter Honey Pig Bread.

Synopsis

Kambirinachi's burden as an ogbanje who decided to stay on earth instead of dying has dire consequences for her and her family. Grief and pain become her shadow: her father dies, her mother abandons her and never returns, her beloved husband Banji is ripped painfully from her by death, and her twin daughters live far away from her, apart and in anger.

Taiye and Kehinde are identical twins born to Kambirinachi and Banji. At first, the twins are inseparable, with Kehinde being the voice of Taiye who hardly speaks. However, when "Uncle Ernest", a boyfriend of their aunt sexually abuses Kehinde, Kehinde starts to resent Taiye for it because she believes Taiye could have stopped Ernest but chose to keep mute and hide under the bed. Kambirinachi, on the other hand, believes she is the cause of all the misfortunes happening to her family.

You may understand this: the people I love are taken from me. They are taken by death or wounded until they leave me. My father, my Banji, my mother, my Kehinde—taken, taken, wounded, wounded. And when Kehinde is wounded, Taiye drowns in the pain.

Thoughts

Butter Honey Pig Bread is contemporary fiction about family, love, spirit, and difference, written in language that is beautiful, rich, soft, kind, patient, empathetic, and sweet, and does justice to the story.

The story is told from the third-person POV of three MCs, including Taiye and Kambirinachi. The characters' lives were dissected and opened to us in the most beautiful ways. I also love how the story unfolds- so intentional with time.

I have never read anything as honest and raw as this book. The emotions carried in this book are so real that readers can literally feel the characters' emotions.

Another thing I loved so much in this book was how Francesca personalized death. Kambi addressed death like they were old friends. Kambi is seen summoning death more than once in the book: The first two attempts by death at her father, she drove it away, and then when Banji died, Kambi summoned death to her and pleaded for the life of Banji.

Taiye, a soft and shy girl, is perhaps my favorite character in this book. She conducts her relationships in a very kind manner, sometimes clinical.

Butter honey pig bread is a very important book, with themes ranging from death, family, love, and sisterhood. Francesca highlights very important topics in this book that should be matters for real-life conversations, such as:

The part where Taiye's best friend was subjected to "corrective therapy" by his family because he outed himself.
Isabella, who says she isn't queer but wants to have sex with Taiye, even seduces Taiye. Many people claim they aren't queer and are probably the first to cast the stone. However, they're often the ones propositioning queer people for sex, as though queer people were instruments.

Kehinde was not given much of a voice in this book. We were not privy to the amount of pain she suffered due to the abuse or if she ever missed Taiye after refusing to speak to her for that long.

I absolutely love this book, no cap. I fell in love with the characters, especially Taiye. This book is raw, pure, and honest, and the abruptness of some of the sentences, especially how we were told their father died, was chilling.

Banji was there, he was loving, and he was content. And then he died.

Finally, I love how the story focused on minorities- women and queer folk. The few men in the story weren't major characters, save for those who were queer.