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Sto caricando le informazioni... Butterfly Heartdi Paula Leyden
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A lyrical story from the butterfly heart of Africa.Bul-Boo and Madillo are worried about their friend Winifred, who has lost her gentle smile and no longer puts up her hand in class. Then the twins discover her secret: she is to be married off to her uncle's friend, who drinks heavily and is old enough to be her grandfather. While Winifred has become resigned to her fate, her friends are determined to put a stop to the marriage. But what can they do? They ask the advice of Ifwafwa, the snake man, who promises to think about the problem. Ifwafwa is wise and has a gift with snakes, but he does not like to hurry and Bul-Boo becomes impatient. Will he be too late to save their friend? Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari 
 Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni...GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classificazione LCVotoMedia: (1)
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Trigger warnings: Forced marriage, death from an animal attack (snake) and a partner in the past, sexism
Score: Five out of ten.
I own this book. Find this review on The StoryGraph.
This book was awful. What was this? A library gave away some novels and The Butterfly Heart was one of them, so I picked it up and glanced at the vague blurb, which made it seem intriguing, and there was a note saying Amnesty endorsed it. However, when I closed the final page, it underwhelmed me. Scratch that. The Butterfly Heart was worse than underwhelming--it was blackface and cultural appropriation.
It starts with the first two people I see, Bul-Boo and Madillo, both biracial, living in Zambia, concerned over their friend Winifred and feel something is going on. They call upon this magic snake person, Ifwafwa, to help them, introducing an element of magical realism into the narrative, but calling it a fantasy is a massive stretch since The Butterfly Heart has mostly realistic roots. I liked the setting since there's only one work of fiction I know set in Zambia, but I had issues with everything else. The characters lack depth so it was hard to connect or relate to them. Adding more depth could've solved that problem.
I liked where the author was going with The Butterfly Heart, a story about forced marriage and women's rights violations, but the execution could've been better in many ways. First, why is there a magical snake person to solve Winifred's predicament when community action could've led to the same result? There is no exploration of the intersectionality between race and class, instead it sent a message about people mistreating women and stopped there when it could go further. The writing style is disjointed sometimes when it switched to first person protagonist to third person omniscient POV, but sticking to one POV would've been an improvement.
The pacing is slow even though it's 200 pages, but removing filler would've increased engagement, and the tone is so preachy I thought Paula Leyden used a sledgehammer to get her point across. Don't treat the reader like they need force-feeding, instead let them figure it out. The worst aspect of The Butterfly Heart is the cultural appropriation, which made me only give The Butterfly Heart five out of ten. A Black author would've done a better job. The conclusion is dramatic as the snake person kills the antagonist and finishes everything. I can't believe Amnesty endorsed this one. I'm so disappointed.