![]() ![]() Praise Song for the Butterflies follows Abeo as she embarks on a journey to seek revenge and ultimately, to forgive the family that sent her into a life of ritual servitude. She suffers routine beatings, starvation, and sexual violence before she’s finally released. For the next 16 years, Abeo endures horrific abuse as a trokosi, or enslaved woman. Soon thereafter, Abeo’s grandmother convinces her father, Wasik, to abandon her at a “shrine” in a remote village in exchange for a financial blessing from their ancestors. ![]() Her life is upended when her grandmother moves in with the family and begins incorporating old-fashioned and sexist rituals into their lives. Its protagonist, 9-year old Abeo Kata, lives with her parents and her brother in Port Masi, an affluent suburb in the fictional West African country of Ukemby. Her newest novel, Praise Song for the Butterflies, continues that tradition. McFadden published her debut novel, Sugar, in 2001, she has taken up the mantle of not only singing a Black woman’s song, but also digging up our histories and putting them on the pages of 12 books. In Ntozake Shange’s 1989 choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, one of her characters offers a very simple challenge: “somebody/ anybody/ sing a Black girl’s song/ bring her out/ to know herself/ to know you/ but sing her rhythms/ carin/ struggle/ hard times.” Since Bernice L. McFadden (Photo credit: Raya/Akashic Books) ![]()
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