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ClareR (5726 KP) rated Build Your Home Around My Body in Books

Jul 28, 2021  
Build Your Home Around My Body
Build Your Home Around My Body
Violet Kupersmith | 2021 | Fiction & Poetry, Horror, Science Fiction/Fantasy
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I loved this enchanting, horrific, beautiful story. Build Your House Around My Body is a difficult book to describe. There are at least three timelines, all relevant to what is happening in the present day to the main character, Winnie née Ngoan.

Winnie is a lost soul - she has gone to Vietnam to stay with family while she teaches English to Vietnamese students, hoping to find herself, but she seems to become more and more lost as the story progresses. She struggles with her dual identity as her mother is American, and her father is Vietnamese. The fact that she seems to deliberately sabotage her own life is the most tragic thing about her.

The time does jump around a bit, but this didn’t confuse me at all - the chapter headings made sure of that - in fact they gave some interesting history lessons (e.g. French colonialism, Japanese occupation).

It’s a weird and wonderful one (my favourite kind!), sometimes bordering on the grotesque (ditto). Bodily functions and food that I wasn’t sure about, galore! (I’d still try the food though, although I draw the line at dog…).

The supernatural elements showed that these things are still very much a part of Vietnamese culture (spirits and demons both feature).

Some parts are achingly sad, some made me feel a bit ill, and others were actually quite amusing. I couldn’t put this book down. The joy of it was that I didn’t know, couldn’t predict, what was going to happen next!

I’m really interested to see what Kupersmith writes next if this is her debut - what an imagination!
Many thanks to Jellybooks for giving me the chance to read this wonderful book.
  
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ClareR (5726 KP) rated The First Woman in Books

Aug 11, 2021  
The First Woman
The First Woman
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
What I most like about a good book is being transported to a time and a place, and that’s exactly what The First Woman did for me. I love reading books that are set in countries and cultures that are completely different to my own, and I always hope that I’ll finish the book having learnt something new.

The First Woman taught me so much that I didn’t know about the clan system in Uganda, and about what it means to be a woman there. To be honest, it seems something of a minefield to live in a system of not just clans, but also class and ethnic groups.

Kirabo, the main character, also has to deal with the patriarchal system, colonialism and the hardships of Idi Amin’s regime.

But this is essentially a coming of age story. It’s the story of how Kirabo lives and grows up, about her longing fo the mother she has never met, about how she wants to find a place for herself in the world. It’s about mwenkanonkano - feminism - and how hard it is for Ugandan men to accept it. And finally, it’s about kweluma, and how people police, instead of support, one another. As Nsuuta says to Kirabo: “That is when oppressed people turn on each other or on themselves and bite. It is a form of relief. If you cannot bite your oppressor, you bite yourself.”

I loved this book: I empathised with Kirabo and her grandmothers friend Nsuuta. I admired that children were always first and foremost in a family and a clans mind, and I have to admit to struggling a little with the fact that women didn’t seem to have any rights over their children.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would. It’s a book that I’m glad came up on the Jellybooks programme, so thank you Jellybooks!