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    Praise Song for the Butterflies
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    Praise Song for the Butterflies
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    Praise Song for the Butterflies
    Ebook271 pages3 hours

    Praise Song for the Butterflies

    By Bernice L. McFadden

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

  • 15,000-copy paperback printing, along with 5,000-copy hardcover run
  • Bernice L. McFadden remains one of our best-selling novelists
  • Her previous novel won the prestigious NAACP Image Award (other finalists in her category included: Jacqueline Woodson, Colson Whitehead, Yvvette Edwards, and Lawrence Hill)
  • Her previous novels have received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Washington Post, O, the Oprah Magazine, on NPR, and have been praised by both Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan, among others
  • There is strong film interest in several of her novels and it seems only a matter of time before one is developed into a film
  • Her novels have been finalists for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
  • McFadden is currently teaching at Tulane University in New Orleans
  • McFadden has strong e-book sales as well as strong library sales
  • McFadden also does incredibly well with book clubs and has a very devoted fan following
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAkashic Books
    Release dateAug 28, 2018
    ISBN9781617756511
    Unavailable
    Praise Song for the Butterflies
    Author

    Bernice L. McFadden

    Bernice L. McFadden is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious, and The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the BCALA.

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    Reviews for Praise Song for the Butterflies

    4/5

    67 ratings25 reviews

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    • 5/5
      “Scars are proof of survival, they shouldn’t be hidden—it’s a story someone may need to see in order to believe that beyond their pain and suffering, there is healing.”  “It was 1985; Abeo was nine years, seven months, and three days old.” It is the mid-80s, in West Africa and we are introduced to Abeo Kata, living a privileged life in the suburbs. Her father has a good job in the government but when he is suddenly suspended, as the political climate in his country begins to shift, the family's comfortable existence begins to crumble. As things begin to hit rock bottom, her father decides to sacrifice Abeo, to a religious shrine (basically a sex slave), to atone for the family's past sins. How this nine year old girl survives the next fifteen years, in horrifying conditions, is the rest of this powerful novel. The writing is beautiful, despite the disturbing subject matter. I will have to check out this talented author's backlist.
    • 4/5
      This novel is a powerful and well written story about a harrowing topic. This is the first book I've read by this author & it's made me an instant fan of Bernice McFadden. Each of her sentences are beautifully constructed & carry a lot of weight. So much is said in so few words. The plot is so compelling that I read the book in one sitting; I just couldn't put it down. It's well structured & told from the point of view of multiple characters giving it depth & providing the reader with insights of the choices made by the characters. This is an unforgettable novel that I'll be recommending to others for years to come. Thank you to the publisher & LibraryThing for providing an advanced reader copy to read/review.
    • 4/5
      McFadden has rendered a horrifying tale of child abandonment bearable through the strong heart of her central character, Abeo Kata. Turned into a Trokosi for a life of slavery, Abeo's existence will now be determined by the whim and appetites of the Priest of this religious shrine in Western Ghana. Her family's rejection comes on the heels of their own spate of "bad luck" which they have blamed on their daughter. The reader will find this story painful but will be unable to leave Abeo and not bear witness to her journey. McFadden cuts to no cinematic recoveries but does include healing,not absolution, of the wounds.
    • 5/5
      Filled with heartache, yet ending on a high note, beautifully written and compelling to the point that I didn't want to put it down, this is a wonderful book. Nine-year-old Abeo lives in her wealthy family's compound in Africa. When Abeo's grandfather dies, her mother and father move her grandmother into the home with them. When her baby brother falls ill, and her father is accused of embezzlement and is suspended from his job, rendering them without enough income to maintain their lifestyle, Abeo's father believes his family has fallen under a curse. Although Abeo's family is Catholic, her grandmother is not, and believes that the only way to release the curse is to sacrifice the first-born child - Abeo. At first Abeo's father resists this idea, but after further setbacks, he agrees and steals away in the middle of the night to deposit Abeo into servitude at one of the many local shrines where young girls harvest corn by day and are sex slaves by night. The story tells the horror that Abeo and the other girls in her hut suffer without being gaudy or sleazy. The reader is disgusted and offended by the acts committed against these young girls, rather than by what could have been much more blatant descriptions. The gift this author has by keeping tactful throughout this heart-wrenching tale rises above other sordid pieces of writing, and reinforces the serious nature of what is happening to these girls.After many years of servitude, many years of suffering, Abeo is rescued and tries to assimilate back into real life. It is not easy, and her suffering is far from finished. But there is always hope.I won a copy of this book from LibraryThing.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written story about the practice of ritual servitude in West Africa. This book grabs your attention from the first word to the last. The story follows Abeo Kata, a nine year old girl living a carefree life of privilege in Ukemby. Misfortune befalls her family and in an attempt to appease the gods Abeo is abandoned to a perverse system to become a trokosi- wife of the gods, by her father. Horrifying events occur, but in the end there is redemption for Abeo. Must read.
    • 4/5
      This story was very powerful. I was not a big fan of the writing style, but the spare descriptions and simplicity of it is fitting somehow. There is so much for the reader to learn and trauma for the characters to go through that more was probably unnecessary. The story of Abeo is one that will stay with me for a long time. I would recommend this book if only so people can gain some insight into trokosi experience.
    • 4/5
      West Africa, Abeo is a happy nine year old, living a priviledged life of two parents who love each other. Her father has a steady job working for the government and Abeo is soon graced with a baby brother. Her happy home life begins to crumble when her father is suspended from his job, while an investigation into theft is completed. After this trouble after trouble begins to haunt this family. His mother, still believing in the old Gods, convinces her son to take Abeo to a shrine, leaving her there as a trokosi, a ritualized slave to the priest. His hope is that the gods will once again look down on him with favor. There is nothing, however, holy about this shrine, nor the life of identured servitude.After almost two decades of a life filled with every kind of abuse imaginable, something happens, one final horror, that causes Abeo to crumble. This event and its aftermath also the one thing that will lead her away, give her a chance at a new life, if she is brave enough to chance trusting again. I loved Abeo, she is a survivor, she is indomitable, and she is fierce. Not that it doesn't take time and courage it does. We can follow her journey, cheer her on, as she makes new discoveries, some about her own family. The tone is matter of fact, these things happened, and very little drama accompanies the writing. The prose is simple, but effective, not a word wasted.Another book about a cultural practice that is hard to read. Though it has been outlawed by the government, my understanding is that this practice still goes on, so incredibly awful. A short paragraph St books end tells how the author came to write about this subject. She wrote an amazing protagonist to build her story around.ARC from librarything and Akashic books.
    • 5/5
      What an amazing book! Heartbreaking but also inspiring. The writing is sparse and very much to the point, but don't let it fool you; this author can shatter your heart with one seemingly-simple sentence. Like many, I am sure, I knew nothing about the practice of ritual servitude, or the term trokosi, and was horrified to think that as recently as the 80s and 90s (my innocent childhood and teen years) these practices were still going strong. It looks like progress has been made as far as the law goes, but I am not sure where exactly things stand today, or how much it has been truly been abolished - but it certainly makes me want to find out more.This is such an important eye-opening book that I would recommend to anyone and everyone. The author did a great job, not only depicting life within the religious shrine, but in dealing with the aftermath and homecoming, and the repercussions on the family unit. I'm not sure how this is the first I am hearing of Bernice McFadden (this is why I love winning books through LibraryThing). I am in awe of this writer and cannot wait to read another one of her books.
    • 4/5
      lves: librarything-giveaways, own My heart hurts and my stomach is in knots. Abeo’s father places his young 9 year old daughter in a religious shrine to atone for sins of the past. For years Abeo is abused physically and mentally. Horrible things happen to her and all the young girls she shares this fate with. This book was not an easy read. The author does not sugar coat the tradition of shrine slavery. This is an “in your face” story of struggle, evil, bravery, and healing. Wow, just wow! Thank you Librarything, Akashicbooks, and author Bernice L. McFadden
    • 4/5
      A fictional account of the fetish shrines that were legally in existence in West Africa until 1998. These shrines forced female children into ritual servitude after they were left there by their families in hopes of appeasing the gods for the misdeeds of their ancestors. Innocent girls were considered slaves and abused in every way imaginable while lining the priest's pockets and satisfying their dangerous sexual appetites. McFadden’s narrative is sparse; she does not use lengthy descriptions, nor is she poetic. I am not a fan of this writing style, but she handles it with skill and builds a powerful revealing story that is, ironically, visual. While excelling here, she falls short by employing a questionable literary contrivance to open and close her work, one that is not consistent with her usual authorial craft. In fact, it is so out of place and character, I am not sure why it was used. She is, however, redeemed by the intervening pages which house a powerful voice with unforgettable imagery worthy of reading.As we try to bring the world and the way women are treated and portrayed into the 21st Century, this is an important story that will someday remind us of where we came from and not where we are today.
    • 3/5
      It's hard to believe a young girl nine years old was taken by her father and left at a shrine and he walked away and never felt any remorse for it. Also the mother who just accepted it and went on with life. So many terrible things happened to this girl in the 15 years she was there but in the end she survived and made a life for herself. A sad book but also a good one that will leave you joyful in the end.
    • 4/5
      This novel follows the life of Abeo Kata as she moves from being the privileged young daughter of a wealthy West African family to being turned over to a fetish priest as a shrine slave when the family's fortunes falter. It is an interesting portrayal of "trokosi" or ritual slavery, practiced in West Africa in the twentieth century. The young virgins faced sexual abuse and forced labor that was comparable to the treatment of slaves in the United States. Although the plot holds no major surprises, the prose is strong and the characters believable. I will definitely read more by this author.
    • 5/5
      A great and powerful read! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book so very much! I received this book from Early Reviewers and Akashic Books for a fair and honest review.
    • 5/5
      Following a string of bad luck, a father is convinced to leave his daughter with a bush priest as an offering to turn things around. This horrifying story is told with beautiful directness. The foreshadowing in the trip the family takes to Ghana is particularly heartwrenching and effective. Ultimately some of the wounds start to heal and the reader feels every bit of the pain and struggle. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Praise Song For Butterflies is a heart-wrenching tale of young Abeo Kata, who is ripped from her family to become a trokosi - a female slave of a priest. The story documents her life in stages: as a young girl much loved by her family, to an outcast and slave, to a young woman reentering civilian life, to a New Yorker who is trying to trust and love again.Abeo's character and circumstances are not ones I will soon forget, especially knowing her fate was the true life of many West African girls.The author's writing style is sparce and succinct - almost to a fault because I felt like it stripped some of the emotion of the story.It's a small complaint, however. I will definitely check out books from the talented Bernice L. McFadden in the future.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book! I have read many books by this author and I think this is my favorite. The subject matter is difficult, but her writing is very readable and enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      Wow! What a beautifully written, heartbreaking and hopeful book. I could not put this one down. It was that good. Fate must have wanted me to read a Bernice McFadden book. This is the second novel in a row I have read of hers, and I am so glad I have discovered this amazing author. She is masterful at character development and creating a scene that pulls the reader in with the first paragraph.The protagonist of this book is Abeo Kato, a young African girl from an affluent Catholic family. When the family encounters a series of bad luck the father takes his daughter, Abeo, to a religious shrine to become trokosi. He hopes that by offering her to the “gods” that the family's luck will change. Abeo is held for fifteen years before she is rescued, in what can only be described as slavery. It was 1985 and Abeo was 9 years old.I was outraged at Abeo’s parents and grandmother. I had a hard time understanding her auntie Serafine too until I heard her story and realized she was only a victim of her circumstance. I saw Abeo as a really strong female to endure her life in troski. In the end, her strength and resilience in overcoming her past ended the book in an uplifting way.I am thankful to Library Thing for providing this book as part of the Early Readers program
    • 4/5
      I have very mixed feelings about Praise Song for the Butterflies.Things I love:*Brings attention to the practice of ritual servitude, in which families give up a daughter to a ritual shrine to atone for a sin committed by someone in the family. Though outlawed in most countries, this practice still exists in several West African countries. I love it when novels teach me and inspire me to do research. *Has a riveting storyline with several unexpected twists and turns. It might make a good movie. *How McFadden ended some chapters with Abeo’s age in years, months, and days. I thought this was a great device to make readers aware not just of time passing, but of Abeo’s lost youth. Things I wasn’t as fond of:*Shifting points of view disrupted the flow of the story.*Too many contrived plot twists and unbelievable coincidences. *Lack of atmosphere, I didn’t get much sense of time or place from the sparse writing style.
    • 5/5
      LibraryThing Early Reviewers Copy. Nine year old Abeo Kata lives a happy life in West Africa with her family. However, when her father starts to have problems, he follows his mother's advice and takes his daughter to a religious shrine hoping this sacrifice will serve as atonement. This practice, called trokosi is still practiced in parts of Africa. This story is heartbreaking, yet still manages to leave the reader with a feeling of redemption. I had never heard of this practice of ritual servitude, trokosi, until I read this book. I spent hours looking it up and reading more about it. It's heartbreaking to read about these young girls, some as young as six, being given to these shrines to become slaves to atone for their families "crimes against their ancestors". This book will break your heart, but it needs to be read.
    • 3/5
      Abeo Kata lives a charmed life in Port Masi, a city in the fictional country of Ukemby. Her mother was a model and her father is a well-compensated employee of the government treasury. After her grandfather dies and her father brings her widowed grandmother to live with the family in Port Masi, Abeo's perfect childhood begins to crumble. Her father's job is in jeopardy as he stands accused of embezzling, her little brother's health is failing, the family car is broken down, and the house is springing leaks. While Abeo remains sheltered, her father finds himself being crushed by the weight of this reversal of fortune such that when his mother suggests the old custom of giving Abeo as trokosi to appease the gods and save the rest of his family from ruin, he gives in to the pressure, and Abeo's new, tortured life as a slave of the gods begins.McFadden's storytelling really shines at the beginning of the book when she is drawing out the idyll of Abeo's childhood. Well loved and ignorant of the troubles beginning to brew among the adults in her life, Abeo is insulated in her perfect life. The childlike joy Abeo feels on adventures with her visiting aunt Serafine makes it all the more potent when her perfect life is torn away and she is enslaved at the religious shrine.After that, things get kind of strange. McFadden's writing style is blunt and simple. The book reads quickly moving from plot point to plot point with little embellishment. In fact, McFadden's writing is so straightforward at times it seems nearly artless. In the parts where Abeo is enduring torture at the ends of the "priests" at the shrine, this comes across as stark and affecting. However, in later parts of the book, it seems to gloss over the details of Abeo's recovery, oversimplifying the struggle of recovering from unspeakable trauma.There are parts of this book that really shine. It is a compelling, unputdownable read on the surface. However, it doesn't seem to stand up to much reflection. Under scrutiny, it doesn't seem to come together all that well as a whole and the unusual writing style doesn't seem altogether appropriate to the story being told.
    • 4/5
      This story about a little girl's life in a fictional West African country is often touching and occasionally brutal. Although the coming-of-age story is not especially unusual, the details are. Although the country is fictional, the practice of trokosi, “ritual servitude,” is not. And ritual servitude is a nice phrase for slavery and additional abuse, emotional, physical, sexual, mostly on young girls. It has been outlawed but is still practiced. Although this was well written book, it certainly was not a fun read. I continue to be astounded by what inhumane atrocities we humans think is okay, and even blessed.
    • 3/5
      There is a sex slave system in Ghana called trokosi where virgin girls, some as young as 6, are taken as compensation to right a wrong of a family member. It was outlawed twenty years ago but still practiced. This book takes place in a fictional African country but it's obviously based on Ghana, so it might as well have taken place in Ghana. I was confused why the setting had to be fictionalized; that it would be more impactful if emphasized that real countries are doing these awful things to real little girls.I finished this a few days ago and have been thinking about it since. This is a story that needs to be told. I am glad this book has done that. I just felt the writing lacked depth, which is very much not what most reviewers felt. Read it for the historical and cultural relevance and judge for yourself.Thank you to LibraryThing.com and Akashic Books for my ARC copy.
    • 4/5
      Praise Song for the Butterflies is my first exposure to author, Bernice McFadden, although she is the author of nine previous novels and the winner of several awards. Her books primarily deal with the experiences of the African American community, and Praise Song moves the experience from the United States to Africa and back.The novel begins with a rather startling 2009 stabbing in Harlem by a woman named Abeo, who we learn is married with two children. This scene is designed to capture the reader’s attention, which it does immediately. The shock is real; wow! I didn’t see that coming!The book then moves to “before” in 1978 when Abeo Kata is a young girl in Port Masi, Ukemby, a fictional African country situated between Ghana and Togo. Abeo’s family are substantial members of the community; her father Wasik a government employee, and her mother, Isme, a stay-at-home mother of Abeo and a baby boy. They are practicing Catholics having been converted in their village, but when Wasik’s mother came from the village to live with them after her husband died, the climate in the home changed. Wasik’s mother believes in the Gods of the countryside, and when Wasik is accused of unethical behavior at work and put on leave, his mother encourages him to take Abeo to the priest out in the countryside shrine to appease the Gods. The next section of the book concerns Abeo’s horrendous 15-year-experience as a ritual shrine slave, a tradition called Trokosi. Abeo is completely broken in body and spirit when she is rescued by an American woman who has made it her mission to rescue the girls in Trokosi slavery and offer them hope and a new life.The theme of the book follows a quotation of Charles Dickens; “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.” The plot moves swiftly and the chapters are short, a compelling format that keeps the reader’s sadness and anxiety at bay a bit. At the end of the novel, we are thoroughly engrossed in Abeo’s new life and her butterfly-like freedom, so when we return to the stabbing in Harlem, we understand fully why it must happen. We are finally honored to see a young woman, one who has survived unspeakable pain, become a woman of grace and courage.I loved this book. I had been exposed to ritual slavery in some other books, but McFadden’s writing style as well as the length of the book made reading about this horrendous practice bearable and enlightening. It also expresses the indomitability of the human experience and gives the reader the courage to face her own life tragedies. I appreciate so much being introduced to Bernice McFadden by the publisher. I appreciate so much getting to know Abeo Kata.Praise Song for the Butterflies will be published on Tuesday, August 28.

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    • 5/5
      Praise Song for the Butterflies by Bernice L. McFadden is a horrible, sad story. I don't mean the writing, I mean the story. And the really horrible, sad thing is, this really happened to so many young women...and it's shameful that so many just looked the other way...

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The story drew me in from the first page. I didn’t want to put it down and couldn’t wait to pick it back up. She had me!Bernice McFadden writes with complete vision of how she wants you to see her story as it unfolds. The chapters are very short but enough to withhold information and my attention. Fast reading and memorable characters. I knew that the story was going to explore my emotions once I reached the chapters of “Wife of the Gods”. The journey was trying already, but I had to put the book down in light of what was to come.I cannot wait for her next literary creation. Everything she has published has been a great read. This is another!