Butterfly burning

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Title:

Butterfly burning

Author:

Vera, Yvonne.

ISBN:

9780374291860

Personal Author:

Vera, Yvonne.

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.

Physical Description:

p. cm.

Abstract:

"Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township of Bulawayo, in the late 1940s, the novel tells the story of Phephelaphi, who glows with vitality and a secret sense of her own freedom and independence. When she meets the much older Fumbatha, he fills her "with hope larger than memory." He, in turn, "wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him." But despite their genuine happiness, Phephelaphi is not satisfied with this "one-room" love alone." "She is pulled toward the experience of other lives, the possibility of alternative futures. Her youth enables her to believe that she is in control of her own body, of her own destiny. but the closely woven fabric of Makokoba, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject Term:

Young women -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Zimbabwe -- Fiction.

Genre:

Bildungsromane.

Love stories.

Electronic Access:

Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol051/00028834.html
Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/hol056/00028834.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168020399461	823.914 V473B 2000	2	Searching... Unknown
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168020398836	823.914 V473B 2000	3	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Vera exploits language to peel away the skin of public and private lives. In Butterfly Burning she captures the ebullience and the bitterness of township life, as well as the strength and courage of her unforgettable heroine.

Butterfly Burning brings the brilliantly poetic voice of Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera to American readers for the first time. Set in Makokoba, a black township, in the late l940s, the novel is an intensely bittersweet love story. When Fumbatha, a construction worker, meets the much younger Phephelaphi, he "wants her like the land beneath his feet from which birth had severed him." He in turn fills her "with hope larger than memory."

But Phephelaphi is not satisfied with their "one-room" love alone. The qualities that drew Fumbatha to her, her sense of independence and freedom, end up separating them. And the closely woven fabric of township life, where everyone knows everyone else, has a mesh too tight and too intricate to allow her to escape her circumstances on her own.