SWEETNESS IN THE BELLY

BY CAMILLA GIBB

Sweetness in the Belly is a richly detailed portrayal of one woman’s search for love and belonging. Set in Emperor Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia and the racially charged world of Thatcher’s London, it is a deeply imagined immersion into the lives of people for whom war, poverty, marginalization and exile are commonplace.

Told by Lilly, a compellingly young white Muslim woman, whose nomadic parents left her with a legacy of intense and varied cultural bonds, the novel addresses the pain of immigration, the beauty of sharing unfamiliar customs and the horror of seeing one's home country in tatters. Sweetness in the Belly is also a beautiful and poetic love story.

We hope you will come on the journey with us.

After her hippie British parents are murdered, Lilly is raised at a Sufi shrine in Morocco. As a young woman she goes on pilgrimage to Harar, Ethiopia, where she teaches Qur’an to children. But even swathed in a traditional headscarf, Lilly can’t escape being marked as a foreigner. Forced to flee Ethiopia for England, she must confront the riddle of who she is and where she belongs.

This year’s OBOA Writing Contest invites you to consider the meaning of “Home” focusing on your sense of place, migration, home or lack of home.

Feel free to interpret the theme of this contest in any way that speaks to you, keeping in mind the overarching theme of “Home”.  

Send your entry to: writingcontest@aurorapl.ca

In Sweetness in the Belly, Lilly is sent to live with a poor family where she earns her keep teaching local children the Qur’an. Throughout the novel, children are featured in the book.

This year’s OBOA Photography Contest invites you to capture children in the act of discovery.

Feel free to interpret the theme of this contest in any way that
speaks to you.  Send your entry to: brock@auroran.com

• Discuss Lilly’s role as an outsider and her struggle for acceptance both as a farenji in Harar and as a white Muslim in London. Who else in the novel could be considered an outsider?

•  What do the words “family” and “home” mean to Lilly? How does her view of herself as an orphan evolve over the course of the novel?

• “Faith has accompanied me over time and geography and upheaval,” says Lilly. For her, love and Islam “have always been one.” Did Sweetness in the Belly in any way alter or broaden your understanding of Islam? Consider, for instance, the notion of jihad or holy war.

• Sweetness in the Belly alternates between Harar, Ethiopia, in the 70s, and London, England, in the 80s and early 90s. What qualities does this crosscutting of time and place impart to the narrative?

• In the chapter entitled “Exile,” Lilly observes that “the smell of coffee draws women together, an olfactory call throughout a neighbourhood luring women from their homes to gather…” Later in the chapter, the act of twisting a mortar over coffee beans and cardamom triggers in her a surge of nightmarish images from the Red Terror. Of the many lush sensory details in the novel – both fair and foul – which affected you the most?

•  While living in Ethiopia, Camilla Gibb witnessed a female circumcision. A doctoral student in social anthropology at the time, she says she had to “understand it in the context of the community in which it was taking place, and not judge.” When Nouria’s daughters are circumcised in Sweetness in the Belly, how does Lilly react as the only Western-born character in the scene? How did you react as a reader?

• Based on your reading of Sweetness in the Belly, what feelings and psychological states are associated with the experience of exile? How do Amina and Yusuf, for example, cope with their respective traumas?

• In Harar, Aziz is called a “black savage, African slave, barbarian, pagan.” In London, Lilly is called a “white fu’in Paki.” Discuss the notion of “otherness” in the novel. How do artificial divisions manifest themselves based on ethnicity, class, race, religion and gender?

• Discuss the ways in which the female characters ensure their survival and empower themselves despite the gender divisions within their communities.

• What does Lilly mean when she says that Aziz “unveiled” her? How does she reconcile her love for him with her love of Islam?

• There can be criticism about tackling a culture different from one’s own, but Camilla Gibb was never been accused of cultural appropriation. Do you think this is because of her background as an academic social anthropologist?