The novel tells the story of Lilly, a white woman of British descent who is raised Muslim and comes to identify herself as Ethiopian, first in the walled city of Harar and later as part of the Harari diaspora in Thatcher-era London. “What distinguishes Gibb here,” Cole writes, “is her willingness to face the outrage that’s bound to dog a book about a culture and religion that are not her own” (par. Cole praises Gibb’s bravery in choosing the topic of the Ethiopian diaspora for her third novel. GradeSaver, Web.In a 2005 review of camilla’s gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly for now magazine, Susan G. Next Section Quotes Previous Section Glossary How To Cite in MLA Format Anonymous 'Sweetness in the Belly Themes'. Will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback. You can help us out by revising, improving and updatingĪfter you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. So she introduces a plea for new order by loudly declaring her Muslim faith in a nation where that is an unusual behavior at best. When she gets to London, there is order, but only because people assume she is like them. The violence is a sign that the community is striving for a new order, but the chaos of the transition is so dangerous that she must leave to go back to London, even though her life has been set in a different part of the world for most of her waking life. Lily has to evacuate her home in Ethiopia when the revolution begins there. Aziz and Lily are a family, and we know that because when they are separated, Lily is true to him, a sign of her sureness in their love.

This shows that prejudice is unfounded and brutal, and that the sufferers of social rejection can find solace in their own community. Judgment and prejudiceĪziz and Lily have more in common than their consonant patterns of their names they also are inverse opposites: Lily is too white to fit into her community, and Aziz is too dark. Her Muslim faith is her impetus to use her life to improve the lives of those in her community. She knows what it's really like to be on the wrong end of the social hierarchy, and she knows what it is like to be taken from home, to lose one's parents abroad, and when she grows up, she gives her life to social work. Lily's opinions of religion are formed by her experience as a literal orphan, so she understands an aspect of Islam that other people understand through lip-service. Written by people who wish to remain anonymous We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb