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‘Baking Cakes in Kigali’ is probably the best book I can recommend to anyone who understands the importance of reading about the brutal side of African life, but is scared away by the lasting impression that vivid descriptions of violence can leave on the imagination. The novel follows an African businesswoman called Angel, who bakes elaborate cakes and lives with her large family, in the midst of a friendly, welcoming community. It feels cosy, safe and in general the characters are nice people the reader can enjoy spending time with. However Gaile Parkin is sure to show the uncomfortable realities that will inevitably butt up against contented, everyday lives when people live in Rwanda. So the reader is ushered in with promises of safety, of cheerful storylines involving cake and no extreme visualisations of violence and then gently introduced to real characters whose lives have been affected by the war in Rwanda and the AIDs crisis. This proves to be an effective way of disseminating information and humanising the country’s problems.Angel and her husband Pius moved from their home country of Tanzania to Rwanda, so that Angels’ husband could take a higher paying job. Angel takes care of her five grandchildren, as both her own children have died. Her HIV positive son was shot by robbers and Angel is told that her daughter was killed by stress after her husband left her, although readers are left initially uncertain if this is true. To remain independent and earn a little extra cash for her family Angel designs cakes for special occasions. The descriptions of the cakes are one of my favourite things about the book, each one is individual and in some way reflects Angel’s knowledge of the person who will receive the cake. They all sound like the kind of centrepieces you would gasp at if they were revealed at your party.
Through her cake business Angel meets a range of characters and hears many stories that show how the effects of British control and the genocide in Rawanda, continue to have a devastating effect on the lives of Africans. Angel meets a man who has just found his brother after being separated from his family during the genocide killings, her friend who owns a bar recounts the story of her husband’s killing and the compound’s prostitute explains that she sells herself because she is responsible for keeping her sisters and another child fed, after their parents were murdered in the genocide attacks. Through these stories, told in Angel’s comfortable house with a slice of cake, the reader is instructed in the history and the effects of the Rwandan conflict by characters who tell their stories with quiet, straightforward sadness, which means that readers who might run from painful, violent images are able to absorb what happened and begin to learn more about an important subject.
Angel’s interactions with her customers also reveal Angel’s determined feminism. I’m really chuffed that just as I was offering up my two pence about using strong, feminist women in books to qualify realistic portrayals of sexism an example of how that might work in practise appeared in Gaile Parkin’s novel. Male customers often come to Angel with some strange views on women, for example one customers tries to order a christening cake with the name ‘Goodenough’ iced on top. It turns out that the baby has received this name because it was born a girl, not a boy. By the time the cake is actually created Angel has convinced the family to change the baby’s name to ‘Perfect’.
‘ "Goodenough? Goodenough? What kind of name is Goodenough?”
“It’s because they wanted a boy, very, very much, but the baby is a girl. She’s not what they wanted, but she’s good enough.”
Angel removed her glasses and began to polish the lenses with the corner of her kanga. “Do you think that is a good name for a girl to have, Bosco?”
“It is not a bad name, Auntie.”
Angel was silent for a while as she polished her glasses vigorously. Then she said, “Do you know what, Bosco? I think perhaps it is not you who should choose the cake for Goodenough…Do you think it will be possible for you to take me with my photo album to meet Mama Goodenough?” '
That’s just one example of Angel’s discreet feminist criticism of the way men living in Rawanda view women, but there are many more episodes where realistic, traditional male views are expressed and then corrected by Angel. This clearly explains to the reader that while men may hold sexist views, these views are not acceptable. I loved that Parkins found a way to integrate feminism and realistic sexist views, found in Rawandan society.
Unfortunately Angel’s feminist principles do seem to desert her whenever one of her friends engages in activities that are anti-feminist. When this occurs she lets some women and the men they are associated with get away with anti-feminist practises without trying to correct their behaviour, perhaps out of tact, perhaps out of a belief in practicality. A young shopkeeper Leocadie waits for her boyfriend’s other girlfriend to have a baby and prays that it’s a girl so that her boyfriend, Modeste will marry her (her own baby by him is a boy). Angel does not heavily censure the man’s behaviour, or talk about how sad it is that he will choose a boy child over a girl child. Possibly she does not comment because she knows that Modeste’s support will enable Leocadie’s son to have a better life, but it seems unfortunate that she only spares a fleeting thought for the other woman and her daughter.
There is also a strange episode where Angel finds herself about to attend a female circumcision at her neighbour’s house. Angel is asked to make a cake for the cutting ceremony and though she is aware of the many problems this can cause for female children she does not interfere out of respect for her friend’s culture. She also admits that she is curious about the procedure. Now the cutting doesn’t go ahead because the girl’s mother doesn’t want her daughter cut and has devised a clever plan to fool her husband into thinking his daughter has been cut. However Angel was still willing to attend, without trying to intervene, although she knew what was going to happen would be wrong. While the idea of female circumcision is clearly shown to be wrong, and Angel clearly struggles with her decision to attend the ceremony readers may wonder at Angel’s acquiescing behaviour before she finds out that the girl will not actually be cut.
There’s lots more I could talk about, both positive and negative things (oh bloggers we can never get it all into one review can we, we need big long chats about these books which I suppose is why Google docs and book clubs and things are such a good idea), for the sensitive way that Parkin deals with grief acknowledging all the different forms it can take, without overflowing the book and making it unbearably sad. The details of the individual characters stories about their particular loss will stay with readers far longer than a news report can, yet the book ends on a simple note that suggests healing and reconciliation, which is as affecting as all the tales of death and trouble Angel has heard:
‘ Sitting in the cool Rwandan night, the quiet of the city interrupted by song and laughter, they sipped their tea together.’
Lovely.
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