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The Butterfly Prison
Raw, confronting and playful, The Butterfly Prison redefines criminals, heroes, and poverty.
The Butterfly Prison is a tapestry of vignettes that tells the hushed-up, little stories that unfold within a world characterized by diminishment and shame, the stories of the disenfranchised, the stories of Paz and Mella.
As each fights for dignity in the shadows of poverty, harassment and exploitation, their decisions tell a compelling story of choice, consequence, systematic injustice, and the inner magic of the human constitution.
Tender and thought provoking, unusual and rule-breaking, The Butterfly Prison bites and delights as it redefines our notions of beauty, freedom, heroes, criminals, and war.
The Butterfly Prison is a tapestry of vignettes that tells the hushed-up, little stories that unfold within a world characterized by diminishment and shame, the stories of the disenfranchised, the stories of Paz and Mella.
As each fights for dignity in the shadows of poverty, harassment and exploitation, their decisions tell a compelling story of choice, consequence, systematic injustice, and the inner magic of the human constitution.
Tender and thought provoking, unusual and rule-breaking, The Butterfly Prison bites and delights as it redefines our notions of beauty, freedom, heroes, criminals, and war.
- GenresFiction
350 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 14, 2015
385 people want to read
About the author
Tamara Pearson
4 books10 followersTamara Pearson is an Australian-Mexican journalist, world news editor, activist, and literary fiction author. Living in Puebla, Mexico, she campaigns for refugee rights and the environment. Her feature and investigative journalism focuses on global inequality and the Global South, the climate, and human rights.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 24, 2016
Tamara Pearson can certainly write, but this book was not entirely even and I thought many of the characters felt more representative than real.
Her descriptions make you feel the mould and dust and despair come off the pages.
She writes about poverty and how society forces people into little "prisons" from which it is almost impossible to escape.
The main stories follow a young girl who gradually becomes more self aware and aware of the world around her and the secondary story follows a group of friends who society has thrown away. These are interspersed by news items of corporate greed and political nastiness and brutality which are quite shocking, but I think disrupted the flow of the book.
A good first book.
Her descriptions make you feel the mould and dust and despair come off the pages.
She writes about poverty and how society forces people into little "prisons" from which it is almost impossible to escape.
The main stories follow a young girl who gradually becomes more self aware and aware of the world around her and the secondary story follows a group of friends who society has thrown away. These are interspersed by news items of corporate greed and political nastiness and brutality which are quite shocking, but I think disrupted the flow of the book.
A good first book.
November 25, 2015
This book is like nothing I have read before.
At times it is really confronting and hard to read. The facts about loss of human life and environmental destruction, exploitation, corporate globalisation and global capitalism are gut wrenching. Although the history lessons are important to not to forget.
Weaved in among stories of awful atrocities of the last few decades is a story of hope for a better world.
I think everybody should read Tamara Pearson's The Butterfly Prison.
At times it is really confronting and hard to read. The facts about loss of human life and environmental destruction, exploitation, corporate globalisation and global capitalism are gut wrenching. Although the history lessons are important to not to forget.
Weaved in among stories of awful atrocities of the last few decades is a story of hope for a better world.
I think everybody should read Tamara Pearson's The Butterfly Prison.
August 30, 2015
"Monarchs with business suits instead of crowns spent four thousand American dollars per day on accommodation at the APEC Summit in Busan, South Korea, in December 2005. The luxury banquet for summit participants cost 1.5 million dollars. It surely must have been Rollsroycefood, swan toilet paper, musical champagne.
Meanwhile the city government closed the street stalls near the venue and walled off the poor quarters. Thirty-five thousand police kept protesters away. If they could, the government would have gathered up the sun too and put it inside a crystal cage in the centre of the summit, leaving just the crumbs of yellow light scattered about for the rest."
"Sitting on the fence, he imagined/remembered a photo of his mum's eyes when she slept. A close up of one eye that was still, but not peaceful. The skin eyelid skin was pulled tightly, as though it was toiling. Paz gave the photo detail; skin lines crossing, the eyelashes dark and gentle."
I have agonised more about which star allocation to provide to this novel than anything I read (well, except the Koran, which is a different case), which of course just comes back to the basic problem with star ratings. While the book is very uneven, the Butterfly Prison is an absorbing, rewarding and challenging reading experience. Pearson's language, a rhythm of description and reflection, is punch-the-air, breathtakingly good when it soars, drawing you seductively in to the perspective of her two protagonists, and carrying the fury, the despair, the strength and finally the hope of the world's poor with it.
Poverty Pearson sees as the theft of not just resources, but of joy, of creativity, of a life with possibility and variety from most of the world. The novel is a long scream of protest at this theft, and unlike many overtly political books, never simplified, never superficial.
Pearson, who grew up in Sydney's west and then spent most of her adult life in Latin America, draws seamless lines between the experiences of the world's poor, whether in Mexico City or Redfern, Venezuela's Merida or Macquarie Fields. The portrait of the latter - "Every day in Macquarie Fields, police cars parked in groups of three outside the supermarket, the station and the park. Officers patrolled the quiet public housing streets, and their shadows stuck to the public housing walls, haunting people even when they weren't around" - is searing, indictatory, confronting an instantly recognisable. It would have been easy to set this tale of poverty and resistance in a country renowned for both, but by setting the tale in Australia, Pearson confronts the reader to understand the universality of poverty, of theft and of the war being hope and hopelessness. She refuses to allow a middle-class Australian to look away, to pretend the problem is elsewhere.
The main technique employed here - the use of interspersed paragraphs of world history, works particularly well, and serves to break up the lengthy and occasionally repetitive, narrative (and in a surprising connection, reminded me somewhat of comic writer Warren Ellis' integration of headlines and story, albeit with a more driven tone).
Which is not to say the novel is grim. Far from it. Pearson has such love for humanity - her protagonists' creativity shines, and their love for housemates and collaborators gives the novel bounce and energy. A key theme of the novel is the families we construct for ourselves, the importance of loving and being loved, of being part of we and not just I.
The book is uneven - not unusual for a first novel - with clunky constructions popping up and pacing issues, particularly in the first half which drags too much. The author has time and space to grow, to make the soaring heights of the book closer to the normal terrain. I was a little worried that I wouldn't love this book (see disclaimer below), but while the flaws are real, there's no question that this is one of those which creeps inside you and changes something.
(Disclaimer - I have known the author for 15 years. I'm not sure that makes me less critical, as opposed to me. YMMV.)
Meanwhile the city government closed the street stalls near the venue and walled off the poor quarters. Thirty-five thousand police kept protesters away. If they could, the government would have gathered up the sun too and put it inside a crystal cage in the centre of the summit, leaving just the crumbs of yellow light scattered about for the rest."
"Sitting on the fence, he imagined/remembered a photo of his mum's eyes when she slept. A close up of one eye that was still, but not peaceful. The skin eyelid skin was pulled tightly, as though it was toiling. Paz gave the photo detail; skin lines crossing, the eyelashes dark and gentle."
I have agonised more about which star allocation to provide to this novel than anything I read (well, except the Koran, which is a different case), which of course just comes back to the basic problem with star ratings. While the book is very uneven, the Butterfly Prison is an absorbing, rewarding and challenging reading experience. Pearson's language, a rhythm of description and reflection, is punch-the-air, breathtakingly good when it soars, drawing you seductively in to the perspective of her two protagonists, and carrying the fury, the despair, the strength and finally the hope of the world's poor with it.
Poverty Pearson sees as the theft of not just resources, but of joy, of creativity, of a life with possibility and variety from most of the world. The novel is a long scream of protest at this theft, and unlike many overtly political books, never simplified, never superficial.
Pearson, who grew up in Sydney's west and then spent most of her adult life in Latin America, draws seamless lines between the experiences of the world's poor, whether in Mexico City or Redfern, Venezuela's Merida or Macquarie Fields. The portrait of the latter - "Every day in Macquarie Fields, police cars parked in groups of three outside the supermarket, the station and the park. Officers patrolled the quiet public housing streets, and their shadows stuck to the public housing walls, haunting people even when they weren't around" - is searing, indictatory, confronting an instantly recognisable. It would have been easy to set this tale of poverty and resistance in a country renowned for both, but by setting the tale in Australia, Pearson confronts the reader to understand the universality of poverty, of theft and of the war being hope and hopelessness. She refuses to allow a middle-class Australian to look away, to pretend the problem is elsewhere.
The main technique employed here - the use of interspersed paragraphs of world history, works particularly well, and serves to break up the lengthy and occasionally repetitive, narrative (and in a surprising connection, reminded me somewhat of comic writer Warren Ellis' integration of headlines and story, albeit with a more driven tone).
Which is not to say the novel is grim. Far from it. Pearson has such love for humanity - her protagonists' creativity shines, and their love for housemates and collaborators gives the novel bounce and energy. A key theme of the novel is the families we construct for ourselves, the importance of loving and being loved, of being part of we and not just I.
The book is uneven - not unusual for a first novel - with clunky constructions popping up and pacing issues, particularly in the first half which drags too much. The author has time and space to grow, to make the soaring heights of the book closer to the normal terrain. I was a little worried that I wouldn't love this book (see disclaimer below), but while the flaws are real, there's no question that this is one of those which creeps inside you and changes something.
(Disclaimer - I have known the author for 15 years. I'm not sure that makes me less critical, as opposed to me. YMMV.)
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December 3, 2015http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/1...
Review by Justin Podur
Tamara Pearson is an independent left journalist from Australia who writes about Latin America. Her novel, The Butterfly Prison, set in Sydney, weaves together three different threads. In the following spoiler-filled review, I discuss each thread.
In the main thread, a young working-class woman named Mella leaves an unhappy home as a teenager, finding herself in an exploitative relationship while working in an exploitative retail job. At the job, she meets a friend, an Iranian refugee named Rafi, who introduces her first to union politics, then to radical politics, before being summarily deported to Iran and never seen again.
Mella has already become a part of an activist network by the time of Rafi's deportation, so her growth continues without him. We read about Mella's political awakening, her political education, and her participation in an ultimately successful revolution.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/1...
Review by Justin Podur
Tamara Pearson is an independent left journalist from Australia who writes about Latin America. Her novel, The Butterfly Prison, set in Sydney, weaves together three different threads. In the following spoiler-filled review, I discuss each thread.
In the main thread, a young working-class woman named Mella leaves an unhappy home as a teenager, finding herself in an exploitative relationship while working in an exploitative retail job. At the job, she meets a friend, an Iranian refugee named Rafi, who introduces her first to union politics, then to radical politics, before being summarily deported to Iran and never seen again.
Mella has already become a part of an activist network by the time of Rafi's deportation, so her growth continues without him. We read about Mella's political awakening, her political education, and her participation in an ultimately successful revolution.
Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2015/1...
May 19, 2017
"They stole our humanity, and now we're taking it back".
This is not an easy book to describe. It is certainly not structured like a conventional book. Other reviews have described it as a rich tapestry or a series of vignettes. I think that is an apt description. The book screams against injustice with polemics rich in their incisiveness interspersed with the coming of age stories of two characters who are the victims of poverty and violence. Set in Sydney it captures the contrasts of the city very well, the realities of struggling aginst low self-esteem, of alienation and living with a troubled childhood.
The two main characters have only the most fleeting (but vivid) of connections possible. The connection, however, remains imprinted on the memory like much of life's events that appear in the same way- moments that become an abstraction in later years, seemingly unimportant, but vividly imprinted.
The novel is beautifully written. Its beauty comes from its descriptiveness of resilience in a world that is stifling, impoverished, mundane and stultified. It is, in essence, tender and gentle in the face of brutality.
Both of the main characters have one thing in common; the struggle to survive and to find their humanity. That is the enduring theme of the novel. These are stories that are not normally told; stories of the dispossessed, people who've been shoved aside struggling to find their space in the world and stand on their own two feet.
As the characters in the story take shape, the book solidifies and gains greater form. The opening sequences are important as they paint very accurately a picture of the world we live in; its cruelty, its injustices and despite everything its beauty.
Importantly the story reminds us we must struggle for a better world, and only in doing so can we transform ourselves.
I think Tamara Pearson has given a lot of herself in this novel; her passion, intelligence and the wisdom gained from personal experience. It's my hope she writes again.
This is not an easy book to describe. It is certainly not structured like a conventional book. Other reviews have described it as a rich tapestry or a series of vignettes. I think that is an apt description. The book screams against injustice with polemics rich in their incisiveness interspersed with the coming of age stories of two characters who are the victims of poverty and violence. Set in Sydney it captures the contrasts of the city very well, the realities of struggling aginst low self-esteem, of alienation and living with a troubled childhood.
The two main characters have only the most fleeting (but vivid) of connections possible. The connection, however, remains imprinted on the memory like much of life's events that appear in the same way- moments that become an abstraction in later years, seemingly unimportant, but vividly imprinted.
The novel is beautifully written. Its beauty comes from its descriptiveness of resilience in a world that is stifling, impoverished, mundane and stultified. It is, in essence, tender and gentle in the face of brutality.
Both of the main characters have one thing in common; the struggle to survive and to find their humanity. That is the enduring theme of the novel. These are stories that are not normally told; stories of the dispossessed, people who've been shoved aside struggling to find their space in the world and stand on their own two feet.
As the characters in the story take shape, the book solidifies and gains greater form. The opening sequences are important as they paint very accurately a picture of the world we live in; its cruelty, its injustices and despite everything its beauty.
Importantly the story reminds us we must struggle for a better world, and only in doing so can we transform ourselves.
I think Tamara Pearson has given a lot of herself in this novel; her passion, intelligence and the wisdom gained from personal experience. It's my hope she writes again.
July 4, 2016
Tamara is an evocative writing talent. And her work vividly describes how the human spirit stands up to, and conquers, the evils of the free world. A heartbreaking and inspiring story.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews