In Bitter Honey, novelist Lola Akinmade Åkerström explores the emotional undercurrents of motherhood and daughterhood. The novel reflects on how the past bears down on the present. How mothers carry their histories into their daughters’ lives – often uninvited, sometimes unrecognised.
My research is concerned with narratives that crack open the heart of African motherhood, stories that strive not only to expose pain, but to understand it. Bitter Honey gestures towards this emotional terrain.
One particular line is emblematic of this exploration: “‘When I was your age, I moved to Sweden without my mother. With nobody.’ Tina has heard this story a million times.” It captures both the weariness of inherited trauma and the fragility of the desire for understanding that threads through the novel.
