Akata Witch

Akata Witch Nnedi Okorafor

Sunny's parents are Nigerian, but she was born in the US and then they moved back to Nigeria when she was 9*. She's also an albino. Her classmates stare. Her father hates her.

She saw the end of the world in a candle flame.

And that's when she learns that she's a Leopard person. Leopard people work juju and have powers. They had their Leopadness from the Lambs (aka Muggles.)

And like that, Sunny enters a double life-- dutiful daughter, diligent student by day, Leopard person out to save the world by night.

Because there's a serial killer on the loose and he's been murdering children. The council knows it's a Leopard person and knows that Sunny and her friends have been chosen to deal with it...

Love.

First off, hey! It's a fantasy set in Nigeria! And the magic and magical world are ones with what I assume are Nigerian characteristics (I don't really know much about Nigeria, so I can't say for sure.)

Second of all, Sunny is awesome. She's smart and clever and nice without being too nice. She has some innate abilities and strengths but she also has to learn how to use them. She isn't instantly the bestest Leopard person ever. I think the supporting characters, especially her friend Chichi and Orlu are also really well drawn.

I like how Okorafor plays with Sunny's outsider status. In the Leopard world, she's a free agent, or one who isn't born in Leopard parents. She wasn't raised in the culture or the knowledge, which puts her at a disadvantage. In the Lamb world, she's between cultures. Her classmates call her akata which is a not-nice word for an African-American. The tensions here are played with even more when Sasha arrives from the States. Her skin color also sets her apart from her peers and family. Her in-between status makes her an excellent tour guide both to the Leopard world but also Nigeria.

There's so much going on here that I really hope this is a series. It stands alone, but the world is so complex and I want to spend more time in it. There's also a lot going on with Sunny's family's backstory that I'd love to explore further.

OH! And I liked that there was some super super light romance but NO instalove and NO love triangles and it was a really minor subplot that didn't hijack the story.

Overall a really excellent book. I che4cked it out when we got it in last spring, but didn't get a chance to read it before I had to turn in all my library books before going on maternity leave. Luckily, it stayed on my radar so I checked it out again and had a chance to read it this time. So glad I did.

*Usually. My one complaint with the book is that sometimes this shifted. Like, she moved back when she was 9, but at one point says she and Orlu have been going to school together since they were 5. I kinda got the sense that when she moved back changed in revisions but not all references to it were caught.


Book Provided by... my local library

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Africans Thought of It

Africans Thought of It: Amazing Innovations Bathseba Opini and Richard B. Lee

They should really call this book "Cool Things they did in Ancient Africa." Topics covered include medicine, hunting, architecture, food, and music.

I very much appreciate that the authors don’t treat Africa as a monolithic place or culture. For instance, the section on metal working talks about different types of metals worked by different peoples—different metals, different objects, different uses. The communication section includes Egyptian hieroglyphics, Beninese gongs and Sudanese woodblocks. It also compares a traditional Maasai animal horn with a modern vuvuzela.

The design is bright and bold, with lots and lots of pictures. Because so many cultures are discussed within each topic, most of it’s presented in a series of pull-out boxes. (If it’s mostly boxes, are they still pull-out boxes?) Because of the way the information is presented, the book is very browseable and readers can dip in and out of it, although it’s interesting enough that once they dip in, they probably won’t dip out until they’ve read the whole thing.

Book Provided by... my local library

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A Crooked Rib

Old Reviews! I have a backlog of about 100 reviews to write. Books don't always get reviewed right away for various reasons. Even books I really liked. And then it's been so long it's hard to write the review, because I can't remember them well. So, we're going to take a Good Reads summary and I'll say what I remember and call it a day.

A book from 2007:

From a Crooked Rib Nuruddin Farah

From GoodReads:

Written with complete conviction from a woman’s point of view, Nuruddin Farah’s spare, shocking first novel savagely attacks the traditional values of his people yet is also a haunting celebration of the unbroken human spirit. Ebla, an orphan of eighteen, runs away from her nomadic encampment in rural Somalia when she discovers that her grandfather has promised her in marriage to an older man. But even after her escape to Mogadishu, she finds herself as powerless and dependent on men as she was out in the bush. As she is propelled through servitude, marriage, poverty, and violence, Ebla has to fight to retain her identity in a world where women are “sold like cattle."

What I remember: This was a hard book to read. Elba's entire life is lived at the mercy of the men in her life. Every time she gets out of one bad situation, she's taken advantage of by another man. At the same time, I loved the language and structure. I also really loved the contrast between country life in a nomadic tribe and city life in Mogadishu. I will also note that this book takes place around the time of Somali independence, so it's not a portrait of modern-day life in the country. There were some themes hinted at, mainly by the men in the city, that dealt with the changing political landscape.

Book Provided by... my local library

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