‘I believed I could only be great if I were curious enough to seek greatness.’
I’ve always enjoyed how speculative fiction is a great avenue for socia‘I believed I could only be great if I were curious enough to seek greatness.’
I’ve always enjoyed how speculative fiction is a great avenue for social commentary on current issues while providing a futuristic landscape to make these concepts more malleable and chart new directions with them. Binti, the afrofuturist novella from Nnedi Okorafor and first in a series of stories about the narrator, is a thrilling tale of culture and conflict when an interplanetary voyage is violently hijacked en route to a university. Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib is the first of her people to ever be invited to attend the Oomza Uni and sets off into a wider universe where xenophobia is widely prevalent, only to have to negotiate a powder keg of long standing interspecies conflict in order to survive and ‘prevent a bloodbath in which everyone would lose.’ Okorafor expertise in world building creates a future so marvelously expansive for such a short book as Binti interrogates concepts of identity and ethics in cultural contexts where Binti is caught between holding onto tradition and adapting to a larger world around her.
‘My people are sons and daughters of the soil.’
Okorafor’s dynamic use of cultural touchstones amongst the various characters becomes the stage for which the themes play out in Binti. The narrator is from the Himba people, a real ethnic group indigenous to Namibia in Southern Africa. In Binti, the Himba are adept at electronic technology, with her father being a successful maker of ‘Astrolabs’ (a communication device that stores the whole of a person’s life) and Binti being a ‘master harmonizer’ able to create electric currents with her body.They are tight-knit, wary of outsiders, and while Binti’s acceptance to the university is a major accomplishment, it is upsetting to her community.
‘My tribe is obsessed with innovation and technology, but it is small, private, and, as I said, we don’t like to leave Earth. We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward. No Himba has ever gone to Oomza Uni. So me being the only one on the ship was not that surprising. However, just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.’
The Himba are generally looked down upon by the Khoush, the lighter-skinned humans who are city and space dwellers and the race that runs and attends Oomza Uni. Binti tells us they have a feeling of superiority to other races and while Binti experiences racism, it is different than the aggresiveness the Khoush feel for the Meduse, the jellyfish-like species with which the Khoush have a long-standing disdain. The nuance is best expressed in the way they treat Binti and Okwu, the Meduse she tepidly befriends amidst the tense standoff central to the story: ‘where they saw me as a fascinating exotic human, they saw Okwu as a dangerous threat.’
‘They say that when faced with a fight you cannot win, you can never predict what you will do next.’
There is a great depth of world building in Binti and with only minimal explanation, Okorafor is able to probe vast implications as to the nuances of interspecies relations. In a book that focues largely on ideas of tradition, we see how hatred can become a sort of traditions itself, such as the way ‘the Khoush expected everyone to remember their greatest enemy and injustice. They even worked Meduse anatomy and rudimentary technology into mathematics and science classes.’ Generations of groomed disdain often has violent consequences when assumptions bypass true understanding of unfamiliar people and cultures. The Meduse, in turn, operate on assumptions such as ‘humans only understand violence,’ making Binti’s need to negotiate survival all the more difficult and fraught with misunderstanding.
‘The Meduse are not what we humans think. They are truth. They are clarity. They are decisive. There are sharp lines and edges. They understand honor and dishonor. I had to earn their honor…’
Adapting is a crucial element to survival, and one Binti must utilize in order be the great harmonizer she is destined to be. We see a contrast in her relations with others and how it relates to aspects of culture, such as friends from her own culture (one in which members don’t really associate beyond work with outsiders) who do not value her aims of mathematical scholarship and then her friends on the ship that value her for her academics but are removed from her culture. It is a reminder that while our culture and traditions are valuable parts of our identity, it is not all we are. Later, Okwu and Binti, about as at odds with each other as they can get, begin to value each other through a mutual respect and open curiosity for one another’s cultures. Using the edan, a mysterious object she discovered long ago that activates and protects her from the Meduse while also giving them the ability to speak to each other despite not knowing one another’s language (it is sort of a Pentecost moment here), they begin to relate through similar aspects of individual identity, valuing the determination and convictions the other holds. Binti, in this way, becomes a parable on seeking to understand in order to overcome prejudice.
‘My hair was braided into the history of my people.’
There is a beautiful moment when, through their ability to communicate, they discover that the Meduse word for their speared tentacles that are critical to their cultural identity and Binti’s word for her hair braids translate into the same word: Okuoko. It becomes a touchpoint of similarity despite being two different things, though both essential elements of their cultural identity. For Binti, her braids are woven in a way that ‘tell the story’ of her family and legacy. The tentacles are part of the Meduse’s self-defense, and the story revolves around the Meduse attempting to break into the Uni in order to recover the tentacle spear the Khoush took from the Meduse chief for the purpose of study and have displayed in the Uni’s museum. At the end, Binti’s braids are replaced with Meduse okuoko and is symbolic of her identity adapting from an isolated set of traditions into a more collective identity in a larger world.
This is similar with the Otjize, the mixture of red clay the Himba wear on their skin as part of their cultural identity and religious practice. Along the way, Binti and Okwu discover the clay works as a miraculous healing balm on Meduse skin and, later, Binti discovers she can recreate the mixture with clay found on her new home planet at the Uni. It becomes a more nuanced symbol of the benefits from sharing culture with others as well as a reminder that traditions can adapt to incorporate new landscapes and new lives outside the traditional cultural homeland. An element of traditions adapting after diaspora is evident here.
‘“When you do math fractals long enough, you kick yourself into treeing just enough to get lost in the shallows of the mathematical sea.’
The story certainly probes ideas of ethics, such as the previously mentioned spear kept in the Uni museum. The story feels like an allegory of colonialism in a way, touching on how, throughout history, cultural artifacts have been taken from other cultures to collect in, say, the British Museum. There is also the gatekeeping of academics, with Khoush traditionally being the only ones invited to study at the Uni. In Binti, we see science and mathematics being a way for cultures to interact through the shared knowledge, such as it being an equalizer for Binti and the Khoush friends she makes in the early stage of the voyage, but also a warning to the violence when academics is undertaken without ethics. At novellas end, however, we see a renewed commitment towards inclusion in the Uni and hope for a brighter, shared future. It could come across as a bit simplistic and naive, especially how quickly the shift occurs, but I do enjoy the hope inherent here.
I quite enjoyed Binti, a quick tale about culture and forging connections across divides and hope to continue reading the series. I mean, I need to know what the edan is, and I enjoy how weird tech artifacts always figure into Okorafor’s afrofuturism stories. I also enjoy how much her stories employ actual African culture and deal with issues of Western society and colonialism in friction with culture. This is a fun one with a lot of excellent world building that seems shockingly vast considering the small scope of the novella. And just cool sci-fi stuff, like the ship they travel in is actually a living creature refurbished for ferrying people around the stars. I also enjoy the hope in a shared, ethical future where we can learn to stop war and overcome prejudice. Cheers to that.
‘She wondered what story it would weave about her and how far the story would carry.’
There’s something I really enjoy about novellas. It is like the p‘She wondered what story it would weave about her and how far the story would carry.’
There’s something I really enjoy about novellas. It is like the poem version of a novel, stripping down to the bare necessities while still expanding voluminously in your mind. Nnedi Okorafor excels at this in Remote Control, leaving signposts that evince a much larger and sinister world at play while confining the story to a sharp and singular tale within it. An Aftrofuturist book set amidst the shea fields of Ghana, Remote Control follows the young girl Sankofa--dubbed the ‘adopted child of the Angel of Death’ in the legends that surround her--as she travels seeking something stolen from her. Her lost seed that fell from the sky has given her a great power of death. A green glow emanates from her when in danger and kills all it touches and just the simple touch of her hand disables all electronics. Leaving behind her village and the countless dead, she walks the land with only a fox as her companion. This tightly woven tale combines fantasy, sci-fi and culture in a brief but dazzling story about corporate imperialism under the guise of aid and the way legends shape us while we, through retellings, shape them.
The day the young girl, seven at the time, lost her family and the life she knew, she also lost her name. In the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, she renames herself Sankofa. Sankofa is one of the ‘sky words’ she would carve in the land to map the stars--which may or may have called down the mysterious seed which fell from space and gifted its curse upon her--and is associated with a proverb that translates as ‘t is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten’ as a message about drawing from the past to shape the future. [image] In Ghana, the symbol of a bird with its head turned backwards to pick up an egg represents Sankofa, and her brother’s wooden Sankofa carving with the broken neck that the girl brings when she leaves her village is a chilling reminder of the destruction she unintentionally caused.
‘I am Sankofa, I belong wherever I want to belong.’
The storyline meanders like a journey, tracing her life back and forth as she weaves across the country following her internal pull towards her lost seed and leaving a trail of bodies behind her. Her reputation precedes her, with folks cowering in fear when she passes through town and spreading the legend of her far and wide and turning her into as much a mythological figure as actual flesh-and-blood. Her story has connotations with wandering witches, but the bringer of death may also be one of peace for those who are long suffering. Sankofa works almost as an inverse of the stories of Jesus traveling about and healing or raising people from the dead as she is often implored to put grant rest to the sick and dying. ‘I don’t know it to be evil,’ she says of her powers. Though it brings death she also thinks death is natural, ‘the world is euthanasia.’
While Sankofa only uses the power to kill, ‘when people threaten my life,’ (and one instance when she arrives with the intention to kill for vengeance) the power still kills beyond her control. While it is seen that being kind to one with such power is often the path to safety from her, misunderstandings lead to the death of those closest to her. She resents being powerless in the face of her power that is, ultimately, more powerful than one person should be able to hold. But still it is her. ‘It hurt because so much of it was terrible,’ Okorafor writes, ‘and still it was hers. Regardless.’
The foil to her character is the Robocop that protects the aptly named Robotown, a market village that thrives on sales of advanced tech. The robot keeps the town safe, but the process of doing so is creating a database of each citizen, scanning the data that passes along with them in their phones and other tech. Putting their entire safety structure on the shoulders of one superhero-like robot is not unlike trusting in Sankofa’s powers and expecting to never be harmed by it. Not only will their society break into chaos is the robot malfunctions but it is likely sending all their data to LifeGen, ‘that fucking big American corporation that’s probably going to eventually destroy the world.’ What seems to confuse the algorithm most is lacking any personal data to collect. Sankofa with her inability to touch electronics is an enigma, furthering LifeGen’s interest in following her and upsetting the social order of data-driven decision making upon which the robocop functions.
This brushes upon modern social anxieties over private data and corporate social engineering. While fear of Sankofa influences behavior, as social psychologist Dr. Shoshana Zuboff discusses, ‘Personal information is increasingly used to enforce standards of behavior,’ and the robocop is reshaping village life presumably around the world in a way that benefits LifeGen. There seems to be an uneasy relationship between tradition and technology, best exemplified by a vendor Sankofa see’s with ‘tattoos of circuitry’ that ‘run up both arms like a disease.’ Slowly LifeGen is creeping across Africa, coming in like a true colonizer with one hand outstretched with the promise of improving life to distract from the other hand clutching a knife behind their back, as hinted at in passing references such as their desire to obtain Sankofa’s mystery seed or carved graffiti she sees stating ‘#AfricansAreNotLabRats’:
’LifeGen made a lot of the drugs patients took. The LifeGen symbol was a hand grasping lightning. But clearly, their drugs didn’t work very well. And clearly, pharmaceuticals weren’t their only focus.’
Where Okorafor most shines is her examination of the legends and the stories we tell and how they are shaped by our context for wanting to tell them. ‘Her story travelled like an ancestor, always ahead of, beside and behind her’. Sankofa hear’s many versions of her own story which always arrive in the villages she passes before her, some more accurate than others. Some versions are meant to scare, some are meant to be used for the benefit of the teller, such as the boys using the story to try and seduce Sankofa--not knowing it is her--by claiming they know how to stop the witch. ‘If there was one rule she lived by it was the fact that Stories were soothsayers, truth-tellers and liars.’ This is an apt description of fiction in general, where in every elaborate fiction there is a kernel of truth and an avenue to critique the world around us through transformation into stories. Okorafor wields this power well with her own crisp and effective writing where the implied travels further than the actual words on the page and build a lush landscape of the imagination.
This is a smart, sharp and fun little novella that hits all the right notes of succinct sci-fi and is perfect for fans of books like N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth books. It is quite dark and intense, and the violence is very stylized to some pretty amazingly disturbing imagery. This is a world that feels so much larger than the reader is currently shown, and could be the launching point for a whole slew of works set in the world, though if not it wouldn’t feel like a waste. Okorafor’s use of shrouding the outside in translucent mystery is part of what makes this feel so dynamic and immersive without having to get into much, it is masterful really, and all her points have been aptly made without need to spell them out further. It feels reflective of sinister things lurking in our own world that we brush aside or relegate to the peripheries to avoid confronting due to the inconvenience of the systemic changes it would requite to properly address them. This is my first adventure into her work and I am already eager to check out her impressive back-catalogue.
4/5
‘In Sankofa's years on the road, she'd learned that people were complicated. They wore masks and guises to protect or hide their real selves. They reinvented themselves. They destroyed themselves. They built on themselves. She understood people and their often contradictory ways.’...more
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afrofuturism
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