Binti by Okorafor: Science Fiction from an African Perspective

Nnedi Okorafor/ Tor Nnedi Okorafor is the author of several widely lauded novels spanning science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. In 2011, she won the World Fantasy Award for her novel, Who Fears Death, a tale of magic and history in post-apocalyptic Africa. Okorafor, of Nigerian descent living and writing in the United States, takes as the center of her fiction African culture and experience, and her recent novella Binti is no exception. Binti starts as many other Science Fiction epics do — Binti leaves home against the wishes of her parents to pursue opportunity across known space. While this is a common beginning, it is uniquely outlined as well. Her “otherness” is marked in specific ways that may feel very familiar to some us — her skin is dark and covered in red clay; her hair is plaited and loc’ed in the same clay; she wears anklets that jingle loudly when she walks. She is marked from the start as being the daughter of a distant, imaginary Africa, (while all of her cultural identifiers are quite real for the Himba of Namibia) a protege in mathematics from a family of similarly skilled people, engineers and programmers every one. She earns an invitation to study at the most famous university in the galaxy and decides to go. Even the journey feels at first familiar for the genre. She is liked by some, teased by others, ostracized by still others. But that is where the story I was expecting was left behind. While Binti is aware of how different she is from those …