Nnedi Okorafor: Lagoon

It's not often that you run into a work of fiction that makes you sit back on your heels and examine just how deeply you have bought into racist and colonialist narratives about an entire continent, but that's exactly what Okorafor's Lagoon did for me.

Lagoon is a narrative centred around first contact with a powerful, and very diferent, but at least potentially peaceful and beneficial alien species that has arrived on Earth. It is set, not in the standard European or North American metropolis, but in the Nigerian city of Lagos, which is built around a lagoon - where the alien vessel lands. The aliens, it turns out, are shapeshifters, with a twist - they have the science (so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic) to change the shapes and substance of other beings and objects as well as their own. As the narrative unfolds, we follow the effects that the aliens - in particular their most visible ambassador, who adopts the form of an african woman and the name Ayodele - and their actions have on the city of Lagos and the people who give it life and vitality.

Three humans - Adaora, a marine scientist in a difficult marriage, Anthony Dey Craze, a Ghanian rap star, and Agu, a soldier in trouble after trying to prevent his comrades from committing a brutal rape - are drawn, even chosen, to be Ayodele's guides both in learning about human beings and in reaching the Nigerian President, sick and self-exiled to Saudi Arabia, defeated in spirit by his inability to deal with the problems facing his country.

And here is where my internalized colonialist narrative started screwing with my reading of the novel. A lot of bad shit goes down. Rabid religious leaders promote fear and loathing of the "witches" from space, multiple factions from criminal to government try to capture, co-opt or kill Ayodele, for money, for research, for trying to get alien support for their issues, for fear.... The list goes on. The responses are often fearful, even violent, and undeniably reveal many very real cultural, social, economic and political issues in Nigeria that need addressing. But because the universal human responses of fear, greed, self-interest, desire for power, are here filtered through an unfamiliar culture and at times a pidgin language, I found myself going to that "poor, undeveloped Africa" headspace that the colonialist narrative encourages.

And then I thought to myself - if this were set in New York or London, if the very same things happened only with white characters speaking standard English or recognisable British or American dialects (Bronx, Cockney), would I think any of these reactions improbable? And I had to say that I wouldn't. From the dying politician who failed to eradicate corruption in his government to the mysogynist priest who thinks aliens and strong-willed women are equally agents of Evil, to the street thugs who think having a captive alien who can create gold is their way to wealth and power - every single fearful or violent act that Okorafor has happen in Lagos could happen in London or New York or Toronto. That made me stop and think about a good many things, and I'd love this book for that alone.

But it's also a great story, about some people finding and reveling in their hidden strengths and differences, about new beginnings, about the irrepressibility of life, about the need to see all life on this planet as part of a web of creation. It's about kicking colonialist and imperialist remnants out of your brain and your life and - whether you happen to be an oppressed person or a colonised country - finding your own self and you own way of life. It's also about the act of creating narrative (which feeds into and is fed by many of the other themes). Okorafor uses elements of magic realism and African myth/religion to underscore this, especially in the segments when the voice of a trickster/narrator speaks directly to the readers. It speaks to many things, in many voices, on many levels.