Nnedi Okorafor: Akata Witch and Akata Warrior

[bibliogramma]

Sunny Nwazue is twelve, and lives in Nigeria with her parents, but she is Naijamerican - born in America to Nigerian parents - and she’s still getting used to living in Africa. People call her “akata” - a word that means bush animal and is a pejorative often used in Nigeria against Black Americans like Sunny. She’s albino, which is making it hard for her at school. She loves reading and learning, which is making it even harder. And though she doesn’t know it yet, she’s one of the Leopard People - the African name for those rare humans born with the ability to use juju, or magic. Some cultures call them shamans, or sorcerers, or other things.

Sunny is what the Leopard People call a free agent. Most Leopard people are born to families of Leopard People, and they know from childhood what they are, and what being a Leopard Person means, even though they don’t begin to come into their powers until they are initiated in early adolescence. But free agents like Sunny are born to families where no one else is a Leopard Person, and they know nothing about their heritage until something powerful happens, or they meet a Leopard Person who figures out what they are and brings them into the society.

Sunny is lucky. Not long after she has a strange experience with a candle and a vision, she meets another Leopard Person, a girl named Chichi who guessed what she is. Together with Sunny’s best friend Orlu, another, not quite as perceptive Leopard Person, Chichi begins Sunny’s introduction to her true people.

It’s not going to be easy. She can’t tell anyone who isn’t a Leopard about what she’s going through, and her parents are strict about things like curfews - but nighttime is when some of her most important learning must be done. And then there’s the matter of a serial killer who has been preying on children in the city...

Nnedi Okorafor’s book Akata Witch is ostensibly for young adults, but I found it just as interesting and entertaining as her books for adults. It’s a magical coming-of-age story, an adventure, and a mystery thriller all in one. Sunny is a determined, courageous young girl who draws the reader into her journey and keeps them reading, eager to see her succeed.

In Akata Warrior, the sequel to Akata Witch, Sunny and her friends are a year older, and Sunny has learned more about how Leopard society works, and is getting to know her way around the magical community of Leopard Knocks, which both is and isn’t part if the mundane world, but she is still somewhat of an outsider, with gaps in her knowledge of customs, history and traditions. She has a mentor, Sugar Cream, who is the Head Librarian of the community of Leopard Knocks, and is learning to read Nsibidi, the secret Leopard language that very few, even among the Leopard People, can read.

Even though she can’t talk to her parents about being a Leopard, they have come to grudgingly accept that she sometimes goes off with her friends to do things she doesn’t talk about. They aren’t happy about it, but they aren’t trying to stop her.

And she’s having dreams about a city filled with smoke, dreams that remind her of the strange vision she saw in a candle flame that began her journey toward becoming a Leopard person.

Forces are loose and moving in the world, and once again, Sunny and her friends will be instrumental in fighting the evil that has come through from the place of spirits the Leopard People call the wilderness.

I love these books. I love it that Sunny, who is different, who can be read as disabled, is a hero. I love it that her powers are partly derived from her disability. I love it that rather than gong with the same old child with a destiny trope, Okorafir has clearly established that it is the team of Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha that together can do great things - and that it’s not, in the eyes of the Leopard people, because they have a special destiny, but because they are the ones who happen to be here, now, with one set of skills that can wage the fight. If they fall, some other group will come along and carry on the battle, maybe in a different way, but it will go on. This is not te one and only hero story but an everyone can be a hero if they act at the right time just as anyone can fail.

And it is good to read contemporary fantasy that isn’t set in Europe or North America and doesn’t draw on European traditions of monsters and magic. This is fantasy that takes its shape from other traditions, and there’s not nearly enough of that around.