Occasionally, I was startled by a character's motivations, or unconvinced by a set of reactions that seemed more plot-necessary than naturally developed, but these were minor exceptions to a general rule of deep enjoyment. Okorafor's writing is even more beautiful than I remember it being in Binti, evocative and sharply elegant in its economy. Where Binti flung its main character into outer space, Home has her delving deep into the desert that's been her home, into her family history and the secrets buried beneath her skin.Īuthor Interviews Hugo Nominee Nnedi Okorafor: 'I Love Stories - And So I Write Them' Home sees Binti returning to her people changed by necessity - but also leaving them again to change by choice. In what I'm beginning to think of as Okorafor's trademark flouting of conventional genre structures, Home is the coming-of-age story Binti seemed to promise before bait-and-switching into an intense thriller. We see Binti dealing with the aftermath of her trauma we see that the Himba people's marginalization and oppression does not make them immune to prejudices of their own and we see Binti's painful, complicated relationship with her family, who feel both proud of her accomplishments and betrayed by her leaving. I was impressed with and admired Binti, but Home is more ambitious, complicating some of the received information in the first book and addressing some of its gaps. She feels powerfully the need to return home and undergo the pilgrimage customary for young women of her tribe, and Okwu, her agender Meduse captor-turned-friend, offers to accompany her as ambassador to humanity - the first Meduse to set tentacle on Earth. Her attempts at understanding her edan, the ancient artifact that saved her life and allowed her to communicate with the jellyfish-like aliens called the Meduse, are often stymied by violent mood swings she can't control or understand. In Binti: Home, Okorafor sends her heroine back to Earth on a quest to reconcile the new, conflicting parts of herself with her roots.Ī year after her cataclysmic arrival at Oomza University, Binti finds herself struggling to make friends or focus on her studies. A shape-shifting story of adventure, trauma, transformation and communication, Binti followed its namesake heroine from her Himba roots on Earth to faraway Oomza University, where hundreds of different peoples from across the galaxy go to study. In 2015, Nnedi Okorafor's wildly successful Binti helped launch Tor.com's novella-publishing imprint before winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards the following year. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Binti: Home Author Nnedi Okorafor
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