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• 1 2019-02-14T17:46:51-08:00 Course Texts 58 plain 2019-05-09T11:47:35-07:00

  Binti by Nnedi Okorafor 

  Winner of the 2016 Hugo Award (Novella)
  Winner of the 2015 Nebula Award (Novella)
  Winner of the 2017 NOMMO Award (Novella)
  Finalist for the 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award (Novella)
  Finalist for the 2016 British Fantasy Award (Novella)
  Finalist for the 2016 Locus Award (Novella)
  
  Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself - but first she has to make it there, alive.
  From Worlds Without End

  Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

  Finalist for the 2014 British Science Fiction Association Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2014 Red Tentacle Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2014 Tiptree Award (Novel)
  
  When a massive object crashes into the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria's most populous and legendary city, three people wandering along Bar Beach (Adaora, the marine biologist- Anthony, the rapper famous throughout Africa- Agu, the troubled soldier) find themselves running a race against time to save the country they love and the world itself... from itself. Lagoon expertly juggles multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives with prose that is at once propulsive and poetic, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself. At its heart a story about humanity at the crossroads between the past, present, and future, Lagoon touches on political and philosophical issues in the rich tradition of the very best science fiction, and ultimately asks us to consider the things that bind us together--and the things that make us human.
  From Worlds Without End

  Kabu-Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor

  Finalist for 2013 Locus Award (Collection)
  
  Kabu-Kabu-unregistered illegal Nigerian taxis-generally get you where you need to go. Nnedi Okorafor's Kabu-Kabu, however, takes the reader to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations you didn't know you needed. This debut short story collection by an award-winning author includes notable previously published material, a new novella co-written with New YorkTimes-bestselling author Alan Dean Foster, six additional original stories, and a brief foreword by Whoopi Goldberg.
  From Worlds Without End

  Monster Portraits by Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar

  Recommended Reading by NPR's Book Concierge
  Del's artwork nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award (2018)
  
  Relentlessly original and brilliantly hybrid, Monster Portraits investigates the concept of the monstrous through a mesmerizing combination of words and images. An uncanny and imaginative autobiography of otherness, it offers the fictional record of a writer in the realms of the fantastic shot through with the memories of a pair of Somali-American children growing up in the 1980s. Operating under the sign of two--texts and drawings, brother and sister, black and white, extraordinary and everyday--Monster Portraits multiplies, disintegrates, and blends, inviting the reader to find the danger in the banal, the beautiful in the grotesque. Accumulating into a breathless journey and groundbreaking study, these brief fictions and sketches claim the monster as a fragmentary vastness: not the sum but the derangement of its parts. Del Samatar's drawings conjure beings who drag worlds in their wake. World Fantasy Award-winning author Sofia Samatar responds with allusive, critical, and ecstatic meditations. Together they have created a secret history of the mixed-race child, a guide to the beasts of an unknown mythos, and a dreamer's iconography. The monstrous never looked so simultaneously haunting and familiar.
  From Worlds Without End

  The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

  Finalist for the 2018 Nebula Award (Novella)
  Finalist for the 2019 Hugo Award (Novella)
  Finalist for the 2019 Locus Award (Novella)
  
  In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air - in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie's trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God's Drums. But Creeper also has a secret herself: Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations. Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God's Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.
  From Worlds Without End

  Everfair by Nisi Shawl

  Finalist for the 2016 Nebula Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2016 Tiptree Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2017 Campbell Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2017 Locus First Novel Award

  
  Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated. Nisi Shawl's speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.
  From Worlds Without End

  The Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

  Finalist for the 2000 Nebula Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2000 Tiptree Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2001 Hugo Award (Novel)
  Finalist for the 2001 Philip K. Dick Award (Novel)

  
  It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. But to young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival -- until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgivable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree. Here monstrous creatures from folklore are real, and the humans are violent outcasts in the wilds. Here Tan-Tan must reach into the heart of myth -- and become the Robber Queen herself. For only the Robber Queen's legendary powers can save her life... and set her free.
  From Worlds Without End

  Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

  Finalist for the 2018 Andre Norton Award (Young Adult Novel)
  Finalist for the 2019 Locus First Novel Award
  Winner of the 2018 Dragon Award (Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel)
  
  Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers... and her growing feelings for an enemy.
  From Worlds Without End

  Other Stories

  China Miéville, “Covehithe”
       Finalist for 2011 British Science Fiction Award (Short Story)
  Warren Cariou, “An Athabasca Story”
  Deji Bryce Olukotun, "Four Lions"
  Henrietta Rose-Innes, "Poison" 
      Winner of the 2008 Caine Prize for African Writing
  Acan Innocent Immaculate, “Wishful Thinking”
  Walter Dinjos, “Mama Mmiri”
  Sofia Samatar, “An Account of the Land of Witches”
  Sofia Samatar, “Ogres of East Africa”
      Finalist for 2015 Locus Award (Short Story)
  P. Djèlí Clark, “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington”
      Finalist for the 2019 Nebula Award, 2019 Hugo Award, 2019 Locus Award, 2019 Sturgeon Award
     (Short Story)
• 1 2019-04-27T04:13:38-07:00 Evolving over time: nature vs industry 12 plain 2019-05-01T11:47:07-07:00 Petrofiction is a segment of literature that focuses on oil-based cultures, and the effect that these cultures have on the world around them. Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Lagoon includes some commentary on the effects of oil-based cultures on the environment.
  
  Act two begins with a chapter called “The Bone Collector” where the narrator details the life of a tarantula as it crosses a highway. The tarantula mentions how he lives a good life in the forest (121), but he chooses to cross the road to make it to a new patch of the forest. As the tarantula gets a little way into his path to cross the road a car comes to bring his inevitable death.
  
  Readers can see the effect that cars and highways have on how creatures besides humans are able to live their lives. The spider’s death is directly connected to the importance of oil and transportation to society.
  
  The spider’s previous encounter with a wasp did not bring his death, and it only left him with a missing leg, in which he was able to live another five years. Readers can consider the difference in the two situations to see why one would cause the spider’s death over the other.
  
  Nature versus Nature
  
  When the spider is battling the Pepsis wasp, they are both elements of nature. Therefore, the two are more evenly matched. Other than some slight genetic differences, one creature cannot be vastly dominate over the other. The battle between the two only resulted in one missing leg for the spider because the wasp couldn’t be superior. However, the tarantula is not evenly matched with the cars on the highway.
  
  Nature versus Industry
  
  The cars on the highway are man made and are not found in nature, but these petro-vehicles function off the natural oil that they exploit. The problem is that the spider is trying to function in a rapidly evolving world where the cars get faster, but his speed cannot get better, but only gets worse.
  
  Over time, creatures in nature devolve while the creations in oil-based cultures, like cars, constantly evolve for the better. Although the spider has crossed the highway many times before, he was able to adapt to society’s progress. Nnedi Okorafor seems to take her point even further when the car continues to drive down the road without even knowing that the spider is dead.
  
  The people functioning in society continue evolve their cars and build more highways without considering the effects on the environment. Towards the end, it is stated that the highway “mostly collects human bones, and the bones of human vehicles. But sometimes it likes the chitinous bones of spiders, too” (122). The highways don’t care about any being that is on the road, and humans can’t event control how the highways affect them. Therefore, smaller creatures are being affected without people even giving an afterthought.
  
  Exploited Nature affecting the Environment
  
  Petrofiction focuses on how industrialized, oil-based cultures impact the community around them, and Okorafor’s chapter “The Bone Collector” provides a unique view.  
  
  Through the story, readers are exposed to see how oil, which is a natural occurrence, can be exploited by the industrialized world to become a cog in the industrial machine. What was once natural is exploited and used to power the machines negative affecting the environment.
  
   The spider and oil could both naturally occur in nature, however, the issue emerges when large oil companies want to make a profit on the untapped oil. The removing of the oil from the Earth transforms it from something natural into a force used to destroy nature when used by humans incorrectly.  The oil then is used in cars that can kill a poor spider without a second thought. Ultimately, petrofiction aims to show the effects of humans exploiting natural resources for the benefit of themselves and industrialization.
  
  
  
   
• 1 2019-04-27T02:24:59-07:00 Hybridity in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon 9 image_header 2021-01-12T18:28:17-08:00

  Hybridity: Derived from heterogenous or incongruous sources; having a mixed character; composed of two diverse elements.

  Hybridity is one of the key concepts in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon. There are many examples of hybrid people, cultures, and languages in the novel due to the combination of a modern, global culture with aspects of a native Nigerian one. This is seen in the friend circle of Philo and Moziz. All of their friends are intellectual and educated Nigerians living in Lagos, but cannot afford to continue university and are stuck working jobs that are well below their education level. When they are around each other they use a pidgin language of Hausa and English, but codeswitch to proper English when speaking to others. One of the greatest examples of hybridity in the story, however, is the alien Ayodele. 

  Hybridity in Lagoon

  Ayodele is the first alien to come to Lagos and it is her mission to prepare its inhabitants for the rest of her colony to come to Lagos. Because she is the bridge between humans and her people, she has to be careful with how she presents herself and how she is perceived by others. When one of the children asks Ayodele why she doesn't look like an alien she says that, "Human beings have a hard time relating to that which does not resemble them. It's your greatest flaw." Ayodele hybridizes herself to look human because she realizes that doing so is the only way she can have peaceful interactions with them. Even though she has the power to kill or overthrow all of Lagos, each of her actions are very calculated because her people want to "bring [Lagos] together and refuel your future. Your land is full of a fuel that is tearing you apart." Their goal is to create a hybrid community between Lagos and their colony so that life will be better for everyone. In a way, she believes that her people will free the natives of Lagos from the oppression of the oil colonizers.

   

  Is hybridity good, bad, or just a fact of life?
  
  In Lagoon, it seems like Okorafor is hinting that hybridity is a product of an outsider manipulating their inherent nature in order to make others feel comfortable. Philo, Moziz, and their friends change how they speak so that they appear more educated and professional, and Ayodele changes her appearance so she can peacefully interact with humans. However, Okorafor mentions in an interview with Lightspeed magazine that being a hybrid herself is something she can't let go of: "This comes from being an African. Being a Nigerian. Being Igbo. I was born and raised in the United States, but my upbringing was very Naijamerican (Nigerian-American). My parents were connected to Home, but also very open to making the US and its culture a simultaneous Home. Duality, hybridization, gathering of more and more, is part of who I am, not leaving things behind to travel lighter." By the end of the colonization and merging of the two groups, the people of Lagos are happy and the effect is generally positive. Perhaps Okorafor uses this story of the merging of two cultures, beings, and societies to prove that even though the initial idea of being hybrid is uncomfortable, it has to be accepted and embraced because ultimately everyone is the hybrid product of something.

   

   

• 1 2019-04-27T03:59:31-07:00 Embracing cultures: ready or not? 9 plain 2019-05-01T11:53:13-07:00 Attending college or university is a time where students begin to expand their horizon past the ideologies that they have learned from their family. Student are interacting with various students from a multitude of backgrounds. In these cases when learning about other students and situations, people can choose to embrace the different cultures or choose to stay in their own cultural bubble.
  
  ►University Students in Binti
  
  Nnedi Okorafor’s 2014 novella Binti presents a university where students from different cultural backgrounds come together and enjoy learning about each other. The students headed for Oozma University are away from societal influences contribute negative stereotypes and negative opinions about others.
  
   The ship brings the students closer together because they take the time to learn about each other. The main character comes from the Himba culture, so she has distinct identity markers such as her hair, the use of Otjize, and her anklets.
  
   Throughout the beginning of the novel, the dominant culture ridicules her culture, but her shipmates headed to Oozma University make her feel comfortable by learning. She starts to realize that the other students are her people even though they have cultural differences.
  
  Binti even mentions that the “commonalities shined brighter,” and the student’s advanced interest in math and other subjects become more important than where they came from. Readers see how the sharing of cultures, and the attempt at understanding another culture can build connections and relationships. People can bond together once they have the trust of knowing that they can be their most authentic self.
  
  ►University Students in Lagoon
  
  A contrast is shown with the students in Binti and the students in Nnedi Okorafor’s novel Lagoon. The Lagoon students are stuck in their own ideologies, and they do not want to understand the cultural difference between themselves and the Nigerians in the media.
  
  The students look at the situation that the Nigerians experiences and immediately began to other the people. No time was taken to understand the culture or the cultural significance of the invasion that Nigeria faced. The students felt as though the situation did not affect them because Africa is only a distant connection to them.
  
   However, it is feasible that these students decide to stay in their ideologies rather than learning about other cultures because they are not exposed to other cultures in the setting presented to readers. All the students who are interacting are African American, Pre-Med college students.
  
  Having students that are cut from the same cloth makes it difficult to see them embrace cultural differences. An exposure to more cultures fosters more cultural appreciation in people. Talking about what on does not understand about a group of people can help eliminate some of the stereotypes and othering that happens.
  
   The students in Lagoon did not have the opportunity with their college or university experience to embrace various cultures, but the students in Binti bonded over learning about the different cultures.
  
   
• 1 2019-04-27T04:10:14-07:00 The distance between Africa and African Americans 9 plain 2019-05-01T11:56:21-07:00

  The African American experience has been largely one of displacement, extreme mobility throughout history—often resulting in deterritorialization, and an erosion of social and cultural identity.

                              -Rodima-Taylor and Zokou
  
  Daivi Rodima-Taylor and Zadi Zokou wrote a blog post commenting on the documentary BlacknBlack, and they mentioned that the documentary provides information on the relations between African Americans and Africans. The quote above focuses on African Americans, and the problems they have faced with their social and cultural identity. Since African Americans were displaced by slavery and forced to move into new environments, their cultural identity was lost. As time progresses, many are working to find their identity in the world, but the displacement has caused some distance with the continent of Africa and its people.
  
  The many years that these people have spent with the colonizer has caused them to unconsciously adopt some of the dominant culture's ideologies about Africa. As the African Americans began to assimilate into the dominant culture, they needed to position themselves in a position to seem more civilized. By working to be accepted by the dominant culture, African Americans were slowly eroding their cultural identity which would eventually be lost over generations.
  
  The connection with the motherland would be lost, and the younger members of the African American community will continue to see Africa and Africans in the perspective of the colonizer where the country is starving and uncivilized. Nnedi Okorafor uses two distinct stories to give commentary on the disconnect that happens between African Americans and Africans or Africa.

  Relevance of the akata
  The first story that Nnedi Okorafor uses is “Icon” from the collection Kabu-Kabu where an African American journalist travels to Nigeria to get a news story Throughout the story. Okorafor creates a contrast between Richard and the other African men. Throughout the work, Richard is referred to negatively as a black American. The word “akata” gets used in the story when Icon calls Ray a “idiot akata.” The use of the word shows the distinct between the two groups of people. Daivi-Taylor and Zokou’s blog post also includes the term akata, and it gives some background. The term is a Yoruba word that “originally refers to a ‘cat who does not live at home, a wild cat,’ sometimes used to refer to African immigrants by the people on the continent.” A deeper looking at akata shows how the African people view Americans as the group who roams but doesn’t try to learn more about the homeland.
  
  The term akata appears to have a negative connotation because Africans could have seemed the American arrogance coming from African American with their sense of entitlement over the poor country of Africa. The term akata is used in the text because Richard expects to come to Nigeria and have a connection already built with the people. He doesn’t realize that his behaviors are different from that of the typical African because he is influenced by colonization.
  
  After having so many generations that have lived in the united states, African Americans have developed to closely resemble and model themselves after successful white people as a means of survival. The influence from the dominant culture affects the views that African Americans have on African and Africans.

  
  A more relatable and modern look at the disconnect.

  The post chapter of Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon demonstrates the distance between Africans and African Americans because she shows that not having a direct tie to Africa makes the people not feel any attachment.
  
  The chapter focuses on a group of African American, Pre-med college students in Chicago. The students are preparing for a study group, and they also discuss the event happening in Nigeria. As the characters talk, a description is given about their dress, and most of the students have on popular brand clothing. Okorafor seems to show that the social identity of African Americans in the United States comes from the brands that they wear because it shows their status.
  
   After giving insight into their outfits, she moves to focus more on their comments about the events happening in Nigeria. The students have distanced themselves from the continent of Africa because they blame it for slavery. They do not see where Africa benefitted them in anyway. One of the female students, Nature, states that “what’s Africa ever done for me?” (303), and her question is followed by Jordan stating that Africa has only enslaved their ancestors (303). She does not consider the rich culture that could have been passed down had the slave trade not interrupted and mixed all the different tribes together. The comments by the students shows how the movement has deteriorate the cultural identities that these individuals have because they do not see how there are still influence from Africa in the African Americans live their lives today.
  
  They place the blame of slavery on African without considers the impact of colonization. The students seem to do more victim blaming than trying to be understanding and building a connection with the land where most of their ancestors came from.