IBARW: Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker
After discussing the disappointing representation of characters of color in ASoIaF yesterday, I'm switching gears to discuss books I think do it much better. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's two (so far) novels are the kind of books that make me say, "Where have you been all my life?" There are so many awesome things about these books.
Brief summaries: in Zahrah, the title character was born with unusual hair that makes her dada, but she's not sure exactly what that means. She starts to discover her powers, and when her best friend gets bitten by a deadly snake in the outskirts of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, shy Zahrah decides to brave the jungle to find the only cure. In The Shadow Speaker, Ejii knows her powers - night vision and the help of the "shadows," who tell her hidden things - but fears them. She goes into the Sahara Desert after Jaa the Red Queen to learn about them (and about Jaa, who executed Ejii's father five years before) and ends up as part of a diplomatic mission to the parallel world Ginen, which is leaking into Earth due to these magical bombs set off decades ago that caused all sorts of magical havoc. Unlike a lot of fantasy protagonists who talk about how horrible it would be to have a war but nevertheless go marching into one straight off, Ejii really does try to prevent war between the two worlds.
The settings are alive. The Greeny Jungle in Zahrah overflows with colors and birdcalls and smells and textures, and the Sahara in Shadow Speaker (complete with haunted sand storm!) is eerily beautiful. The houses in Ginen are literally alive (and the mile-high skyscrapers, too!), and I totally want to grow my own computer from a CPU seed now. Or figure out how that glass library finally grew from the glassva plant. Or zoom around in one of the non-polluting, super-fast cars with squishy seats.
Also, the protagonists are black. And girls. In fantasy and sf novels. I haven't seen that since Octavia Butler's books. (Something which I'm trying to rectify - I have heard of several other awesome-sounding books with black female protagonists. I will track them down.) Oh, and except for the Token White Mentor* in The Shadow Speaker, who gives a little helpful advice and then disappears from the narrative forever, all the other characters are black too.** In fact, in Ginen, since humans never spread out over the entire world (there being lots of other sentient species sharing it), they never diverged from the alternate-African population. This means that every human being in the entire world is black. It is so cool to see a default-black world in fiction instead of default-white.
Did I mention that Okorafor-Mbachu wrote an article called Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes for Strange Horizons? I bet she had a lot of fun writing that Token White Mentor. This article also mentions the "primitive" stereotype of poc, which I think she also tried to subvert in these books with Ginen's high-tech biotech. Yeah, they're surrounded by plants and insects and other natural things, which might make you think there's a "primitive and thus closer to nature blah blah blah" stereotype coming up - but a moment's investigation shows you that Ginen is a high-tech world, maybe even more high-tech than Earth. It's just not our technology. And in a familiar attitude, the residents are also wary of the Greeny Jungle, which is too much wild nature for them. (I do think the Greeny Gorillas' role is a bit problematic, however; if anyone else has read Zahrah or just wants to listen to me ramble, let me know.)
Shadow Speaker also deals with gender issues - not in super-philosophical depth, but a lot better than any YA I remember reading before. Ejii's father once ruled her town and instituted restrictive laws requiring women to stay out of the public sphere, robe and veil themselves when out of doors, etc. (Jaa the Red Queen was Not Pleased when she got back...) These laws have since been lifted, but Ejii still suffers the effects: she's both impressed by and uneasy of her female teacher who wears slacks, walks a step behind her male friends, and often covers up before going out even though she doesn't have to, for instance, mostly without even realizing it because she's so internalized the experiences. The veiling issue isn't as simple as "veil bad, no veil good," though - Ejii notes that sometimes it's nice just to be anonymous in a crowd, and the ass-kicking Jaa wears a veil, albeit a see-through one. Jaa is famous for, among other things, reforming her adopted Tuareg tribe to open up male-only roles to the women. Also, Jaa's autobiography is called My Cyborg Manifesto. (Oh, and she has two husbands. Who are powerful in their own right. And they're all three happy together, and the in-laws are happy too.) Ejii becomes more confident by the end, but everything isn't magically fixed with perfect answers tying up the loose ends - like the issue of the war, this is one of those things that is going to take a ton of work over a long time. And as the veiling issue suggests, some things are not as cut-and-dry as they're often represented in white American feminist circles.
I could go on for ages about these books, but I'll link you to another essay, much more eloquent than mine, which discusses another cool aspect of the books: The Chosen One vs. The One Who Chooses. Those of you who share my annoyance at the Chosen One trope will be happy to know that none of those pesky Chosen Ones appear in these books. The essay explains what they have instead. Also, it compares the resolutions of Zahrah and the Harry Potter series, which it boils down to embracing differences vs. embracing conformity, which it posits as results of the absence or presence of the Chosen One trope in this case. Go read it!
*Ejii thinks Token White Mentor is kind of exotic and cool, because she went through phase where she got really into American pop culture in the same way a lot of Americans now are into Japanese pop culture.
**Wait, there were some accidentally-transported American soldiers too. Ejii tells them off for being dumb and they never show up again. I almost forgot about them!
Brief summaries: in Zahrah, the title character was born with unusual hair that makes her dada, but she's not sure exactly what that means. She starts to discover her powers, and when her best friend gets bitten by a deadly snake in the outskirts of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, shy Zahrah decides to brave the jungle to find the only cure. In The Shadow Speaker, Ejii knows her powers - night vision and the help of the "shadows," who tell her hidden things - but fears them. She goes into the Sahara Desert after Jaa the Red Queen to learn about them (and about Jaa, who executed Ejii's father five years before) and ends up as part of a diplomatic mission to the parallel world Ginen, which is leaking into Earth due to these magical bombs set off decades ago that caused all sorts of magical havoc. Unlike a lot of fantasy protagonists who talk about how horrible it would be to have a war but nevertheless go marching into one straight off, Ejii really does try to prevent war between the two worlds.
The settings are alive. The Greeny Jungle in Zahrah overflows with colors and birdcalls and smells and textures, and the Sahara in Shadow Speaker (complete with haunted sand storm!) is eerily beautiful. The houses in Ginen are literally alive (and the mile-high skyscrapers, too!), and I totally want to grow my own computer from a CPU seed now. Or figure out how that glass library finally grew from the glassva plant. Or zoom around in one of the non-polluting, super-fast cars with squishy seats.
Also, the protagonists are black. And girls. In fantasy and sf novels. I haven't seen that since Octavia Butler's books. (Something which I'm trying to rectify - I have heard of several other awesome-sounding books with black female protagonists. I will track them down.) Oh, and except for the Token White Mentor* in The Shadow Speaker, who gives a little helpful advice and then disappears from the narrative forever, all the other characters are black too.** In fact, in Ginen, since humans never spread out over the entire world (there being lots of other sentient species sharing it), they never diverged from the alternate-African population. This means that every human being in the entire world is black. It is so cool to see a default-black world in fiction instead of default-white.
Did I mention that Okorafor-Mbachu wrote an article called Stephen King's Super-Duper Magical Negroes for Strange Horizons? I bet she had a lot of fun writing that Token White Mentor. This article also mentions the "primitive" stereotype of poc, which I think she also tried to subvert in these books with Ginen's high-tech biotech. Yeah, they're surrounded by plants and insects and other natural things, which might make you think there's a "primitive and thus closer to nature blah blah blah" stereotype coming up - but a moment's investigation shows you that Ginen is a high-tech world, maybe even more high-tech than Earth. It's just not our technology. And in a familiar attitude, the residents are also wary of the Greeny Jungle, which is too much wild nature for them. (I do think the Greeny Gorillas' role is a bit problematic, however; if anyone else has read Zahrah or just wants to listen to me ramble, let me know.)
Shadow Speaker also deals with gender issues - not in super-philosophical depth, but a lot better than any YA I remember reading before. Ejii's father once ruled her town and instituted restrictive laws requiring women to stay out of the public sphere, robe and veil themselves when out of doors, etc. (Jaa the Red Queen was Not Pleased when she got back...) These laws have since been lifted, but Ejii still suffers the effects: she's both impressed by and uneasy of her female teacher who wears slacks, walks a step behind her male friends, and often covers up before going out even though she doesn't have to, for instance, mostly without even realizing it because she's so internalized the experiences. The veiling issue isn't as simple as "veil bad, no veil good," though - Ejii notes that sometimes it's nice just to be anonymous in a crowd, and the ass-kicking Jaa wears a veil, albeit a see-through one. Jaa is famous for, among other things, reforming her adopted Tuareg tribe to open up male-only roles to the women. Also, Jaa's autobiography is called My Cyborg Manifesto. (Oh, and she has two husbands. Who are powerful in their own right. And they're all three happy together, and the in-laws are happy too.) Ejii becomes more confident by the end, but everything isn't magically fixed with perfect answers tying up the loose ends - like the issue of the war, this is one of those things that is going to take a ton of work over a long time. And as the veiling issue suggests, some things are not as cut-and-dry as they're often represented in white American feminist circles.
I could go on for ages about these books, but I'll link you to another essay, much more eloquent than mine, which discusses another cool aspect of the books: The Chosen One vs. The One Who Chooses. Those of you who share my annoyance at the Chosen One trope will be happy to know that none of those pesky Chosen Ones appear in these books. The essay explains what they have instead. Also, it compares the resolutions of Zahrah and the Harry Potter series, which it boils down to embracing differences vs. embracing conformity, which it posits as results of the absence or presence of the Chosen One trope in this case. Go read it!
*Ejii thinks Token White Mentor is kind of exotic and cool, because she went through phase where she got really into American pop culture in the same way a lot of Americans now are into Japanese pop culture.
**Wait, there were some accidentally-transported American soldiers too. Ejii tells them off for being dumb and they never show up again. I almost forgot about them!