(no subject)
Aug. 27th, 2014 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI CANNOT WAIT to get my hands on Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon, but I can't do that until I'm moved into Boston and can get my Boston library card, so to tide myself over I read Kabu-Kabu, her collection of short stories from last year.
Actually 'from last year' is not really correct -- while the collection was published last year, many of the stories included were written towards the very beginning of Okorafor's career. And ... you can tell! A lot of it definitely reads like very early work. The writing's much more jagged, and many of the stories feel like initial explorations rather than complete works. It's super interesting, though, because you can get a chance to see the themes that show up in the novels developing, and Okorafor's favorite secondary worlds coming together and becoming more thematically solid in various short snapshots throughout.
My favorite thread is a bunch of stories about Windseekers -- people born with the gift of flight -- which it turns out are mostly part of an unpublished novel about a Windseeker named Arro-yo. What's cool about these stories is you get mythology being established and then questioning and problematizing itself; one story introduces the concept of DESTINED REINCARNATED SOULMATES for Windseekers, and in the next you get a pair of destined soulmates who ... pretty much immediately murder each other every time they recognize each other after reincarnating, because having a soulmate ties you down, man! Gotta get rid of that before it's too late!
(Nnedi Okorafor actually wrote in her afterword that she didn't like that story anymore and if rewriting it probably would not have had them actually murder each other. TOO BAD, I LOVED IT.)
A couple of my favorite stories from the collection are actually available online - I want to call out Spider the Artist, at Lightspeed Magazine, about a woman who befriends an oil pipeline guard robot, is one of my favorites in the collection, and The Palm Tree Bandit, at Strange Horizons, about the creation of a legend. But reading them in the context of Kabu-Kabu as a whole is different from reading them alone, I think. It adds context to a lot of Okorafor's other stuff -- even though many of the stories really aren't as strong, taken by themselves.
(Fair warning #1 is that the content rating is pretty much the usual for Okorafor's adult stuff, by which I mean PRETTY HIGH: lots of spousal abuse, gendered violence, rape racism, race-based violence, and imperialism in the collection as a whole. You don't have to brace yourself as much as you do for Okorafor's Who Fears Death, because with Who Fears Death it's just CONSTANT, and Kabu-Kabu will frequently give you a breather with, like, a whimsical story about a trickster spirit. But some bracing nonetheless required.)
(Fair warning #2 is that the one thing about Okorafor's stuff is that nobody is ever anything other than cis and straight, which stands out more when you have, like, 20 chances for somebody in a story not to be, and most of the characters are not twelve..)
Actually 'from last year' is not really correct -- while the collection was published last year, many of the stories included were written towards the very beginning of Okorafor's career. And ... you can tell! A lot of it definitely reads like very early work. The writing's much more jagged, and many of the stories feel like initial explorations rather than complete works. It's super interesting, though, because you can get a chance to see the themes that show up in the novels developing, and Okorafor's favorite secondary worlds coming together and becoming more thematically solid in various short snapshots throughout.
My favorite thread is a bunch of stories about Windseekers -- people born with the gift of flight -- which it turns out are mostly part of an unpublished novel about a Windseeker named Arro-yo. What's cool about these stories is you get mythology being established and then questioning and problematizing itself; one story introduces the concept of DESTINED REINCARNATED SOULMATES for Windseekers, and in the next you get a pair of destined soulmates who ... pretty much immediately murder each other every time they recognize each other after reincarnating, because having a soulmate ties you down, man! Gotta get rid of that before it's too late!
(Nnedi Okorafor actually wrote in her afterword that she didn't like that story anymore and if rewriting it probably would not have had them actually murder each other. TOO BAD, I LOVED IT.)
A couple of my favorite stories from the collection are actually available online - I want to call out Spider the Artist, at Lightspeed Magazine, about a woman who befriends an oil pipeline guard robot, is one of my favorites in the collection, and The Palm Tree Bandit, at Strange Horizons, about the creation of a legend. But reading them in the context of Kabu-Kabu as a whole is different from reading them alone, I think. It adds context to a lot of Okorafor's other stuff -- even though many of the stories really aren't as strong, taken by themselves.
(Fair warning #1 is that the content rating is pretty much the usual for Okorafor's adult stuff, by which I mean PRETTY HIGH: lots of spousal abuse, gendered violence, rape racism, race-based violence, and imperialism in the collection as a whole. You don't have to brace yourself as much as you do for Okorafor's Who Fears Death, because with Who Fears Death it's just CONSTANT, and Kabu-Kabu will frequently give you a breather with, like, a whimsical story about a trickster spirit. But some bracing nonetheless required.)
(Fair warning #2 is that the one thing about Okorafor's stuff is that nobody is ever anything other than cis and straight, which stands out more when you have, like, 20 chances for somebody in a story not to be, and most of the characters are not twelve..)
no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 09:07 pm (UTC)ugh what if they belong to the other political party
WHAT IF THEY LIKE BAD ART. WHAT IF THEY WANT IT OVER THE SOFA. Let's just end this thing right here. Perfect logic.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 11:56 pm (UTC)Like, "Ugh, whatever, we're soulmates. Let's get drunk and fuck once a decade, and the rest of the time you can be over there on that continent with your freshman year Klimt prints and reality TV obsession, and I'll be over here on this continent with my cat that you're allergic to, my Greens Party bumper sticker, and the really stinky shrimp paste I cook with."
"Fine. Don't fuck anyone I wouldn't... wait, what am I saying? You can have all my rejects you want to, just don't block me by telling people I'm interested in that we're soulmates. Later, babe."
[they ride off into opposite hemispheres, humming Vienna Teng's 'Flyweight Love' in perfect unison]
no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-27 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:05 am (UTC)EVERYONE WAS *SPOILER* AT THE END!
no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:06 am (UTC)...so at least some people will probably survive it! :D?
no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:24 am (UTC)angel sanctuary??
no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:26 am (UTC)I forgot who in Angel Sanctuary was actually soulmates ....
I MEAN THAT PLOT COULD BE ANYBODY
no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-28 04:28 am (UTC)