(no subject)

[skygiants]

jothra has been valiantly attempting to lend me Nnedi Okorafor's Binti trilogy for ages, but then my house was full of lead and then my new house was full of boxes, so I made her wait until last month before actually giving me the books.

Binti, the first novella in the series, is the shortest and most self-contained: in the far future, Binti becomes the first Himba girl to leave home and take up a prestigious scholarship at an interstellar university, but en route her ship is attacked by jellyfish aliens, and it's up to Binti to determine whether tragedy will lead to more tragedy or to the possibility of understanding. The journey is the story, and the terror and grace of change is the conclusion.

Then comes Binti: Home and Binti: The Night Masquerade, which together take the themes of the first novella and crank them up to ELEVEN. Binti, who has already been irrevocably altered by her first adventure, struggles to maintain her connection to her identity while simultaneously getting surprise pieces of her heritage thrown at her and forming newer, additional mystical bonds to alien creatures. The whole story of these two books takes place over about two weeks and by the end of it Binti has gone through at least four MAJOR identity shifts. Thematically I think it works to convey the things that are important to Okorafor about connection and change and self-acceptance, but it is also A LOT.


I am not sure how I feel about the fact that Binti's attempts to end the war are so unsuccessful and, in the end, abandoned in favor of a journey of personal growth - specifically, I'm not sure how I feel about that in the end of Binti the original novella, which was so surprisingly hopeful about the possibility for forging peace out of tragedy and ending cycles of violence. I mean I get why Okorafor would not necessarily be hopeful about that, but it bummed me out regardless.

I do really like that Binti's trauma about what happened on the shuttle in Binti never goes away, that she can be bonded with (and in some way married to? well played Binti outsourcing your future pregnancy to a jellyfish alien) Okwe and understand and care about the Meduse and also still be profoundly impacted by the terrible things that she saw them do, that it's possible for those two things to exist simultaneously and the one doesn't negate the other.