Binti is an incredibly well-rounded character. Her motivation is obvious, and the protagonist begins as one thing then evolves into another while remaining clear and concise at every point of the narrative.
Binti, the first book of the Binti Series, by author Dr. Nnedi Okorafor is a refreshing breath to the science fiction community. Following the footsteps of Octavia Butler, Dr. Okorafor features a black woman as the centerpiece narrative. The world of Binti marries African culture with the future.
“My science fiction has different ancestors - African ones,” says author Dr. Okorafor in her November 2017 TED talk. She’s an American born daughter of Nigerian parents born on April 8th, 1974. She began writing while recuperating from a surgery to resolve scoliosis and has since published multiple books and stories which reflect West African heritage and American life.
This particular book is about a young woman named Binti leaving home for the first time to attend a university very far away and without her family’s blessing. The reader is immediately presented with the human struggle of establishing oneself outside of their family. At just ninety pages, this Afrofuturist, young adult novella packs a lot of punch with its marriage of African tradition and technology, linked through the theme of human truth.
Binti is an incredibly well-rounded character. Her motivation is obvious, and the protagonist begins as one thing then evolves into another while remaining clear and concise at every point of the narrative. She’s believable, her plight relatable. In a world of transporters, astrolabes, and alien species, there is a constant thread of humanity concerning class and race relations, self- discovery, and personal growth.
The plot moves swiftly, as a novella should, and stays on task through each page. Sentences are concise yet incredibly poetic. There are lines so well written, I found myself just putting down the book to process. Binti describes her people as: “We prefer to explore the universe by traveling inward, as opposed to outward. No Himba has ever gone to Oomza Uni. So me being the only one on the ship was not that surprising. However, just because something ins’t surprising doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with.” Lines like this made me understand Binti, and her people, on a spiritual level.
"I wanted to tell him that there was a code, that the pattern spoke my family’s bloodline, culture and history. That my father had designed the code and my mother and aunties had shown me how to braid it into my hair.” Hair braiding as mathematical genetic art? Yeah, she did that, and I was so there for it.
“They were all girls who grew up in sprawling house, who’d never walked through the desert, who’d never stepped on a snake in the dry grass. They were girls who could not stand the rays of Earth’s sun unless it was shining through a tinted window. Yet they were girls who knew what I meant when I spoke of ‘treeing’.” The author makes the case of noticing how the other girls are different from her yet immediately creates a connection based on how they are the same. Like my grandfather once told me. “It’s okay to be different. Being different don’t make no difference.” The plot is the epitome of going to college and meeting new friends who you probably wouldn’t have had the chance to know if it weren’t for higher education and seeing how similar humans are at our core. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Binti not only because of the effortless world building but the pairing of the future with past traditions while exploring the human experience of creating oneself. I don’t want to offer to many criticisms due to the fact that there are two other books in the series that I haven’t yet read. Overall, this was a quick and enjoyable read that definitely lived up to the praise given to it.
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