Note: I am a white American of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. These books are about the experiences and cultures of black people, both in Nigeria and in the United States. I am probably, therefore, not the ideal person to review them. Still, I would like to talk about the impact these books had on me, in the hopes that more white people will read and appreciate them, and express my gratitude to Dr. Nnedi Okorafor for telling her stories.
Nnedi Okorafor’s novels Akata Witch and Akata Warrior tell the story of Sunny Nuwaze, a Nigerian-American girl with albinism struggling to fit in after her family moves back to Nigeria. She discovers that she, and a number of her classmates, have magical powers that make them part of an international secret society, and begins to learn how to use those powers to save the world from demons.
Parts of this are going to sound familiar if you’ve read J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The two have often been compared. But Akata Witch and Akata Warrior go above and beyond the wizard-school tropes of my childhood in a great many ways. (Spoilers ahead.)
They’re diverse. Dr. Okorafor has no time for Rowling’s incredible whiteness of being; her books are set in her parents’ home country, Nigeria. Most of the characters are black Nigerians; some have lived in the United States; and white people are explicitly described as white, which really makes you stop and think if you've (like me) grown up surrounded by books that take whiteness for granted. Though Leopard Knocks, a center of magical culture, is very close to Sunny’s new hometown, there are hints that the Leopard Society, as this world's magic users call themselves, is truly global, with mentions of Leopards from Muslim, Christian, European, and American backgrounds in addition to African cultural and religious backgrounds. (I remain hopeful for Jewish characters in book 3.)
The books also highlight diversity of ability, and often contrast it with the sexism and ableism prevalent in both Nigerian and American societies. An individual Leopard’s magical specialties are related to some disability or personal “imperfection.” A scholar with extreme scoliosis can transform into a snake; a wrestler who lost an arm can generate a magical prosthesis; and Sunny’s albinism, for which she’s been mocked as a “ghost girl” in the past, translates into an ability to become invisible and insubstantial at will. Sunny's magic also makes her more resistant to sunburn so she can play soccer, which she does better than most of the boys around her.
However, the Leopard Society is not without its own prejudices. People without magical abilities are referred to as Lambs, with the implication that they are ignorant and easily manipulated; and "free agents," Leopards from nonmagical families, are also less than appreciated by the wider Leopard community. This has not yet been addressed, but Okorafor may be setting up an opportunity to do so, with one of Sunny's nonmagical brothers becoming uncannily aware of what Sunny and her friends are up to. (Or it may just turn out that he's also a Leopard and doesn't know it yet.)
Everyone is here to learn. The point of being a Leopard is explicitly to acquire knowledge and skills and use them for the good of humanity. The centers of Leopard culture are massive research libraries, and Leopard markets use a currency that can only be acquired as a magically-manifesting reward for learning things. There are no Houses or cliques among Leopard students; the vast majority of Leopards are Ravenclaws and proud of it. That’s not to say they’re not without bad apples. Some Leopards study in order to summon demons for personal gain; others make their money from oil companies and practice the kind of crony politics that the Leopard Society as a whole works to prevent (among other social ills). But I’m still much more comfortable here than at Hogwarts, mainly because:
The teachers don’t lie to you. Since I last read it a decade ago, my primary takeaway from Harry Potter is how often adults in a position of power endanger the children in their care by both attempting to protect them from unpleasant truths and manipulating them into pursuing the adults' own petty agendas. Leopard teachers don’t do that, even though Sunny’s world is much more dangerous by design than Harry’s. At Hogwarts, barring the return of Voldemort himself, the worst that can happen is a grotesque but painless splinching, while Leopard magic often involves partly or fully entering the spirit world, a deadly place at the best of times, and can attract the attention of the kind of spirit that thinks humans are tasty.
As a result, rules are strict, and the punishments for breaking them are extremely harsh by white American standards. In Akata Warrior, Sunny is punished for revealing herself and her magic to non-magical people by being locked in a library basement with a hungry djinn and a family of spiders for three days, and anyone who gives her advice on surviving the ordeal is caned. But her teachers are blunt and honest about rules, risks, and punishments, so much so that Sunny and her friends can weigh risk against benefit accurately and decide as mature human beings whether or not to take the risk anyway, whether it's to punish Chicago cops for violence toward the communities they're meant to protect, stop a deadly fraternity initiation, or sneak out on a cross-country road trip to stop a demon from destroying the world. I don’t think Harry ever got that much agency.
The teachers encourage that same honesty in their students. The story never devolves into harmful miscommunication. There are conversations put off, yes, and emotions bottled up until they explode, but at this point in the series the only lingering hard feelings among Sunny's close friends are plain old teenage relationship drama. Even Sunny's parents are coming to terms with the fact that she has to do things they don't understand.
Some white guy once said Hogwarts was the safest place in the world. Honestly, I feel safer at Leopard Knocks, because unlike at Hogwarts, I know what the dangerous things are, and they're generally not other humans.
It is consistently wondrous. Nearly a decade after the release of the final book, most of what I remember about Harry Potter is the dark parts: the child abuse, the PTSD, the racism and classism and all the little representation gaps that the fandom has worked its collective butt off to try to fill on their own. Though the dangers of being a Leopard are real and vividly described, Akata Witch and Akata Warrior don't feel that dark (at least not up to now). They remind me of what was like to read Harry Potter the first time, both through powerful descriptions of performing magic and through the slow growth of friendships and relationships between Sunny, her Leopard peers, and her nonmagical relatives who are gradually becoming aware that something's going on.
This is a world I want to live in. And if you're looking for a cool fantasy world that deals maturely with real-world issues without becoming less cool, you should come visit.
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