Binti

September 7, 2015
Okorafor's sci-fi novella tackles sprawling ideas with little satisfactory resolution. Binti is a teenage girl from Earth, a member of the marginalized and disrespected Himba culture, and the first of her people to attend the prestigious Oomza University, located on a distant planet and home to the galaxy's finest academic minds. Midway through the voyage to the university, her ship is attacked without warning by Meduse warriors, and Binti must draw upon her unique strengths to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Okorafor draws from her rich knowledge of cultural warfare to craft nuanced commentary on how we mock "alien" peoples at our own peril; however, the plotting and characterization suffer from lack of authorial attention. Abstract concepts are introduced without warning and rarely defined to any satisfactory degree, while fascinating objects receive only the briefest descriptions, if any at all. For example, Binti's ship, a living being related to shrimp and the novella's primary setting, is never described from the outside and only vaguely on the inside. This overstuffed novella introduces too many concepts to process in a small space, muddying its otherwise laudable message.

November 28, 2016
Okorafor picks up her interplanetary adventure story a year after the traumatic events of the Hugo-winning novella Binti. The titular heroine, Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib, is the lone human survivor of a massacre. The jellyfish-like Meduse attacked the living space vessel Third Fish while Binti and her fellow young adults were en route from Earth to the university on the planet Oomza. She now carries Meduse genetic material, which has changed her hair into tentacles, and her best friend at uni is the Meduse Okwu. When she feels a strong call to return to Earth, Okwu accompanies her as an ambassador of the Meduse. Binti hopes to engage in the traditional pilgrimage of the Himba, who live on the edge of the Namib Desert, to cleanse her outbreaks of anger. After traveling home in Third Fish, she finds the situation on Earth is complicated and her pilgrimage may not be possible. Strange happenings press her to choose her path into the future. Within a small space, Okorafor efficiently depicts several distinct cultures and portrays a strong and unusual heroine. A cliff-hanger ending promises more excitement to come.

December 4, 2017
Okorafor’s lively, dramatic third and final Binti far-future science fantasy novella (after Binti: Home) finds Binti, the young protagonist, struggling to integrate new perceptions from the recently awakened alien technology in her body. This is an inheritance from her father’s tribe, the Enyi Zinariya, that allows her to communicate across long distances, view historical events at the sites where they happened, and experience other similarly disorienting things. Binti has always identified with her mother’s people, the Himba, who see her father’s folk as uncultured barbarians. The Himba, however, are in danger of being caught up in an outbreak of war between the human Khoush tribe and the jellyfish-like alien Meduse. Only Binti, who happens to be bonded to a Meduse in a hive-mind symbiosis, can possibly blend the cultures, technologies, viewpoints, and interests of all these groups and attempt to bring about a lasting peace. Incident follows incident
in a dizzying array, action is fraught with enough emotion for drama to become melodrama, and several key plot points are inadequately foreshadowed, but Binti’s powerful feelings of displacement, loss, grief, and joy make this entertaining narrative vivid, funny, and memorable.