REVIEW: BINTI by Nnedi Okarafor

I’m sitting in a boba-tea shop sipping down some tapioca balls of goodness and I got to thinking about the book I finished reading last night: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. For those of you who’ve never read anything from Okorafor, Binti would be a splendid introduction. Published through Tor.com’s novella program, Binti is only about 50 pages long, but in those pages Okorafor jam-packs a mind boggling amount of world building, character development, and conflict.

Binti is refreshing because the central character is so different from what mainstream science fiction has come to accept as “normal”. I mean, just look at that cover (GORGEOUS)! Binti is a young “tribal” (a term used almost derogatorily by the other characters) woman from the African desert.

At times we’re dealing with a world not so terribly different from our own. But in other ways we couldn’t be further apart. The compelling thing about Binti is the interplay between this dichotomy. She has wants/wishes/dreams that we find sympathetic and familiar, and yet, her cultural background is so different as to feel nearly alien.

Binti is a harmonizer, which means she unites things through complicated mathematical equations (or something, I’ll be honest I’m not terribly clear the mechanism behind all this). One of the beautiful parts of Okarafor’s writing is that she doesn’t spoon feed answers and explanations. A lot of things are only tangentially inferred, which leads to a significant amount of reader engagement as you’re constantly challenged to stretch and explore the possibilities of her meaning.

Binti’s people never leave home. They are brilliant and insular. In a world where interstellar travel takes place inside genetically modified fish-ships, these people remain rooted to their little patch of desert. Binti is accepted into the most prestigious school in the galaxy and decides to abandon her family in pursuit of exploration and knowledge. She struggles with the ramifications of this decision not only for herself, but for her family and her people. This is the recurring theme of the story which primarily deals with the idea of bridging gaps between peoples while maintaining respect and understanding for where we, and they, come from.

These ideas transcend the framework of Okorafor’s science fictional universe to inform our own existence where, despite the interconnectivity provided by the internet and other modern communication systems, there are still those peoples and cultures spread across the globe that seem almost incomprehensibly foreign to us. As a group, humans fear what we don’t know, don’t understand. Those things and people who are not like us. Binti helps bridge this gap by showing all the ways disparate cultures can come together to inform and help one another.

If this all sounds like some heavy material, you’re right. It sort of is. Sure, it’s dressed up and coated in pretty prose, but beneath all that, there’s an important message.

Alright, that’s my sterling endorsement for the day. Scamper off and pick up a copy now. Read it. And then stop back and leave a comment. I want to hear from you.