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Akata Witch: original African fantasy from author Nnedi Okorafor

by Sarah-W 09:09 AM

Twelve-year-old Sunny is the American-born daughter of Nigerian parents. Her mother and father have moved the family back to Nigeria where her outsider status makes her a target for bullies at school. She is also albino, which means she can’t even play soccer in the sun with her brothers and must carry an umbrella everywhere she goes. Her classmates suspect her of being a ghost or a witch, accusations Sunny knows to be superstitious and untrue. But how, then, can she account for the vision of disaster she sees in the flame of a candle one night? Or the revelation that her classmate Orlu and his friend Chichi claim to be Leopard People --- magic workers --- and insist she is one, too? 

 

Author Nnedi Okorafor is herself the American-born daughter of Nigerian parents. Akata Witch is her latest book of African magic for youth readers, focusing on the coming-of-age story of a girl divided between two worlds. Not only is Sunny divided between the United States and Nigeria, she discovers she has a gift for slipping between the physical world and the spirit world --- what her friends call the wilderness. This means she is also one of the Leopard people: “Sunny, you have friends and enemies in the spirit world,” one of the Leopard elders tells her, “for before you were born you were a person of importance there. What kind of person were you? Well, that is something you’ll have to figure out. A friend or enemy of yours showed you that vision in the candle. It changed you, no?” 

 

Sunny is what is called a free agent. Her parents have no magic themselves and cannot help her with her gift. Instead, she must rely upon a network of friends and teachers to initiate her into the Leopard world and help guide her on her magical path. Among them are Orlu, whose gift is for undoing juju; Chichi, who is in an ancestral line of powerful priestesses; and Sasha, an American boy who’s been sent to Nigeria after getting in trouble for working powerful magic: raising masquerades, physical manifestations of powerful spirits, difficult to invoke and even harder to control. They discover that they are an oha, or coven of four, chosen to confront a powerful sorcerer whose dark magic has required the ritual sacrifice of other children. 

 

Most of Akata Witch centers on Sunny’s initiation into the Leopard people and her tentative first steps in embracing her spirit face and newfound identity. The four students embark on various lessons set to them by their teacher Anatov, Defender of Frogs and All Things Natural. They take trips to the Leopard marketplace where they buy books and supplies for their lessons. They also accompany Anatov to Zuma Festival, a gathering of Leopard people from across the continent where athletic games and contests of magic are held, where important decisions are made by the most prominent members of the magical community. They travel there by “funky train,” a kind of magical, shape-shifting bus that runs off juju, but still needs the occasional push-start.

 

At this point, it’s hard not to make comparisons to Harry Potter: Leopard Knocks sounds an awful lot like Hogsmeade, and the funky train could certainly be compared to the knight bus. Though the two tales share similarities in their theme of magical education, Akata Witch is much more than Harry Potter reworked into a Nigerian setting. Like its heroine who walks the knife edge between two worlds, Akata Witch is a highly original fantasy that belongs in a category of its own. Reading it is to discover a whole new world, one that restored my faith in fantasy literature and magic.

 

Akata Witch is not Nnedi Okorafor's first book. Okorafor has written several other imaginative fantasies for young readers, including Zahrah the Windseeker, another quest fantasy set in a world with plant-based technology, and Shadow Speaker, set in a post-nuclear disaster Sahara. For more about Nnedi Okorafor's work and life visit her website, which includes a marvelous interview with this emerging author of original speculative fiction. "I naturally see the world as a magical place," she says in the interview. "That comes out in my writing."

 

What are you favorite fantasy titles for youth readers? Can you recommend any other titles for youth readers set in Africa?

 

Sarah A. Wood, a reviewer for teenreads.com and kidsreads.com since 2003, is a lifetime reader and writer. She refuses to accept that there are people who don't like to read and stubbornly believes this is only because they have not met the right book yet.

3 comments
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by on ‎03-18-2011 07:33 PM
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You know I'm trying to decide if that book is dangerous or not. Being set within the region where albinos are often hunted down, killed, chopped up, and made into candles simply on the belief that they are magical.

 

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by Moderator Sarah-W on ‎03-19-2011 11:06 AM
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This is a very good point. The author does address the real-world problem of persecution of child witches without letting it interfere with her imaginary world of the Leopard people.

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by on ‎03-19-2011 02:50 PM
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Yes but in an age of global exposure. You can't assume that a book will stay with any particular audience. Eventually something of this sort can and will reach the wrong audience.

 

So I guess my question is how big do the warnings need to be, that must come with such imaginings?

 

And at which point does it all become some over the top after school special?

 

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