Nnedimma Nkemdili Okorafor was born April 8, 1974 in Cincinnati OH to Igbo parents who emigrated from Nigeria in 1969. She earned a BA in rhetoric at the University of Illinois in 1996 and an MA in journalism from Michigan State University in 1999. She attended the University of Chicago, getting her MA in English in 2002 and completing her PhD in 2007. She attended the Clarion writing workshop in 2001.
Okorafor is an author primarily of Africanfuturist and Africanjujuist literature. Her first SF story, “The Palm Tree Bandit”, appeared in 2001, and story “Windseekers” was included in a Writers of the Future anthology that same year. Since then her stories have appeared in various anthologies, and some of her short work was collected in
Listen to Kristina Yezdimer as she recommends Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor.
This is Kristina Yezdimer from the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today I’m going to recommend the spellbinding young adult fantasy novel Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor. Marketed as the Nigerian Harry Potter, this book has several things in common with the boy wizard but has its own unique magical world based on African folklore. 12-year old Sunny, a black girl with albinism, is always an outsider. Raised in the United States by Nigerian parents, she didn’t fit in. When her family returns to Nigeria, she is called Akata, a derogatory term for an American of African heritage, and also a witch because of superstitions about her lack of skin pigment. Even her parents give her fewer freedoms than her two brothers because she is a girl, especially with a serial child killer nicknamed Black Hat in the local news.