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.
Local librarians recommend powerful and inspiring coming-of-age stories.
By
Rebekah Kibodeaux
2/9/2021 at 6:00am
Wings of Ebony by Houston author J. Elle.
The average bibliophile has a moment in their history when a book becomes more than a book, a story becomes more than a story, and tearing their eyes away from a page becomes more of a chore than the laundry in the hamper or the dishes in the sink. A book can come with all sorts of thrills, chills, and adventure, but what truly hooks a fledgling reader is the ability to relate to the characters theyâre introduced to, and to see themselves represented in the words.
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A wanderer with terrible power, Sankofa, the protagonist of Hugo Award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor’s latest novella,
Remote Control, has the aura of a mythological figure. She inspires a mix of hope and fear everywhere she goes, and there are numerous conflicting tales about who she is and what she’s capable of. But while the people she interacts with call her the adopted daughter of Death or a witch, Okorafor most directly compares her to the stick-up man Omar Little from
The Wire. Okorafor uses Omar’s taunting line to his enemies “You come at the king, you best not miss” as an epigraph. People mark Sankofa’s appearance in town by shouting, “Sankofa is coming,” a riff on the warnings that greeted Michael K. Williams’ shotgun-wielding robber of drug dealers.