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.