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Worlds Without End Blog

Outside the Norm: Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker Posted at 2:50 AM by Rhonda Knight

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Rhonda Knight is an Associate Professor of English at Coker College in Hartsville, SC. She teaches Medieval and Renaissance literature as well as composition courses. When she looked over last year’s reading list, she was shocked to see that only 17% of the authors she read were women. This blog will record her attempts to read authors that are generally considered out of the science fiction norm: women, persons of color, and non-U.S. and non-U.K. authors.


Zahrah the WindseekerWhen I started thinking about authors I would read for this series, Nnedi Okorafor was at the top of my list. I started with two of her young adult novels, Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker because they were available in my college library. Both of these novels feature female protagonists who are about fourteen years old. Each girl has a special magical power and learns to use her power when she embarks upon a quest. As such, these are coming-of-age narratives that show how the girl, who is different, who is teased for being different, comes into her own and learns of her own strength and self-worth. This seems to me to be what many YA novels do; however, I did not really read YA novels when I was a “YA” (except that I had a great obsession with The Hardy Boys mysteries), so I am far from an expert.

What amazes me is the variety of plots that YA authors devise to illustrate this common theme. As proof of this, the young heroes Zahrah Tsami and Ejii Ugabe (who is the protagonist of The Shadow Speaker) demonstrate different strengths and weaknesses as they experiment with their powers; the goals of their quests are nothing alike; and the plots are not formulaic and are paced quite differently from each other. Both Ejii and Zahrah are metahumans (or in the older lingo, dada). Ejii’s skills are apparent from the beginning of the novel, while Zahrah learns what her talents are during the course of her narrative. Zahrah is born with dadalocks, which seem to be dreadlocks that have vines incorporated in them. Here’s what Zahrah says about being born dada:

“To many, to be dada meant you were born with strange powers. That you could walk into a room and a mysterious wind would knock things over or clocks would automatically stop; that your mere presence would cause flowers to grow underneath the soil instead of above. That you caused things to rebel or that you would grow up to be rebellious yourself! And what made things even worse was that I was a girl, and only boys and men were supposed to be rebellious. Girls were supposed to be soft, quiet, and pleasant.” (Zahrah the Windseeker viii).

One great thing that these books have in common is a complex magical world that engenders these metahumans, which is what I want to discuss in this blog. According to Okorafor’s website, Who Fears Death and her other YA novel, Akata Witch are set in the same world.

Okorafor’s literary setting contains several parallel worlds, Earth, Lif, Ginen, Ngiza, and Agonia (The Shadow Speaker 301). Zahrah the Windseeker is set in the village of Kirki in the Ooni Kingdom, which is in Ginen. In this novel, few characters know that there are parallel worlds. For Zahrah and her friend, Dari, Earth is only a myth, until they meet Nsibidi who claims her mother is from Earth. The Shadow Speaker occurs later in the timeline because, in Ejii’s Earth, people are able to move between parallel worlds. Ejii’s quest requires her to leave her Nigerien village of Kwàmfà and to travel to the Ooni Kingdom in Ginen. The shadows who whisper to her have told her that only her presence at the multi-world meeting of the Golden Dawn can stop the other parallel worlds from declaring war against Earth.

Nnedi OkoraforThe year of Ejii’s adventure is 2070. She lives after the Great Change, a series of events that engendered both magic and mutants on Earth. The Great Change is the “result of nuclear and Peace Bombs being dropped all over the earth. The Peace Bomb was the tool of an enviro-militant group called the Grand Bois, headed by a Haitian man named Dieuri [who], himself, was responsible for crossing science and magic and creating the Peace Bomb, a weapon consisting of airborne biological agents meant to counteract the effects of nuclear missiles” (55). Besides shadow speakers, who can listen to the shadows, interpret the thoughts and feelings of other sentient beings, and communicate with some of animals and non-humans, there are windseekers, like Zahrah, who can fly. Other metahumans that receive less attention in Okorafor’s books are shape-shifters, faders, firemolders, rainmakers and metalseekers. Many animals in her worlds can speak, such as Onion, Ejii’s camel:

“Onion was not like other camels. He was one of the few who could speak; one did not have to be a shadow speaker or any other type of metahuman to understand him. After the Great Change, Onion had realized that he had a bulge near the top of his long neck—a large, developed voice box. He’d been hearing human beings speak all his short life, for he was just a calf. It was not hard for him to do the same.” (The Shadow Speaker 74).

Like Ejii, Zahrah is able to converse with some other animals because of her dada powers.

In both cultures, metahumans are the minority and are feared by many people who say they bring bad luck or are evil creatures. The acceptance of metahumans seems more “progressive” in The Shadow Speaker, perhaps because the Great Change causes more of them. Ejii has two friends who are shadow speakers and together they train with an adult shadow speaker. On the other hand, Zahrah’s fear of her emerging abilities to levitate and fly and her desire to hide these abilities create the tragedy that brings about her quest into Ooni’s Forbidden Greeny Jungle.

Technology plays an important role in both stories. The way that Okorafor constructs technology in each parallel world is true to her overall portrayal of each. Ejii carries an e-legba, which seems to be like an iPad. The internet became immortal after the Great Change, continuing to work without either “power or maintenance” (The Shadow Speaker 93). Zahrah’s Ginen is a plant-based world. Zahrah has a floral computer:

“My father had given me the CPU seed when I was seven years old, and I had planted and taken care of it all by myself…. Its light green pod body was slightly yielding, and the large traceboard leaf fit on my lap like a part of my own body…. The computer would pull energy from my body heat, and I’d link a vine around my ear so that it could read my brain waves. It would grow in size and complexity, as I grew.” (Zahrah the Windseeker 37-38)

Many of the buildings are also engineered from plants. For example, the library in Zahrah’s village is a five-story building grown from a glassva, a transparent plant. At this library, Zahrah and her friend Dari checkout a digi-book, The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide, that accompanies her upon her quest. Okorafor has written a short story about a set of adventurers who contribute to this book and are looking for a rare wild CPU plant. (You can find “From the Lost Diary of Treefrog7” here.)

The Shadow SpeakerThese novels are fun and exciting reads. As I read, I wished that I knew more about West African culture, mythology, and folklore. I felt as if I was missing out on some interesting nuances. For example, what am I missing when I read Ejii’s mother is New Tuareg and her father was Wodaabe? I learned a lot about these tribes from the links and was able to see how Okorafor used tribal traits of the Tuareg for characterization and plot. However, I feel that the stories of their stormy relationship is intended to be a metaphor of Niger, but I’m not well informed enough in Nigerien or West African history to understand.

If I have any criticism of the books, it is that the conclusions leave you wanting more. I feel the ending of The Shadow Speaker was too abrupt. Ejji’s return home leaves open some questions about what happened in Kwàmfà while she was away. Zahrah the Windseeker has a much more extended ending, but Zahrah and Dari’s encounter with Nsibidi, a mysterious windseeker from Earth leaves the ending open. Both endings almost seem as if they are setting up sequels. However, Okorafor’s publishing history does not seem to indicate that she will revisit these characters even though she is revisiting this world in her more recent books, which I am now even more anxious to read. The conference that Ejii attends in Ginen gives us a glimpse of the peoples who live in the some of the other parallel worlds. I hope Okorafor decides to explore Lif, Ngiza, and Agonia as well.

I think some readers will not like Okorafor’s world as much as I do. She does not always explain things, and I’m sure if I looked I could find contradictions in the ways that the magic functions. However, I can very willingly suspend all sorts of disbelief when a setting is intriguing, the plot is good, and the characters are relatable. And they are.

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