Consequence, Harmony, and Afrofuturism in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti: The Night Masquerade
1 Consequence
In a February 2017 interview with Weird Fiction Review, Nnedi Okorafor notes
that the interstellar-traveling Binti, the Himba title character of Binti, Binti: Home, and now Binti:
The Night Masquerade (I won’t call it a trilogy, in the hopes that readers
will hear more from Binti in the future), has deep-rooted cultural connections
with her people. Okorafor says, “Culture is very deep, it can’t just be shed
just as you can’t shed what is part of your DNA. But culture is also alive and
can incorporate things, it blends, shifts…and there are always consequences to
change” (WFR). From the very first book in the series, we see Binti confront these
consequences through loss. When she decides to enroll in Oomza University, she
loses her daily family connections, as well as the love of her best friend and
possibly future husband, Dele. On the ship on the way to Oomza, she witnesses
the slaughter of all her friends aboard the ship. She even loses her otjize-covered hair that recorded her
family history in twenty-one braids of “tessellating triangles” (22).
In Binti: Home, her loses continue. She loses her chance to go on her
culture’s traditional pilgrimage. She loses her sense of being pure Himba, when
she realizes that she now has Meduse DNA and family ancestry with the so-called
Desert People. The Desert People are actually the Enyi Zinariya, who have alien
nano-technology flowing through their blood. Binti: Home ends with Binti’s fear that her Himba homeland is under
attack.
Binti:
The Night Masquerade intensifies this sense of consequence and loss, as it
opens with the line “It started with a nightmare” (9). In The Night Masquerade, Binti fears the death of her entire family.
She risks her own life to try to end a war between the Khoush and the Meduse. She
even loses the use of her astrolabe, which ceases to function after Binti
activates the Zinariya technology that flows through her body. Binti had
crafted the astrolabe herself over many hours of highly intricate, technical
work; it had contained her whole history. The importance of this loss cannot be
overstated. In Binti’s world, an astrolabe “carried the full record of your
entire life on it—you, your family, and all forecasts of your future” (44).
When her astrolabe stops working, Binti thinks, “I’d just lost my entire
identity” (45). Binti’s original decision to leave her Himba family, to leave
Earth, leads directly to her total loss of familial connection and
self-identity. Binti pays a high price for her decisions. But these
consequences are only a part of her story.
2 Harmony
Readers of Binti and Binti: Home
will know that Binti is a master harmonizer, a person capable of negotiating
peace between warring factions, such as the Meduse and the Khoush. As a master
harmonizer, Binti also communicates across spirit and technology, using “deep
mathematics” to create useful currents and flows. In Binti: Home, her father tells her “It’s the job of the master
harmonizer to make peace and friendship” (63). Through the first two books,
Binti brings peace to the warlike jellyfish creatures, the Meduse. As this
peace falls apart in The Night Masquerade,
Binti reaches for an even deeper level of harmony. With her identity lost with
the destruction of her astrolabe and the ending of the peace treaty between the
Meduse and the Khoush, Binti turns inward to forge a masterful new identity. I
cannot think of much other science fiction (or any other kind of fiction,
really) that examines so closely, and with such care, the creation of a complex,
interstellar, hybrid identity. The Night
Masquerade shows us how Binti risks her Himba identity to form a self that
is completely new. Toward the end of The
Night Masquerade, a doctor tells Binti “there is no person like you at this
school” (216). Remember, Oomza University brings in students from galaxies
across the universe. If there is no person like her at the University, there is
probably no person like her in the whole universe.
To be brief, Binti is Himba by
birth. She becomes part Meduse, when she is stung by a Meduse in the first book
(she loses her hair, and grows okuoko,
Meduse-like tentacles, in its place). She learns that she is part Enyi Zinariya
through her father’s mother. When Binti activates this part of her identity,
she loses the use of her astrolabe, but gains a much deeper and stronger form
of communication. Finally, (for reasons I will not spoil in this review), she
absorbs DNA and microbes into her being from a living space ship known as “New
Fish.” To assert this four-fold identity, Binti proclaims “my name is Binti
Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka Meduse Enyi Zinariya New Fish of Namib.” And while The Night Masquerade starts as a
nightmare, and while many people in the novel try to discount or destroy Binti’s
newly-made identiy, the nightmare becomes a dream, and Binti gains control over
every aspect of her identity. She harmonizes herself. To use a word that she is
fond of, she survives.
3 Afrofuturism
According to the Namibia Tourism board,
there are 20,000-50,000 Himba people in Northern Namibia. Okorafor’s Binti books are far-future science
fiction. Interstellar space travel is taken for granted. Thousands of species
of living beings interact at Oomza University. The books never tell us about
Earth history from the 21st century to the present day of Binti’s
world. We do not learn what has happened on Earth or how interstellar travel
has affected the universe. What we do learn is that a small group of people survive
with their cultural traditions intact across thousands of years. All of the Binti books’ scenes on Earth takes place
in Africa. The final part of Binti’s name, “of Namib” still signifies in this
future. I cannot think of a better definition of Afrofuturism—a future where
the people and places of what 21st century Earthlings call the
African continent take center stage. Contemporary writers like Deji Bryce
Olokotun have given central importance to Nigerian characters in science
fiction. N.K. Jemisin has shown that questions of race and racism will persist
on Earth in her far-future Broken Earth
Series. Okorafor gives us a single person, Binti “of Namib” who literally
embodies, in her DNA, a multispecies identity that keeps both its roots and its
branches. Binti travels to the rings of Saturn (no spoilers, so I won’t say
why) and Okorafor beautifully captures the freedom that Binti feels. “I moved
through Saturn’s rings of brittle metallic dust . . . It felt pleasant . . .
This was my mission. My purpose. And it was fantastic” (188). The fact that “it
was fantastic” is what makes The Night
Masquerade fantastic. In Binti, Okorafor has made someone new and
fantastic. “Space is the place”[1]
for Binti. The Night Masquerade earns
the hope that it offers readers.
[1]
“Space is the place” is the title of chapter 8 of The Night Masquerade, borrowed from Sun Ra, who famously declared
he was from Saturn.
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