Zahrah the Windseeker.
Mar. 10th, 2010 19:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyOkorafor, Nnedi. Zahrah the Windseeker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005.
Since I enjoyed The Shadow Speaker thoroughly, and since Okarafor is a Guest of Honor at WisCon 34, which I'll be attending, I wanted to read more of her books. Zahrah the Windseeker is Okorafor's first novel; it's loosely connected to The Shadow Speaker in that it takes place in the Ooni Kingdom of Ginen, the planet to which in the later book Earth has become more closely connected. For young dada girl Zahrah, whose vine-shot hair marks her out as different no matter how much she wants to fit in, and her friend Dari, whose curiosity and acceptance of Zahrah's difference (and her burgeoning abilities of flight) makes him unusual, Earth is a legend; they're far more interested in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, the borders of which are only a mile outside of their town.
I realized about 1/3 of the way through this book that if I'd read it when I was a member of the target age group I probably wouldn't have finished it, because Zahrah starts the book as exactly the sort of girl I didn't want to read about at all when I was in middle school: in a word, scared. She's also very concerned about being obedient to her parents, which is unusual in fantasy inasmuch as she has parents and that pleasing them is important to her. I don't have a problem with self-confident girl protagonists; when The New York Times criticized Ally of Tamora Pierce's Trickster's Choice several years back I realized that I hadn't thought of Ally as self-confident at all; she'd just seemed, well, normal or admirable in that she was extremely competent. But my younger self would have been missing out on an excellent story; right when I picked up the book again today Zahrah started to learn to overcome her fears and then the story became a quest novel, which I love. I liked too that Zahrah learns not to rely on books but on her own wisdom, knowledge, and instincts, and that she's careful to not impose her own standards on the creatures and societies she meets on her way through the jungle. Also, I loved the Speculative Spotted Frog a lot, not least because the Frog reminded me of the Transcendent Pig of Diane Duane's Young Wizard books.I may or may not be requesting Speculative Frog & Transcendent Pig BFF fic for Yuletide 2010, fair warning. Especially since I've been thinking lately about thingswithwings's comment about the difficulty of finding clips with characters of color next to each other in vid sources, I also really liked that this was an entire secondary world fantasy in which all the characters are black. I think the genre needs more of that; a lot more, actually.
Another thing that's interesting is that the Ooni Kingdom's technology, while comparable to that of contemporary U.S. society, is entirely organic--CPUs literally grow on trees, and digi-books are far more widespread than here. Zahrah takes a guidebook with her into the jungle that ends with the follow passage, which I think (because I tend to see meta-textual comments everywhere) stands as a fitting tribute to the book and to Okorafor's writing as a whole:
Since I enjoyed The Shadow Speaker thoroughly, and since Okarafor is a Guest of Honor at WisCon 34, which I'll be attending, I wanted to read more of her books. Zahrah the Windseeker is Okorafor's first novel; it's loosely connected to The Shadow Speaker in that it takes place in the Ooni Kingdom of Ginen, the planet to which in the later book Earth has become more closely connected. For young dada girl Zahrah, whose vine-shot hair marks her out as different no matter how much she wants to fit in, and her friend Dari, whose curiosity and acceptance of Zahrah's difference (and her burgeoning abilities of flight) makes him unusual, Earth is a legend; they're far more interested in the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, the borders of which are only a mile outside of their town.
I realized about 1/3 of the way through this book that if I'd read it when I was a member of the target age group I probably wouldn't have finished it, because Zahrah starts the book as exactly the sort of girl I didn't want to read about at all when I was in middle school: in a word, scared. She's also very concerned about being obedient to her parents, which is unusual in fantasy inasmuch as she has parents and that pleasing them is important to her. I don't have a problem with self-confident girl protagonists; when The New York Times criticized Ally of Tamora Pierce's Trickster's Choice several years back I realized that I hadn't thought of Ally as self-confident at all; she'd just seemed, well, normal or admirable in that she was extremely competent. But my younger self would have been missing out on an excellent story; right when I picked up the book again today Zahrah started to learn to overcome her fears and then the story became a quest novel, which I love. I liked too that Zahrah learns not to rely on books but on her own wisdom, knowledge, and instincts, and that she's careful to not impose her own standards on the creatures and societies she meets on her way through the jungle. Also, I loved the Speculative Spotted Frog a lot, not least because the Frog reminded me of the Transcendent Pig of Diane Duane's Young Wizard books.
thingswithwings's comment about the difficulty of finding clips with characters of color next to each other in vid sources, I also really liked that this was an entire secondary world fantasy in which all the characters are black. I think the genre needs more of that; a lot more, actually. Another thing that's interesting is that the Ooni Kingdom's technology, while comparable to that of contemporary U.S. society, is entirely organic--CPUs literally grow on trees, and digi-books are far more widespread than here. Zahrah takes a guidebook with her into the jungle that ends with the follow passage, which I think (because I tend to see meta-textual comments everywhere) stands as a fitting tribute to the book and to Okorafor's writing as a whole:
Anyway, since you have turned to the end, we'll humor you and pretend you've finished. We hope you've been convinced of how stupid and ignorant most of our people are. It's a shame. We live right on the border of such an amazing place, and yet we choose to stay where we are. No optimism. No curiosity. No wish to move forward, to expand ourselves, our horizons. But you, reader, are now properly informed. Even if you never go into the jungle, we trust that you will walk out your door and inform the rest of the world; for what good is knowledge if it's not shared?