Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor

In Binti, Nnedi Okorafor created a fascinating universe that drew on an often different set of inspirations to those usually found in space opera to give us something that felt both fresh and original. In Binti: Home, Okorafor expands on this — both in terms of the society and environment of Oomza University and also the cultural environment from which Binti comes.

The emphasis in this novella, as in the previous one, is very much on the character of Binti and her struggle to develop in the face both of conflicting expectations.

After having left her insular community to become the first member of the Himba to enrol at Oomza University, Binti now returns home. But home is not quite home any more. Binti has seen and done too much and grown in directions that make it impossible to fully fit in with the community in which she grew up.

The Australians have a term, Tall poppy syndrome which describes resentment towards people who are visibly successful in comparison to their peers. It’s a phrase I have seen used within various expatriate communities, specifically in the context of returning home, and it’s a phrase that came to mind several times as Okorafor describes the resentment of family members and the refusal of friends to accept, or even understand, the person Binti has become.

Of course, intolerance works in many directions and, while Binti has to deal with the reactions of those she left behind, she also shares their prejudices against the Desert People who are generally seen as primitive and unstable. It is Binti’s necessary reassessment of her prejudices that form the culmination of this novel, and which sets things up for the third novella in this series.

Binti: Home is an engrossing continuation of the first novella that challenges you to think about the way in which prejudices are unthinkingly adopted. It also ends on the sort of cliff hanger that left me wanting to dive straight into the next novella, Binti: The Night Masquerade.

While this novella suffers a bit from being the middle book of a trilogy, it is a satisfying read that works well in the context of what we understand of Binti’s world. I will definitely be reading the third, and final, book in this series and am looking forward to discovering how Nnedi Okorafor brings Binti’s journey to a conclusion.