Sunday Shorts—Home by Nnedi Okorafor
[image error]I read Binti a couple of years ago, I loved it, which told such a brilliant story. I’d sort of squirrelled away Home, the next novella in the series, for some unknown “later” when I’d need a novella I knew would be amazing.
That time came in mid-winter this year, when I hit a wall of migraines and headaches and couldn’t handle much more than lying in the dark and listening to books.
Home picks up about a year or so after Binti, with Binti off-planet and studying at a multi-species university. She is a kind of celebrity—the woman who united two warring species—but also a curiosity—from an insular culture, now “changed” with part-alien physiology, and these two pieces play a major role in the narrative, for Binti is feeling unlike herself on a core level, and decides she needs to go home and perform a pilgrimage to cleanse herself. And from the first step, things do not go as planned.
The realism in Binti’s psychology after suffering such trauma in the first book was so refreshing (and, as an added dose of realism, I truly appreciated Okorafor noting that Binti felt fine for a while, but the PTSD snuck up later). More, Binti’s return to her home feels so very full of, well, humanity reacting to those who are different, that it felt like putting on an old sweater, one that I thought should have made me feel nostalgia but instead is really just scratchy and ill-fitting.
Binti’s alien artifact is once again key to the story, and it turns out that much of what Binti knows and believes she understands about her family and her home aren’t as clear or as understood as she thought. Her journey home is just a start.
My single (minor) caveat for my otherwise complete enjoyment of this novella was the cliffhanger ending. At least in this case the third instalment is already in my library, but if you’re someone who finds cliffhangers less appealing, consider yourself forewarned to pick up the third piece at the same time.
