May 9, 2023: Spring 2023 Surprises: Akata Witch in Intro to Sci Fi and Fantasy

[Asanother challenging but rewarding semester comes to a close, I wanted to reflecton a handful of moments that particularly surprised me (in good ways). I’d loveto hear some of your Spring reflections in comments!]

As Imentioned in mysemester preview post, the new addition to my Sci Fi/Fantasy syllabus thistime around was Nnedi Okorafor’s AkataWitch (2011). I like Okorafor’s novel a lot, but we can never know for surehow a reading is gonna go the first time we teach it—and, as I’ve highlightedin this space before, I’m always particularly uncertain about assigning longerworks like novels in our fraught and challenging current moment. And to add onemore variable, we read Akata Witchafter four weeks working with only short stories, meaning in the two weeks wespent on Okorafor’s book we have significantly more pages in front of us thanhad been the case. So I was definitely surprised and really impressed with howfully the students got into Akata Witch,in both senses: getting through the novel across those couple weeks of classesand conversations; and connecting to it on many different levels, making thosediscussions consistently thoughtful and fun. Think this one is staying on thesyllabus!

Nextsurprise tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Spring semester reflections you’d share?