By Melanie Ojwang
When I said “Wakanda Forever,” I really meant that. Manifesting “Wakanda Forever” for me has meant searching for more stories that redefine and highlight the potential of Africa and African-ness.
Fiction options have often felt lackluster as Black representation is often limited to tokenization, flat caricaturization, or magical negroism meant to teach oppressors a humanity they innately lack.
But dynamic Black narratives are possible as shown through Octavia Butler, especially her Patternist series. What’s new is that now we see holistic Black representation across various mediums as more Black cultural producers are intentional about how their characters exist in worlds beyond enslavement.
Two recent stories that have stuck with me are those of Sunny in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch series and Zelie in Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone. Both series follow the lives of magical girls in modern-day and fantastical Nigeria respectively, struggling through their own heroic journeys.
These narratives both address oppression through truly replicating oppressive systems within the books’ universes (not just slapping a slavery allegory on a mythical race and calling it profound) but also avoid hyper-focusing on it. The protagonists’ humanity is explored beyond their experiences with systemic pain. Oppression is not the sole focus of their plot or the only aspect of the characters’ development, though it does play a key part in each story.
Present in both these worlds are oppression and the destruction that comes with subjugation, with our villainous characters directly tied to societal deterioration and social unrest. In Children of Blood & Bone there are physical markers of maji (and even replications of colorism) that deem them a separate, lower class. In Akata Warrior the appearance of Ekwensu causes an oil spill in a vulnerable area.
Though these worlds are fictional, these prevalent ills force our protagonists to address personal and systemic challenges. One of Sunny’s ongoing conflicts is how she is perceived as flawed due to her albinism and her being born in the United States.
Zelie’s story starts similarly, as a marked outcast due to her physical features, but her existence as a white-haired maji puts her in a lower caste of society. Unlike her father and brother, who are non-magic using kosidan, she is subjugated to harsher rules and rough treatment from the kingdom’s soldiers.
But the pressures the characters navigate within modern-day Nigeria or fantasy Orisha aren’t weighed down by the presence and constant comparison to whiteness. The lens used to frame their personal and societal issues, to challenge the problems, to craft the main characters’ magic and experiences all exist outside of whiteness as the default.
The focus is on the Black characters and their complex stories, and there’s little need to draw parallel. It is briefly mentioned, for example, that the villainous king in Children of Blood and Bone mirrors his system of oppression after other kingdoms, which resemble modern European nations. Though the system is potentially rooted in white supremacy, the manifestations that have to be defeated are those which have been continued by the Orishans, who must rediscover a peaceful, authentic way to live.
My childhood reading experiences were often marked by racebending (changing the race of) characters in my head, or reading Black characters and knowing that large parts of the plot would be heavy and anchored to the real world, thus disallowing my escape as a reader.
Many books that had Black characters were set in timelines full of pain (namely chattel slavery and the Civil Rights era) or had story lines focused on specific, limited teen issues like unplanned pregnancy or varying levels of violence. While these narratives are important to also represent, I had difficulty finding stories that offered me an escape rather than a retelling of historical pain.
Akata Witch and Children of Blood and Bone are not without their heavier plot points, but they offer a balance that allows me to be in a fantasy world without punishing me and, more importantly, by catering to my view of life.
Sunny and Zelie’s fights to make sense of their worlds suddenly made strange strongly mirrored my own fumblings. As a child of immigrants, my cultural identity is often murky to me. I’ve always been aware that I’m not as Kenyan as my parents but that my experiences also often left me disconnected from portrayals of Black Americans.
I have moved through life with the looming possibility of feeling out of place in my community, however that’s being defined. I am someone who couldn’t find the right entry point of how to explore the motherland while simultaneously honoring my experiences in the United States.
I saw my search reflected in Sunny and Zelie, whose quests to understand themselves were significant in their journeys. Whether it is Sunny trying to decipher her status as a Free Agent or Zelie fighting to liberate the maji community, both have to juggle pride and acknowledgement of who they are with the process of understanding what their identities mean.
Their identities put them between worlds, clashing both with the dominant culture and with the idea of belonging.
Language is especially used to mark spaces and who can access them, a direct tie-in to diasporic considerations of Blackness and cultural identification. How I am able to communicate my place in the world is central to my own self-comprehension. I can’t communicate with my grandparents because we don’t speak the same language, literally, so the power of language is very palpable to me.
These stories factor in language as a marker of core identity in that it is used as a vehicle to determine how magic functions in their worlds.
Zelie, our lead in Children of Blood and Bone, has to use the forbidden, and almost forgotten, Yoruba to create spells. Sunny, of the Akata Witch series, who knows Igbo, has her strongest magic with English.
To see language reflected through the production of magic is astonishing. I felt validated and comforted by Zelie’s need to strengthen her knowledge of her mother’s tongue and by Sunny’s reality of English as her strongest language, presenting the familiar tension of having a first language be that of the oppressor.
Sunny’s comfort in English is not presented in a way to encourage mockery or shame, but rather is shown to have as much power as Efik or Igbo in connecting Sunny to magic. She showed that I do not have to give up all that I know to connect with that which I wish to learn.
Language is just one way the familial links to magic are stressed. For the two girls, family history is a place to gain strength, which is not unlike the prominent themes of generational strength, pain and learnings throughout the diaspora. Sunny and Zelie’s paths led them to look at the pasts of direct family (grandmother and mother) and greater, older spirits (Anyanwu + Oya) for guidance.
The ancestors aren’t used as a template on how to behave, but rather serve as a representation of a set of values and ideals with which to guide the living.
Sunny and Zelie aren’t meant to be exact replicas of the ancestors they draw guidance from. They take the conduct of the past and apply it to the present, thus highlighting that we need not strive to recreate our ancestors, but to use the energy they embodied and find how that radiates through us in current form.
I have come to understand more about myself and others like me. Instead of being determined to fit into a role, I relish in this strange middle space. I am not alone in this diasporic dissonance but having a path to validation that honors the complexities of my identity helps me in defining this space for others and in searching for ways to bridge the gaps for us all.
Looking for balance in my life has been mirrored in the literature I search for. There’s a need for a balance of escapism with the real but also the balance within the diaspora, my own balance between identity markers. Like Sunny and Zelie, I am connected to the ancestors while still navigating a completely separate set of contemporary ills. What these heroines illustrated is that I may be between worlds but this is where I am supposed to be.
Suggested Reading
“The Girl with all the Gifts” is a nightmare for white supremacy” – Sherronda J. Brown, RaceBaitr (July 25, 2017)
“Listen to the ancestors, run!: Get Out, zombification, and the pathologizing escape from the plantation” – Sherronda J. Brown, RaceBaitr (March 7, 2017)
“The Parable of the Sower” offers the Black feminist vision “The Handsmaid Tale” was missing” – Brittany Frederick, RaceBaitr (January 3, 2018)
Melanie is a child of the South, life-long learner, writer and podcast co-host. Her writing focuses on Blackness, gender & sexual identity, social commentary, and fandom ramblings.
RaceBaitr is an independent digital publication by and for Black Liberationist seeking to make sense of a world that is not yet here. We are supported through monthly and one-time donations.
