Akata Witch

Aw man, I really liked this! A lot more than I thought I would - I thought I would medium-like it, approving of its general values and such, but I ended up being totally charmed, crushing it in two sittings and thinking about it a lot after finishing. This is a YA fantasy novel about an albino Nigerian-American girl, Sunny, who ends up having magical powers. It offers an affectionate portrayal of modern Nigeria, and was thus UGH SO REFRESHING because HONESTLY PEOPLE THERE IS A WHOLE BIG WIDE WORLD OUT THERE IT'S NOT ALL ANGLO-AMERICAN YA KNOW

Heeennyyywayy. Yeah, I do think a lot of Harry Potter's success is the world's general Anglophilia and the fact that people get pretty charmed by adorable Britishnesses - good Lord, Downton Abbey is hard to resist, I will admit. But it was just so FUN to see Lagos and Abuja and MAGGI NOODLES and all that stuff.

Okay, so Sunny is a tween/early teen girl going about her usual ho hum life. Pretty early on, she learns that she's a “Leopard person” (i.e. person who can do magic) and, on top of that, a “free agent” (kinda like a witch with Muggle parents), which has all sorts of complicated consequences in Leopard-dom. The usual YA fantasy journey is undergone, wherein a gang of other magical friends are gathered, and grumpy teachers are encountered, and a magical sport is witnessed. Interspersed are some primary documents from a book, “Fast Facts for Free Agents”, which includes a wonderful recipe for “tainted” pepper soup that warns that if you use the wrong Maggi noodles IT WILL EXPLODE aaahahaha I loved that part. Another favorite part was the vain wasp artist diva!

Okay, but definitely there was some fraught things. Like, for one, I don't know if it's the same in Nigeria, but albinism is really discriminated against in Tanzania - actually, that's putting it mildly. There are folk beliefs in Tanzania that albinos have magical powers and people have murdered and mutilated people with albinism, stealing their body parts, because of this. So having a story about a literal magical African albino without ever alluding to this horrible prejudice made me go, huhhh? Maybe it's not a thing in Nigeria?!

Another thing that was perplexing was the patriarchy (ISN'T IT ALWAYS): on the meta level, this book is a huge Bechdel pass and clearly has a progressive heart. On the within-the-book level, there's lots of plain sexist talk, which - again - okay fine, that happens a lot. But I was sometimes, uhhh, UNSATISFIED with the insufficient femrage at these sexist moments? I dunno how to articulate it, and I have no examples. I know, very helpful.

Anyway, very very nice, a wonderful fun YA book.