Lucky duck I am, I could download the Binti: Home audiobook immediately after finishing the first novella. Binti felt like one of those stories that could be continued or not—Okorafor left readers in a comfortable middle ground where most is resolved, but some threads could unspool further. I’m so glad we’re receiving more! 

A year has passed since the Binti established peace between the Meduse and Khoush, and it’s been a year since Binti and her Meduse friend Okwu enrolled at Oomza Uni. While her studies are rewarding and therapy has provided much needed healing, Binti longs for home, her family, and their traditions. Okwu proposes something radical: that he accompany Binti home as an inter-galactic peace mission. A good idea in theory. Reality is much more difficult to navigate. Binti and Okwu encounter prejudice at every turn. 

Binti: Home is a much more human, earthbound story. Not to say the novella lacks science fiction—the relationship between Okwu and Binti reminded me of a lot of Lilith and the Oankali in Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood. No, it’s that the bulk of the novella focuses on humans. Binti’s harmonizing skills are put to the test not by Meduse, but her own family. Her siblings, aunties, cousins, and parents all struggle to understand a fraction of what happened to her. A pity since this is when Binti needs their support the most. I got flashbacks to returning home from my first semester at college. Binti’s experiences have expanded her world-view so much that suddenly her hometown feels small and limiting. Spice in some Khoush-Meduse brinksmanship and Binti: Home is a gut-clenching read. 

Okorafor’s art shines once again through these pages. Complex issues are brought down from pie-in-the-sky theoretical to solid people and tangible interactions. I felt like I was being given stones to mull over. There’s conversations and musings on anger: how it can be a weapon to split people apart or pop the bubbles of limitations we put on ourselves and others. Binti repeats how she wants to go “home,” but she’s forced to realize that there’s no going back to how things were. Okorafor seems pre-occupied with change and travel—physical, emotional, and spiritual. How fraught travel is; the danger and degradation experienced if one moves among strangers; how irrevocable the change. Again, for such a small page count, Okorafor fits in so much. Onto Binti: the Night Masquerade.