After recounting his personal tale of murder in self-defense - also in response to an attack motivated by hatred and fear - the two embark on an adventure together. DNA), a Fulani herdsman invested in tradition, enters the narrative the first morning following AO’s abrupt departure. AO’s road companion and eventual love interest, Dangote Nuhu Adamu (a.k.a. Okorafor moves the story briskly after the murder and subsequent escape. The narrative takes off after a group of men with anti-robot sentiments corner AO in a market, sneering a question that Okorafor returns to throughout the novel: “What kind of woman are you?” Though they attack AO viciously, their assault does not go according to plan AO kills them all in self-defense and flees into the desert, their blood still fresh on her clothes. While Okorafor never calls AO a cyborg directly in text, there is narrative parity to larger speculative fiction conventions, especially in the vitriol AO receives for seeming “ more machine than human” in the eyes of those around her. Born with “withered” limbs and disfigured internal organs that were further damaged in a rare “autonomous vehicle” accident when she was 14, the AO readers meet has extendable metal legs, a powerful cybernetic left arm, and a neural implant to help manage her pain. AO stands for “Autobionic Organism,” a name the protagonist chose in her 20s that gestures to her technologically augmented body. As readers, we navigate the futurescape through the eyes of Noor’s cybernetically augmented protagonist, AO Oju. In terms of plotting, Noor provides a fairly standard, serviceable speculative fiction novel. In this future, an enormous, endless sandstorm known as the Red Eye swirls ceaselessly over “miles and miles and miles of Northern Nigeria,” and massive machines called Noors gather energy from the natural disaster. Like many of her previous Africanfuturist works, Okorafor grounds this novel in “African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view.” Noor presents a version of Nigeria a few generations removed from our present moment. In 2021 alone, she published two long-form prose pieces: Remote Control, which has been met with wide acclaim and was dubbed the “ anti- Binti” by Dan Friedman, along with the newest addition to her catalog, Noor. Okorafor is as prolific as she is beloved, having published nearly 30 works in the last 16 years - from comics to novels to picture books - and with over 15 awards and honors adorning her bibliography. This focus isn’t surprising Okorafor, of course, coined the term “Africanfuturism,” and her blogpost defining the subgenre and its cousin Africanjujuism sent waves through creative and scholastic spheres.
IN AN ESSAY on Afro- and Africanfuturism published by the LARB, poet/critic Hope Wabuke analyzes and admires the work of storyteller Nnedi Okorafor.
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