Billiken Bookmarks: Summer Reading Picks from SLU Authors

Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon (Saga Press, 2014).

Lagoon is science fiction with an African and feminist focus.  It is about aliens landing in the ocean off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria, who come not to threaten Nigerians but to help them clean up their ocean, which is very polluted. 

Adaora, the protagonist, is a marine biologist and mother of two.  She, along with Agu, a Nigerian soldier, and Anthony, a Ghanian rapper, "adopt" Ayodele, an alien who can shape shift.  Together, they petition the ailing president of Nigeria (who is hard to get in touch with) to meet the alien "Elders" under the ocean.  After some persuasion, the meeting takes place and the president is physically and spiritually rejuvinated. He pledges to get rid of pollution and corruption and the aliens cleanse the ocean and then leave. 

It is a good example of feminist Afro-futurism with an eco-critical twist, which makes it exciting.  Okorafor is very talented and specializes in Afro-scifi and Afro-futurism.  I like her writing style and have read several of her short stories.  The novel is also set in Lagos, Nigeria, which is a city I like!

It meshes with my scholarly interests, which include African fiction, women's writing and fiction about young adults.  While I haven't published any scholarly articles about her [Nnedi Okorafor], my current book project about African child soldiers has a chapter about magical realist fiction about child soldiers.  So the insights I got from reading Lagoon are helpful for my research.

Most importantly, a Nigerian mother of two (who also happens to be a scientist) saves the city from destruction!  

I taught this in my graduate seminar in Spring 2018 and it was well liked by my graduate students.  My area of specialty is African literature so I have long admired Okorafor's work.  She was the keynote speaker at a conference I went to several years ago.  

Joya Uraizee is associate professor and associate chair of English at Saint Louis University, where she teaches African and postcolonial literature and film.  She is the author of This is No Place for a Woman: Nadine Gordimer, Nayantara Sahgal, Buchi Emecheta and the Politics of Gender (2000),  In the Jaws of the Leviathan: Genocide Fiction and Film (2010), and is putting the final edits on her third book, Writing that Breaks Stones: African Child Soldier Narratives. She is also beginning a new book project about African child refugee narratives.