Nnedi Okorafor: Trajectories of an African Futurism

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the new category of Africanfuturism coined by the Nigerian American writer (or Naijamerican, as she defines herself) Nnedi Okorafor in 2019, after years of questions about the limits that the category of Afrofuturism has put over the receptions of her works. Okorafor felt the urgency to open this new horizon to better insist on the importance of stories and narratives profoundly rooted in the African continent, thus abandoning the Western models and canons of science fiction and creating new ways of looking towards the far future. Through the analysis of Okorafor’s novels (Who Fears Death?, Lagoon and Binti), interviews and posts on her blog, the article explores the potentialities of Okorafor’s speculative fiction to deal with technologies, traditions, cultures, social transformations, and how these issues inform a future Africa that could possibly be an entirely new world, in which the concept of ‘West’ and ‘colonialism’ do not have any meaning.