One college-bound young woman's very bad time in space

"Binti" by Nnedi Okorafor
Recommended Grades: 9-12

Binti is a young woman who’s a prodigy in mathematics and communication, living in a future time when humans from all cultures of the world have access to space travel, and are in contact with several space-faring alien societies.

She is the first woman of her people, the Himba of Namibia and Angola, to be invited to study advanced mathematics at a prestigious university in another star system. She is the first in her family to even want to leave the village they live in long-term, let alone the planet. Full  of hope, she leaves earth on a spaceship.

Everything goes horribly wrong in space. She will have to use her wits, the knowledge that her elders taught her, and her incredible communication skills to survive conflicts with a jellyfish-like alien race that seeks to destroy her new university home.

The worldbuilding and technology in this story is so much more creative and groundbreaking than any science fiction television show or movie of today, even though the book was published almost 10 years ago now. Its centering of the way of life of a culture that has, by the futuristic setting of this book, stood up to the assimilative efforts of Eurocentric colonial capitalism for many centuries is remarkable on its own, but that’s just the beginning of its originality.

Binti’s Himba culture isn’t just a costume for her character. It forms core parts of her characterization and of the plot. This reliably places this series into the science fiction sub-genre of Afrofuturism.

The action is exciting and fast-paced, and the plot is compelling. I found myself not wanting to put it down before I reached the end.

The themes of the story revolve around coexistence with cultures that one doesn’t share. This could fit into larger unit about cross-cultural understanding.

There is some brutal violence in this story. For this reason, I recommend keeping this book, and the rest of its trilogy, available for all science fiction enthusiasts older than 9^th grade, who don’t mind a little violence.

Word count: 330 Words

Content Warnings (contains spoilers): 

A brilliant and challenging comic on the Asian American experience

"American Born Chinese"
By Gene Luen Yang
Recommended Grades: 9-12* (See review)

Lin moves to a new school for third grade. As one of only three Asian-American students, he struggles to fit in. Not only do the white classmates relentlessly bully him, but the teachers alienate him through their stumbling lack of familiarity with his culture. He tries to fit in more by rejecting anything that his classmates see as too Asian, including, at times, a classmate from Taiwan, Wei-Chen.

At the same time, the traditional Chinese story of the Monkey King is told. The Monkey King is a divine ruler of monkeys who’s rejected by the other divine beings for not being human-like enough. He struggles with trying to become more human-like in order to fit in.

At the same time, Jin watches a 1980’s style sitcom along the lines of Family Matters, about a white high school main character having to put up with an embarrassing comic relief cousin. The cousin is a full Chinese stereotype, straight out of racist 1800’s cartoons and minstrel shows.

OOPH.
A reminder that the contents of these comic pages do not
reflect my personal beliefs or taste.

This is a complex graphic novel to fully grasp. I first read it as a fan of graphic novels marketed towards adults, and it has a large adult audience. It’s appreciated for its unique overlapping storytelling, its use of metaphor and symbolism, and for its potent expression of the experience of growing up as an Asian American. I didn’t even think about it as a book to recommend to young readers until recently.

So: What age is this book right for?

Despite the story starting in third grade, I suggest this book to high schoolers and up. There are a few moments of bloody violence in it, and a few passing sexual references told as sitcom jokes, but those aren’t why I suggest caution here.

The Asian stereotype character is so potently offensive that any students who have not learned about the history and use of Asian stereotypes in the USA probably shouldn’t read this book and take him at face value. These parts of the book may even fuel racist bullying in classrooms that are too emotionally or intellectually immature to understand him.  

A high school literature class would need to spend time learning about stereotypes to give students the context needed to understand this character.

This character is such a problem that the Disney Plus television TV-14 adaptation of this book toned  him down substantially. They replaced his offensive name, removed his lecherousness, and instead portrayed him as a clumsy version of a 1980’s style Asian stereotype, along the lines of Sixteen Candles Long Duk Dong, rather than as the fully 1800’s-era portrayal found in the graphic novel.

Overall, this is still a brilliant book. I fully suggest having it available in a high school library’s comics collection for students’ solitary reading, and for requests. I would also suggest it as a text for use in a high school classroom to study stereotypes and the Asian American experience.

Word count: 478 words

Content Warnings (contains spoilers): 

This ghost story brings the history of the dead to vivid life

 "How I became a Ghost" by Tim Tingle
Recommended grades: 5th-8th

Issac is a ten-year old boy of the Choctaw people, from what we now know as Mississippi. He’s already dead when he starts narrating the tale of what leads to his early demise. Death is an inevitable facet of reality for the many doomed characters in this dark story, since soldiers of the United States army have begun the destruction of and forced relocation of his people. We now know this genocidal project as the Trail of Tears.

Isaac’s existence is already on the border of the mystical while he’s still alive. He has frequent visions of danger and death before the events happen, and ghosts that only he can see are a constant presence in his tale. He also talks to his dog. None of this is seen as dangerous or unrealistic by his tribe members once he finally tells them. Ancestors visiting to impart wisdom is treated as just another part of their daily lives. This departs from the normal tropes of children’s literature, in which disbelief or shunning often come to a character with powers.

Despite his inevitable death, Isaac still succeeds in aiding his tribe as they travel west, through a harsh winter, with cruel and sadistic soldiers who seek to escalate the violence and disease at every opportunity. The violence and injustice is graphic and upsetting at many points. Which is the point.

The use of ghosts and ancestral spirits in this book to give depth and life to historical events reminds me of the Southern Gothic tradition and of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” which also uses fictional ghosts to represent the ancestral trauma and permanent scars of American history on its still-living survivors. This book is written in a much more straightforward narrative than that work, and its sympathetic characters and well-paced action sequences make it a thrilling read in parts, on top of its educational and empathetic values.

You expect the hero of a story to survive the tale of adventure that he tells you. That this hero is dead before the book even starts should tell you how unique and unpredictable this middle-grade book really is.

This is one reason this book stands apart as a notable work of children’s literature. The other is the unfortunate dearth of culturally authentic written adaptations of Native American stories. Most children’s books which proport to be taken from Native American traditions instead originate from a person outside of the culture, such as a white anthropologist, whom inevitably adapts the narrative to fit European tropes and traditions.

By contrast, the mystical and historical events at this book’s heart are, according to the Choctaw author, Tim Tingle, taken from genuine stories from his people.

I recommend this harrowing, but gripping, book for 5^th grade and up, especially if it could be added to the time period that the student is learning about the Trail of Tears in their history curriculum. Be ready for any parents or school officials who adore Andrew Jackson  to challenge it, but it’s worth that fight.

Word count: 500

Content Warnings (contains spoilers):