"Let that which had been written all be rewritten"

The challenge this week? Read the first book in a series by a person of color. Using the handy list compiled by the NYPL, I decided on The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor.

Years after computers are relegated to desert caves, a nomad discovers an audio recording of a memory extract entitled The Book of Phoenix.

Phoenix narrates her life story which began as a genetic experiment. It’s only after she escapes Tower 7 that she realizes the extent to which she was manipulated. Magically, she sprouts wings and travels to Africa to return a seed given to her by the great tree that served as the “Backbone” of her home tower.  

However, her presence in the African village is soon detected and she is captured and taken to another tower back in the States. Here she is reunited with the speciMen who helped her escape, Mmuo and her close friend Saeed.

With the help of Mmuo and Saeed, she discovers that an inordinate number of the speciMen are African or of African descent. Dying and rising multiple times, she makes it her life mission to destroy the towers the Big Eyes have created. Through the violence and destruction, she discovers, “Human beings make terrible gods.”

Okorafor explores the parallels between the new world’s enslavement of the genetic experiments to the slave trade of America’s beginnings.  In addition to exploring the issue of race relations, her story also takes in to account the devastation of global warming. Phoenix is troubled by not only the treatment of her fellow man, but perplexed by the outdated social mores she encounters: “It was 80 degrees outside, balmy December weather. I still couldn’t understand why men in this day and age had to wear this outdated attire (a suit) to look professional and respectable. These clothes were from cold times, before the climate had changed. Why couldn’t the United States incorporate the world’s fashions as the English language incorporated so many of the world’s words? It was plain meshugana.”

We know through her legacy that Phoenix can only succeed through another fiery self-sacrifice. We also learn, in the end, how the nomad takes her story and puts pen to paper to disseminate this fantastical tale. However, the book’s epilogue provides an intriguing monologue by a new character, Sola, that makes us question the veracity of all we have heard.

And of course check out the next book in the series, Who Fears Death.