< A Boy Avenges His Murdered Father, With The Help Of A Magical 'Ikenga'

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

When Nnamdi's father, a police chief in Nigeria, is murdered, he vows revenge. But how much power does a 12-year-old boy really have? Turns out, a lot - that is, after he's given an Ikenga, a magical object that turns him into a superhero known as The Man. "Ikenga" is the new middle-grade novel from Nnedi Okorafor, who has won almost every major science fiction and fantasy award for her books. And she joins me now. Hello.

NNEDI OKORAFOR: Hi.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what is an Ikenga, for those who may not know?

OKORAFOR: Oh, boy. An Ikenga - it's quite a complex thing. But most simply put, it's an Igbo - which is a Nigerian ethnic group - it's an Igbo spirit or symbol of strength.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sort of like a magical object - right? - that gets given to Nnamdi.

OKORAFOR: Uh-huh.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: His father is the chief of police. And life was pretty good until his father is murdered. And everyone sort of suspects that the murder is tied to his dad's efforts to cut down on corruption in his town. So where does Nnamdi go from there? What does he decide?

OKORAFOR: So Nnamdi is - you know, he's a 12-year-old boy. First, he's kind of struggling with figuring out how to live his life. He - OK, so the story is set in present-day Nigeria in a small town called Kalaria. And that's in Imo State. It's a very specific part of Nigeria, in Imo State. This is the part of Nigeria that I know very well. And this town has trouble with corruption.

And that corruption comes in the form of all of these very colorful characters, criminals. Like, there's the kingpin, who's the chief of chiefs. And his - and Nnamdi's father - you know, he was embroiled in this need to take down all of these criminals. And that's really what the story stems from. So Nnamdi kind of decides to step into that role to finish what his father started.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And, of course, nothing ends up exactly as planned. And there's sort of a very timely theme in this book. I made note of this line where a character talking about Nnamdi's father says he believed in justice, but, quote, "I could never believe that justice could ever be truly served under a corrupt system." Was that inspired by current events in this country or elsewhere?

OKORAFOR: I mean, I started writing this in 2009. These themes are - one, they're universal, and two, they're ongoing. What we're dealing with now in the United States is not something that just happened. It's been going and going and going. And if we're talking about Nigeria, Nigeria has been battling corruption for a very long time as well.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But this is in particular a hard thing to see through a child's eyes, isn't it?

OKORAFOR: Yeah. And that was - you know, he has to deal with understanding that things are often more complex than he would have thought. You know, there were a series of things that happened prior, long before he even existed, that made for these things to happen and to understand how it's all connected. I think that's really valuable for young readers - to first start learning how to unpack things and how to piece things together and understanding how everything affects everything.

That's a really important lesson to learn as a kid but also for me as a writer. I learned a lot of things going through the journey from that perspective, too.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm curious what inspired this story. You say that this is from a very specific part of Nigeria that you know very well.

OKORAFOR: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: It seems rooted in real life.

OKORAFOR: Yeah. Well, for one thing, the Ikenga is a real - I have an Ikenga, you know? And this is where that whole idea of the fantastical blending with the mystical is - it's something that I like doing a lot in my stories. But also, you know, from a young age, my - I was born in the United States, but my parents have been bringing me back to Nigeria with my siblings to meet family and all of that, reconnect with our heritage, all of that. And there were stories there. They've all - even before I was a writer, there were stories.

One thing that I've always wanted to do is celebrate Indigenous Nigerian - probably most specifically Igbo - cultural and mythical and cosmological beliefs within my stories because, you know, I feel like colonialism has stifled a lot of that and made those things taboo or to be viewed as evil. And I think that's highly problematic.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I want to ask something else about you growing up and how you sort of came into this career. You had a pretty traumatic-sounding surgery when you were a teenager. You were paralyzed for a time. Did that have any effect on your desire to write and also to write fantasy in particular?

OKORAFOR: It's the reason why I write. I was an athlete - then when, you know, I had scoliosis and had to have corrective surgery, have my spine fused and everything. It was supposed to be normal, and I was supposed to be back on the tennis court and on the track. And I was in that 1% who responded to that surgery with paralysis, and they didn't know why.

So it was - I was 19, and before that, I wanted to study bugs. I wanted to be an entomologist. I always loved the sciences. Sciences and math were my strongest areas. When that happened, though, the only way that I kept myself sane - I started writing these stories.

And that was how I started writing because I never had written anything prior to that, never thought to - the fantasy aspect definitely - there was a very mystical aspect to losing the ability to walk when you were a mega-athlete and then learning again. There's definitely a mystical aspect to that.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know, it's interesting when I hear you tell the story of your surgery and recovery. And I want to bring it back to the book because it reminds me of this idea of the character Nnamdi, of feeling helpless then to feeling like you...

OKORAFOR: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Have a superpower.

OKORAFOR: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And it seems like you made that journey, too.

OKORAFOR: Yeah. I was definitely drawing from my journey with paralysis in Nnamdi's journey with coming to terms with what he was given because we have this 12-year-old boy who is given this ability that's huge. It's huge, and it's destructive. It's unwieldy. It's scary. But it's amazing, and he can do amazing things with it. And he had to learn to not view it as a terrible thing and instead view it as something great.

When I went through what I went through, I discovered a superpower, in a lot of ways, which was storytelling. I discovered it through that pain. I had to learn how to embrace it because if I didn't, I would have gone to a very dark place. And I think Nnamdi does the same thing. Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Nnedi Okorafor - her new novel is "Ikenga."

Thank you very much.

OKORAFOR: Thank you for having me.

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