Akata Witch

In Akata Witch, Okorafor explores the need that individuals have to feel they are part of a community, whether large or small. In the Prologue, Sunny identifies herself as someone who doesn’t fit easily into one world or another. Her albinism, her American accent, and her age set her apart at school, and after Miss Tate further stigmatizes her by asking her to strike her classmates, she becomes even more of an outsider. When she is attacked by Jibaku in the school yard in Chapter 1, “not one of her ex-friends came to her rescue. They just stood and watched” (11). At home, she feels unloved and rejected by her father, and she can’t participate in the activity she most enjoys with her brothers, playing soccer, because of her albinism. In addition to her ambivalent cultural identity, she feels prevented from identifying with the groups she thinks she should feel most connected to: classmates, friends, and family members.

As Sunny learns of her Leopard Person identity and develops friendships, she begins to figure out what her place is within new communities. Most importantly, she forms a new group, the Oha coven, with Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha. At first, these four young people seem very different, but after Sasha proposes they could be an Oha coven, they gradually come to think of themselves in group terms. For example, when they successfully encounter a bush soul in Chapter 7 and earn chittim, they make the decision to pool their chittim rather than to split it up, showing their understanding of themselves as a unified whole. By the end of the novel, when they are going to confront Black Hat, Okorafor describes them as one entity: “Like the team they were, they clicked their knives together. As the knives touched, they seemed to become one thing—one being made of four people” (315). Sunny feels strengthened by her relationships with the other three members of the Oha coven, who also offer her friendship and support. Being a member of this group makes her—and the other members—more powerful. Through this dynamic, Okorafor emphasizes how important a sense of community can be to self-actualization.

Throughout the novel, Sunny also begins to discover her role within Leopard society as a whole, often through guidance and knowledge from older members of the community. As a free agent with no Leopard parents, she sometimes feels “completely out of her element” (226), overwhelmed by a society she doesn’t understand. Still, elder members of the society help Sunny find her role: Anatov helps Sunny to learn juju and sends her to meet other scholars, even though his lessons sometimes frustrate her, and Sugar Cream ultimately agrees to be her mentor, giving her an honored place as the mentee of a renowned Oku Akama scholar. Sunny’s revelations about her grandmother’s past help her to understand how her own family history relates to the Leopard world, integrating her past and present senses of self. By the end of the novel, Sunny is so much more comfortably a part of the Leopard community that Orlu even suggests she might start to prepare to pass her second level, although she dismisses the idea. Being welcomed into the Leopard society was crucial for Sunny’s growth, Okorafor demonstrates, even if the welcome didn’t always look like what she expected.

Although Okorafor suggests that individuals must sometimes make sacrifices for the good of the group, she also emphasizes the importance of recognizing each individual’s unique abilities. While belonging to Leopard society can be a source of power and strength, Sunny also notices that she frequently is put in personal danger for the sake of the greater good, without having a voice in how the greater good is defined. Okorafor demonstrates a tension between the interests of individuals to keep themselves safe versus the interests of the community as a whole. One example of this is when Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha are sent by Anatov into Night Runner Forest to find Kehinde, a task that turns out to be nearly fatal. Sunny is angry and frustrated about the danger they’ve been exposed to. When she says so to Kehinde, he explains the position of the scholars on their well-being: “The world is bigger than all of you. Chances have to be taken […] Anatov thinks you’re […] useful to the Leopard People as a whole, though all this might be harmful to you as individuals” (133). Later, when the four young people are sent to find Black Hat, they discover that other covens were sent before them, but were unsuccessful. One scholar says, “More is at stake than your lives” (310). The message to Sunny and her friends is clear: Their individual lives are less important than the mission to stop Black Hat.

For Leopard People, one’s natural magical ability is determined by “those things that mark him or her” (99), such as a particular talent or perceived flaw. Although the scholars sometimes devalue the lives of the four young people in the Oha coven, their value as distinct individuals is also important, as their traits and abilities balance one another and are perfectly suited for the task of confronting Black Hat. Sunny is needed specifically because she is Ozoemena’s granddaughter and shares her natural powers of invisibility and innate connection to the spirit world that allows her to banish Ekwensu. Orlu is needed because he can undo bad juju due to his dyslexia, and so is able to revive the murdered children. Sunny, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha are also personally important to one another developmentally; their friendships with one another are based on their individual identities as well as their group identity.

At the end of the novel, when Sunny and her friends face Black Hat and Ekwensu, Sunny accepts that her own life is less important than the greater good of preventing the end of the world. In the final moments of Chapter 19, when she faces Ekwensu by herself, she is calm and thinks of saving her family’s life, untroubled by the seeming inevitability of her death. In this moment, downplaying her own importance as an individual, Sunny becomes more powerful than she has previously been in the novel; her willingness to sacrifice for the group ironically gives her more individual strength.