102 pages • 3 hours read
Nnedi OkoraforBinti
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Hair
Hair is a central symbol to Binti: The Complete Trilogy and appears throughout the series. It symbolizes a connection to culture and heritage. Okorafor’s depiction of hair can be read as a pushback against current Western beauty standards and the often racist rhetoric around black and African hair types. The description of Binti and her family’s hair as beautiful should not be revolutionary, in the same way that a science fiction protagonist who happens to be an African girl should not be; and yet by definition, the very existence of Binti is an act of subversion. Hair is politicized in Binti in a similar way. Binti, as the only Himba to have left Earth, comes into direct contact with the Khoush, a group who views the Himba as inferior. It is tradition for Himba women to cover their skin and hair with red clay; they think it is beautiful.
The Khoush believe that the Himba are savages. When Binti is at the launch port to leave for Oomza University, Khoush women feel entitled to touch her hair: “The woman who’d tugged my plait was looking at her fingers and rubbing them together, frowning. Her fingertips were orange red with my otjize. She sniffed them” (5). The woman is surprised to find that the clay does not smell like waste, and Binti can only ignore them. Binti’s hair thus takes on a deeper meaning, serving as a representation of and connection to her Himba culture. Okorafor emphasizes this connection when Heru notices that Binti’s hair is “braided in tessellating triangles,” a “pattern” that Binti knew “spoke [her] family’s bloodline, culture, and history. […] [Her] father had designed the code and [her] mother and aunties had shown [her] how to braid it into [her] hair (10). Binti’s hair is “braided into the history of [her] people” (10) and represents her connection to her beloved family and community.
When Binti arrives at Oomza University, she discovers that because of her encounter with the Meduse, her hair has become tentacle-like. She is no longer able to brain it into the history of her people. This change reflects Binti’s disconnection and her permanent separation from her Himba heritage. The Himba are traditionally an Earth-bound race; to leave her community and Earth is also to denounce a part of her Himba-hood that she can never get back. Binti forges a new connection with the Meduse, however, and her okuoko connects her to Okwu the way no human has ever been.
The Root
The image of long and deep tree roots repeats throughout the entirety of the series. As a Himba woman, Binti’s kind has raised her on the importance of community, family, and stability; roots symbolize similar meanings in the novel. Binti’s home, the Root, symbolizes and echoes Binti’s journey of self-discovery: “Six generations of my family had lived there. It was the oldest house in my village, maybe the oldest in the city” (2). The Root is the center not only of Binti’s childhood but also of the entire Himba community. At the end of the series, Binti’s home burns to the ground. Binti is entirely groundless, destabilized from the lack of support from her family, her community, and her uncertain new identity. Uprooted, Binti struggles to find a home within herself. Roots are fundamentally tied to the Undying Trees that are grown in Osemba:
The Undying Trees grew all over Osemba. They had thick rubbery wide leaves and trunks spiked with hard thorns that had lived longer than any generation could recall. Their ancient roots were so strong and they snaked so deeply beneath Osemba that the town’s waterworks were not only built around them, they were built along them (174).
The Undying Trees and their roots are vital to the survival of the Himba people. Intimately intertwined with their history, the Himba go to the ground when trouble occurs. Instead of running outwards, they flee inwards. The Root is built on the roots of an Undying Tree and protects Binti’s family when the Khoush burn the Root to the ground.
The Root and its subsequent decimation and resurrection reflects Binti’s own path. Previously revered by the Himba people, just as Binti had been as a master harmonizer, the Khoush desecrate it and burn it to the ground. The Khoush are also responsible for killing Binti. The destruction of the Root also represents the end of all that Binti has ever known; she can no longer ever go home. Despite this and Binti’s fundamentally changed physicality and mentality, the Himba part of Binti will always exist. The roots of Himba culture and the love of her family remain in her even as she continues to grow and change.
The Color Red
The color red is a recurring motif throughout the text. It takes on different meanings as the story progresses and serves to represent Binti’s mental state. At the beginning of the novel, red is a sacred color for Binti. Red is a color of power for the Himba people as it represents the earth: “We Himba don’t travel. We stay put. Our ancestral land is life; move away from it and you diminish. We even cover our bodies with it. Otjize is red land” (3). The color red becomes something that is fundamentally tied to Binti’s Himba heritage and her home in Osemba. Binti even wears red colors to the launch port when she leaves for Oomza University. At the beginning of the series, the color of red symbolizes ancestral homeland, the Himba heritage, and a connection to Binti’s family.
The color red takes on an altogether different meaning after the Meduse attack Third Fish. When Heru dies, Binti can only see images of the red blood that emits from him. This experience traumatizes her. The red covers of Binti’s bed in the breathing room of Third Fish make her “think of blood” (32) rather than the warmth and familiarity of home and Osemba. Later, after months at Oomza University, Binti still has flashbacks and panic attacks when she remembers the scene on board Third Fish: “For the first few weeks, I was okay, but eventually I started having nightmares, day terrors, I’d see red and then Heru’s chest bursting open” (113). Although Binti still wears red clothing and covers herself in otjize she makes herself, she still panics at the sight of the color. When Binti sees herself bleeding, she likens it to “the red flower on Heru’s chest” (88).
When Binti returns home, she even chooses to wear a blue dress that is altogether uncharacteristic of the Himba people. Binti remarks that the “strange blue clothes […] make [her] look like some sort of masquerade” (140). Binti’s conflicting connection to the color red can also be seen in the change of her hair. Previously, Binti wraps her hair in red otjize; after the incident with the Meduse, however, her hair becomes translucent blue okuoko. This change marks Binti’s disconnection with the color red and more importantly, with her family and her Himba heritage.
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