Book Review: “Kabu Kabu” by Nnedi Okorafor
Soul In Space’s I Read It For You series
Nnedi is commonly praised for stringing together a collection of stories that manages to immerse her readers into a universe she has created and we, as readers, adapt to fairly quickly. Her mixing of reality vs fantasy, using and calling out tropes and sticking to consistent settings, characters and more have helped us navigate a collection of tales fluently rather than getting lost in translation.
While Nnedi has done an exceptional job at storytelling and immersing her readers, her tales do have slower moments. Slow, because she can weigh the reader down with details or side stories. For example in the short story, Kabu Kabu, after Ngozi realizes she was robbed of her credit card and cellphone from an intoxicating vampire, that shared her cab, she is taken on a ride she will never forget - to hopefully make it in time for her sister’s wedding.
“Then she saw. The largest spinning brushes detached itself from the interior of the car wash. Still rapidly spinning, it came toward them, as if it had officially checked out and was leaving work for the day. Ngozi trembled, unable to look away. It whipped water as it approached …”(286)
The first stop is at a local car wash, where one of the bristles is actually a local spirit in need of a ride. Ngozi watches in horror, for what feels like forever as the new passenger hops on board. As we share this moment of terror with her, personally for myself I had to go back and reread, her reactions seemed a bit more delayed compared to someone that was already in a rush and distrusting of her driver. The Kindle version of the book has the scene go on for a few pages, before even having her attempt to pull the handle on the door, upset when she realized the door was in fact locked. The drawn-out scene can weigh down the event we are seeing, making it hard for the reader to digest.
Now, it is good to note Kabu Kabu is a collection of stories, but it also was not written in one season of her life. The book also demonstrates Nnedi’s development as a writer. Meaning, you will notice some things style, like the detail example I mentioned before, but you may not see it creep up in a different story. These discrepancies are all intentional.
Nnedi does a good job of continuing the same narratives in other stories also with sticking two the same cultures rather than mixing a batch of stories from all over the world. Because our settings or are Nigerian or American throughout the book, it easier for her to play with the magic and fantasy. She also makes it a point that stories with similar plots or character have a certain amount of distance from each other. For example, and as you can see in the author’s notes, she has various stories of Arro-yo, a character of her, not in an order or even one after the next. Because of this style of piecing her collection together, when we do come across familiar characters like Ngozi or Arro-yo, it’s almost grounding like “I know this person.”
A very powerful tool of Nnedi’s is her ability to manipulate tropes in her storytelling. I enjoyed her very short - almost felt too short- story of The Magical Negro, which she says she wrote in response to a lecture and short story she witnessed at Michigan State. “Still I was pretty pissed off about it so to illustrate my annoyance, I fired back by submitting this story to the workshop.” (3800)
The Magical Negro was a comedic and blunt response to what we have seen in many literary pieces as well as movies. The black person who plays “the supporting stock character that comes to the aid of the white protagonist” (Wikipedia). The story introduced this narrative, and at first, that’s what we think we’re going to get. But just as soon as the black character seals his fate and dies, he snaps and calls the trope out for what it is.
“Look… fuck you.”Then he looks up at the blue sky and said, “My ass comes here to save his ass, and after I tell him what he needs to do, I get sixed? Whatchu’ think I am? Some fuckin’ shuckin’, jiving, happy Negro still dying for the massa ‘cause my life ain’t worth shit?”(67).
By placing this story in the beginning, it wakes the reader up and lets them know what really to expect going forward.