This is actually the second novella in Nnedi Okorafor’s “Binti” series, but it’s worth it to pick up the first one too in order to get the whole story. (Binti won the Hugo for Best Novella in 2015, and it’s only about a hundred pages. Go on, I’ll wait…)
All done? Okay, in the first book, Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka of Namib runs away from her isolated tribe in order to be the first Himba to attend Oomza Uni, the finest school in the galaxy. During the trip she survives the massacre of her entire class, and manages to end a centuries-long war between two races, the Khoush and the Meduse.
In Binti: Home, Binti has returned to Earth. This is where Binti is forced to deal with the fallout from the first novella. All of it. The nightmares from the slaughter aboard the spaceship to Oomza, her friendship with Okwu (a Meduse who participated in the killings), the change to her DNA that has made her more (or less) than human now, the secret of the mysterious edan that she found in the desert as a child. And most importantly she’ll have to face the family and tribe that loves her, and who may never forgive her for leaving in the first place.
The storytelling here is a type that I enjoy the most, the kind where the reader is thrown into the middle of an unfamiliar situation/race/planet and left to figure things out. Some things I never quite understood, like Binti’s talent with mathematics (which in this version of Earth’s future seem to be a science, a meditation aid, and an actual psychic power) or the astrolabes that everyone carries (possibly similar to smartphones, except they’re linked to their wearers with that same undefined, mathematic-psionic ability). Okorafor’s writing paints lovely images of all of this technology, both of how it appears to everyone and what it looks like inside Binti’s head.
As I hummed I let myself tree, floating on a bed of numbers soft, buoyant, and calm like the lake water.
In the galaxy that Okorafor has created you’ll encounter the spectral-jellyfish race of the Meduse, plus living spaceships that travel faster when they’re about to give birth, people who communicate using whistles or flashes of light, and spaceports that are designed for the comfort of races that look nothing like humans.
There were whole terminals that I could not enter, because the gas they were filled with was not breathable to me. One terminal was encased in thick glass and the inside looked as if it were filled with a wild red hurricane, the people inside it flying about like insects.
But it’s Binti’s home – the planet Earth, specifically Namibia – that gets most of the attention. Okorafor takes us deep into the society of the Himba, a tribe that exists in real life but which is almost as unfamiliar to me as another planet.
The otjize, the clay-based paste that the Himba women wear on all exposed skin, is just one of the more obvious ways that set the Himba apart. It’s not something I would have ever imagined wearing (and never removed; more layers are constantly applied, and in the water-scarce community it’s rarely if ever washed off), but through Binti’s eyes we can see it as decoration, and hygiene, and tradition, and a celebration of femininity, and even comfort when she holds her hands to her face and breathes in the smell of home.
Binti hangs on to as much of her culture as she can at Oomza Uni, even coming back to Earth to attend Pilgrimage with the woman in her tribe and possibly “cleanse” herself of the strange moments of fury that she keeps falling into. But it’s not enough for her family. Not even close.
This was the most harrowing part of Binti’s story so far. Surviving a massacre in the previous novella was one thing, but having the people she loves tell her that she’s now damaged beyond repair is painful. Even worse, by rejecting her duty and flitting off to another planet, she’s actually hurt everyone in her family. Or at least that’s what Binti’s perfect, dutiful sister tells her. The Himba have traditionally been looked down on by the other Earth races, even in their own country, but the pressure from within the community to not mix with other races can be as strong as the pressure from without.
And as if becoming a pariah by her own actions wasn’t bad enough, Binti then learns a new wrinkle about her own history, one that sets her apart even more.
“You people are so brilliant, but your world is too small,” the old woman who was my father’s mother, my grandmother, said. “One of you finally somehow grows beyond your cultural cage and you try to chop her stem. Fascinating.”
This is a story about having to explore outward and inward. It’s about having to confront your own prejudices while dealing with all the ones that are currently crushing you from the outside. For me, one of the most amazing elements of 
Binti’s story is her friendship with Okwu. It’s hard to imagine being friends with someone who killed her entire class (for what he and the other Meduse thought were very good reasons). I feel like this tackles the idea that in a conflict that has gone on for generations, where both sides have done unforgivable things, the only way it’s going to stop is if someone takes the impossible step of forgiving them anyway.
The novella’s cliffhanger ending shows that forgiveness of one person is only the first step, not the actual solution. Hopefully the final novella in the series will show the real ending to the war, and maybe some kind of acceptance by Binti’s family. If any of them survive.