Mapping the Spaces of Black Women in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy and Who Fears Death

Afrofuturism emerged as a subgenre of Science Fiction in the 1990s, and with it, stories such as Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti Trilogy (2019) and Who Fears Death (2010). Both are set on Earth in the future, both portray the coming of age of their protagonists, Binti and Onyesonwu, and both discuss topics such as neocolonialism, slavery, female genital mutilation, alien-human contact, identity formation, and the emancipation of women.
This thesis’s interest is to gain insight into the construction of the spaces that Okorafor created for Black women in her novels. The analysis will show that Okorafor created protagonists that defy the neocolonialism portrayed in both novels: Binti and Onyesonwu evolve into hybrid posthuman figures that ultimately change the landscape they inhabit just as much as they are influenced by it.
The methodical approach consists of a spatial analysis of the Binti Trilogy and Who Fears Death executed with three focal points: postcolonialism, feminism, and posthumanism, using concepts from scholars such as Homi K. Bhabha, Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, Doreen Massey, Robert T. Tally, and Paula-Irene Villa. The analysis of Okorafor’s constructed spaces in the Binti Trilogy and Who Fears Death proved valuable for discussing the similarities between character development and spatial construction.