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Binti: Home

Book Notes

Book 2 in the Binti series, this book picks up right where the previous one left off, with Binti at school, trying to adjust, and deciding that home is where she needs to go.

While I understand the bone-deep need to go home, home of our memories and melancholy don't exist. Okorafor conveys this in Binti: Home incredibly well, as Binti returns home and it just... isn't. Her family it torn between the joy of seeing her, and the rage at her ignoring the path they set out for her.

Which is pretty much the lesson one can take from the series so far: that we need to follow our own path, even as it is filled with stress and guilt and pain and disappointment.

Really liking the series so far, recommended, but be sure to have all three books before you start reading. The first two are fast reads, and you'll want to jump right into the third after finishing this one.

Plus, I didn’t want to turn back. Why don’t I ever want to do what I’m supposed to do?
Page: 132

I can relate to this.

I’d come all this way to go on my pilgrimage because I’d thought my body was trying to tell me something was wrong with it. I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but I’d thought I’d broken myself because of the choices I’d made, because of my actions, because I’d left my home to go to Oomza Uni. Because of guilt.
Page: 144

Suddenly, I felt cold. Very very cold. With dismay. Deep down, I knew. From the moment my grandmother told me about the Zinariya, I’d known, really. Change was constant. Change was my destiny. Growth.
Page: 146

“Oh, they know, someone in those clans knows enough to build toxic ideas against us right into their cultures. That’s really why we are so outcast, untouchable to them."
Page: 147

Why did the Seven allow this to happen? Yet, drowning in the waters of death gave me new life. Not drowning in it, carried by it.
Page: 148

“You did not succeed your father. No man will marry you. Selfish girl. Failed girl.” I was supposed to be these things in order to be. I had not taken my place within the collective. This had left me feeling exposed and foundationless, even as I pursued my dreams.
Page: 149

I looked at my hands, wanting to bring them to my face and inhale the scent of the otjize covering them. I wanted to go home. I wanted to chase crabs near the lake until the sun set and then turn around to look at the Root and admire the glow of the bioluminescent plants that grew near the roof. I wanted to argue with my sisters in the living room. I wanted to walk into the village square with my best friend Dele to
Page: 150

I wanted to sit in my father’s shop and construct an astrolabe so sophisticated, my father would clap arthritis-free hands with delight. I wanted to play math games with my mother where sometimes she’d win and sometimes I’d win. I wanted to go home.
Page: 150

I wanted to go home, but I wanted to solve the edan more. Everything comes with a sacrifice.
Page: 152

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