Why Nnedi Okorafor Keeps Coming Back to Coming-of-Age Stories | Audible.com
Why Nnedi Okorafor Keeps Coming Back to Coming-of-Age Stories
The Nebula- and Hugo Award-winning writer traces a young heroine’s discovery of her terrifying powers in ‘Remote Control,’ a new sci-fi novella that expands on Okorafor’s signature themes.
Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Sam Danis: Hello, everyone. I am Audible Editor Sam, and I'm thrilled today to be talking to Nnedi Okorafor. She is the Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of many captivating sci-fi, fantasy, and Africanfuturism stories, including,,,, and the novella we're here to talk about today, which is her latest, . On a personal note, her cat is also one of my favorite Twitter follows. Highly recommend it. Nnedi, thank you for joining me today.
Nnedi Okorafor: Yes, of course. My pleasure. Glad to be here.
SD: Great. Let's get right into it. Remote Control is the name of your latest novella. It takes place in a near-future Ghana and features a really compelling young protagonist, whom you describe as the adopted daughter of death. Can you tell us a little bit more about this story and this character?
NO: It's a little difficult to talk about without spoilers, but okay. This story is set in a very near-future northern Ghana. We have our main character who—her name is Fatima, later on Sankofa—she's a young character and she does some things that set some things in motion. Spoiler: she eventually has this ability to bring death. She glows in this way that kills anything that's biological and also technology as well. And because of that, she eventually goes on some adventures and becomes known. She becomes very known for her abilities, and stories begin to be woven around her. That's really the crux of the narrative without me spoiling too much of it.
SD: I know it's always so hard when you don't want to give too much away. I will say I feel like this is one of those novellas that is really nice to go into. Just go right into it, dive right in.
NO: Dive right in. It's difficult to talk about because some of the really pivotal stuff happens right at the beginning, like right at the beginning.
SD: Right. This character is just kind of pulled from everything she knows right into this new world, where she has to figure herself out, from the ground up again.
The narrator is Adjoa Andoh, and she gives an amazing performance. It's just fantastic. She previously lent her voice to your novel Lagoon, but she is also having a bit of a moment as Lady Danbury, of course, on Netflix's, which is amazing. What can you tell me about the casting process there? Were you involved in it at all?
"For me as the writer of the story to listen to the audiobook... it's like hearing your book for the first time."
NO: Oh yeah, definitely involved. She was one of the voices in the audio edition of my novel Lagoon. And she was amazing with that, and she's an amazing actress and an amazing narrator. I've always loved her work, and with Remote Control, I knew that she was the one who would rock this, because, one, she could flip accents really well, and with Remote Control, you have to flip accents really well. Two, I knew that she could channel this young but very, I don't want to say dark, young but very rich little girl character. I knew she could do it. I knew she could, so I knew early on as soon as my publishers were like, "Who would you have in mind for this?" I was like, "Oh yeah, her, definitely her." She was my first choice and I was so ecstatic when she could do it, because I knew she was going to do an excellent job. I listened to it immediately…. The moment it was available, I jumped right in, and the experience was incredible. She did an amazing job.
SD: She really does knock it out of the park, and the way she switches from the narrator to character...
NO: Yeah.
SD: It's like you said, with accents and everything. It's flawless. She's great. You've mentioned that you're an audiobook fan, as am I, if that wasn't clear. I'm curious if that experience of being an audiobook listener has had an impact on how you approach your stories and how you write.
NO: Definitely. In my stories in general, I've always played with this idea of the written word and the oral storytelling, and how they play off of each other and how they add to each other and which one is given more weight. That conversation has been part of almost every story I've written. It's part of Remote Control, the idea of oral storytelling. So that's already been there.…
I've always loved audio. Even as a kid I used to listen to books on tape. I was so into those. It was so magical when I think of the little sack with the tape in there and the little book in there, it was magical. So the written word and the spoken word have always… There's been an interplay with them from the beginning.… For a while they were on CDs and then you had tons of CDs and you had to remember your place and it was a little difficult, but once they were digital, where you could bring it with you and have a ton of them on your phone and all of that, I really started getting deep into audiobooks.
So, my reading experience, because I read as much as I write, became written book via digital or physical book. Inevitably that was going to affect how I write and how I hear my stories because even part of my editing process is oral. When I get near the end, I will listen to the whole thing because you have text-to-speech software, and I like to hear the story as well. That layer of the oral definitely affects the way I tell my story, the substance of it. It's even more combined now. Even with my reading experience, with my writing experience, there's definitely an oral aspect to it.
SD: And there's that oral storytelling tradition, like you mentioned in Remote Control, where these legends of who the Sankofa character are going around, as she finds her way in the world. That's really interesting, and I love that you've been listening since you were a kid. We love the audiobook lore here.
So getting to your characters, Fatima/Sankofa, as well as Binti, some of your other characters are very often either children or young women. The narrators are very obviously adult performers, actors. Do you feel like the audio brings a new dimension to that character or allows you to see them in a way that you maybe didn't when you were writing them?
NO: Definitely. I mean, that's part of why whenever the audio version of anything that I've written comes out, I'm jumping on it. It's not that it changes it, it just makes the story more. For me as the writer of the story to listen to the audiobook, I can't even explain to you how it's like hearing your book for the first time. It's like hearing your story for the first time…you've heard your characters speak. I hear my characters speak, and this is really good. Like Remote Control? Really good. Suddenly you're hearing the character that has been in your head outside of your head and it's crazy. And for readers, there's something that's added, especially for a lot of my works because a lot of my works tend to involve accents that my readership has not heard or is not familiar with.
When they're reading the book as a physical book, they may hear it in a way using knowledge that they don't have or attempting to use, you know, trying to fill it in because there's certain things you just have to hear to understand. Like pidgin English? You have to hear it. It's meant to be heard. Pidgin English is really meant to be spoken more than written. So when you listen you'll get that. That layer of the accents which is really important with Remote Control. It's really important. With Lagoon, the accents are really important. I think the [accents] add a lot to grow the story in really amazing ways.
SD: When I go back to listen to a book I've read in the past, it's like reliving it in a completely different experience.
NO: Yeah.
SD: I can only imagine as the writer, “Those are my words. I wrote that,” but just getting to experience a different facet of it I'm sure is a rewarding experience.
NO: Oh yeah. And then there's also the aspect of, when I sit and read my own book, I'm still editing. I'm always editing. When I sit and listen to it, the editing is less, so I can sit and be the reader a little more easily, which is a nice experience. I enjoy that.
SD: That sounds very nice actually. As someone who is always editing my own work as well, I'll have to get someone to record my stories. Keeping along that topic, you do write these young characters who often end up as outsiders among their own community or family. These kind of coming-of-age stories. I'm curious what attracts you to writing those younger characters and exploring their journey.
NO: I keep returning to, like, there's a specific age range I keep returning to, and it's not even on purpose, but when I really think about it, I think it has a lot to do with, for me as a kid and as an adult, I was raised... There were aspects of my childhood and adulthood where I was really sheltered, like really sheltered. So with Binti, for example, that story, Binti was this girl who leaves her very insular family to go into outer space and go to a university of aliens, on a different planet, and she comes from this very traditional family.
That was inspired by my own personal experience with my own family when I was offered this position and in a different state, and I was what, 40 or late 30s? So there's certain aspects that I just relate to with the coming-of-age narrative. There's certain aspects to it that I deeply, deeply relate to as an adult, as a kid. I remember going through certain journeys as a kid. I've always been able to draw the parallel between the two really easily.
And I feel like, writing in that age group, I'm best able to tell the story that I want to tell, best able to channel that narrative. It hasn't been something that I'm choosing to do, like with Remote Control. Remote Control is not a young adult novella, but the main character is very young. I think there are parallels throughout life that are best told within that age range, if that makes sense.
SD: Totally. I mean, it's almost as if, you know, coming of age never really stops—
NO: Yes. We have to do it over and over again.
SD: We’re always going through transitions, and young characters are really an interesting way to explore that.
NO: Yeah.
SD: So, not to bring up the pandemic question, but there is a reference to the 2020 pandemic in Remote Control, which I was surprised and a little bit relieved to see. It's almost like, "Okay, we got past it." It's okay. It was oddly comforting in a weird way, being able to reference that. You were obviously in some stage of the final edits or writing towards when the pandemic started. I'm curious, did that have any sort of impact on the story or your writing process?
NO: Yeah, the pandemic happened right at the very end. We'd gone through all the edits. It was done. And I literally woke up one day, and was like, "I gotta add this, I gotta add this, this totally fits in." So it was done. But the thing is, the world that Remote Control is set in, it fits right in. The pandemic slips easily in. It's not like, "Oh, this world could not have existed with the pandemic." This is an alternate universe. No, it fits perfectly in there. There's nothing that I had to change, because the way I was imagining the future, things like the pandemic definitely happened.
So, there was nothing that had to be changed. It was an easy fit, but I just knew also that I couldn't have this future without a reference. And then there's something in the early part of the novella that happens that echoed the pandemic, it echoed. It just made sense. The pandemic had to be referenced. In this world for that to happen and there to be no reference to the pandemic wouldn't make sense.
SD: Right. And pandemics and things like that have long been a thing that's been explored in speculative fiction. I'll be curious to see over the next year or two how many of those kind of references you see, because like you said, it fits sometimes, it's impossible to ignore.
NO: Yeah. Yeah.
SD: So, Remote Control is a novella. Binti kind of fell into that realm as well. I personally have really been enjoying the novella format as a way of exploring characters in their worlds, and I feel like we've seen a lot of it in this genre, especially between The Murderbot Diaries [by Martha Wells] and Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series, both of which I love as well. I'm curious, is this a format that you feel like you're naturally drawn to? Is this what you set out to write? Or does the story take that shape for you?
NO: I think it's a bit of both. When I sit down to write a story, I'm not thinking about lengths at all. Remote Control has its own, boy, has its own trajectory. Its shape shifted a lot. I'm not thinking, okay, I'm going to sit down and write a novella and then write to that length. Whatever the book is, is what it will be. That's always been… It's been difficult. It's made things difficult. Like, who writes a novella trilogy? I didn't even mean to.... The way that Binti [the trilogy] happened was, it just happened the way it happened. It was not planned. It just happened the way it happened, and same with Remote Control.
But I do think that I do like that length. I do. I like what you can do with a novella. I like the feel that it leaves. I like that feel of, it often leaves readers satisfied but wanting more. It's the way that I like to eat, which is I don't like to stuff myself, but I don't want to undereat either. I eat just enough where you're fulfilled, but you could eat more, but you're not going to. You don't need to. It's like that, you know? So novellas... and I like that, I like how lean the stories are. And after reading a novella, that feel of they have their own specific result, and I think that's really cool.
And this is something more that I become aware of.… To write the novella, I never know what something's going to end up being, but after I've written it, I'm like, "Okay, you know, this is cool, this is cool." And I also have so many ideas and my ideas are big, and my characters and their stories are big. I want to get all of them out. I want to write all of them. And the novella gives me a chance to explore worlds in a way that feels very, very satisfying, but not overwhelming.
SD: Right. That makes a lot of sense.… There's so much world-building, and so much character that goes into these stories in a relatively smaller lane. So it's been a really interesting format to see emerge over the past couple of years.
Remote Control felt very satisfying, and the arc that the story takes feels complete, but do you see yourself returning to Fatima/Sankofa anymore after this?
NO: We'll see. I know the world is big. I like the idea of leaving it where it is, but yeah, there's always room, there's always room, and I never know what I'm going to do next anyway. Could wake up tomorrow and just start writing the thing. I don't know. Right now, it's not a series. But it's a world. This is a world that I've been to before.
That's why it reads that way. There are things that may have been touched upon, but they're not dwelled upon in the story. There's a reason for that, because that world is big. I've written in that world multiple times and I've written short stories. I've written novels. I've written about the character, all of that, there's just so much. A direct part two not as likely, but something in that world, highly likely, yeah.
SD: Nice. I like that. It feels very organic wherever that world decides it wants to take you next. So, big news, both Who Fears Death and Binti have now been picked up for TV series. Very exciting. You've actually shared that you're cowriting the pilot for Binti. I'm curious what that process has been like. Have you written for TV before? Is this your first foray into that world?
NO: I've written a lot of different types of things. I've written comics. I've written two or three plays that have been produced here in Chicago. So I've done that, memoir, I've done all kinds of different types of writing. Who Fears Death, I am a consultant on that and I'm not writing the pilot. I've gotten to see things, I've gotten to see development from that angle, and then I'm also adapting Octavia Butler's Wild Seed series for Amazon Studios. I've learned about adapting, and we're cowriting the pilot for that, and we're actually on the second episode. I've learned what it is to adapt other people's work. And then Binti was me adapting my own work. At this point I've got some pretty good experience, and there are other things in the pipeline as well.
"Remote Control is not a young adult novella, but the main character is very young. I think there are parallels throughout life that are best told within that age range."
But the process for adapting, each of the projects is different. Every adaptation is different. I cowrote the pilot for Binti with Stacy Osei-Kuffour, who it was just announced that she's going to be writing the script for the Marvel movie Blade. She's amazing. Adapting Binti has been like, Binti lends itself really nicely to TV and it's grown. Oh man, I can't wait till I can actually talk details, because that whole process was amazing and cool.
And just watching the story grow and shift, because it's different from the novella series, but it's also the novella series—it's just adapted for TV, and it's just amazing. And the process has been really eye-opening, but also amazing watching the story grow.
SD: Well, you've given me a lot of hope that there's going to be a lot of good TV and movies to watch in the near future. Very excited about that. What's next for you? The kind of adaptation you're working on right now, or is there some other project that's near and dear to you at this moment?
NO: Right now, well, I just finished the third book in the Akata series, so there's that. And we can thank the pandemic and me having nothing to do. It is being worthless that I just spit that thing.… I finished that and we're in the editing process. I also finished an adult novel, which is going to be published by the same publisher as Who Fears Death. And so there's that, and then, yeah, the adaptation stuff, that's also taking up a lot of my time and energy.
So there's Binti, there are three I can't name, actually four, and I'm very busy. I'm juggling all these things...and there's something else—I really need to get to the point where I can talk about these projects, because there's so many things that I'm working on that I literally can't announce yet. I'm busy and I'm productive and it's been an interesting year.
SD: To say the least. I'm glad to hear that you were able to get so much done and get so much inspiration going. I'm excited about these to-be-named projects, but I'll be patient. I did have one final question, since you mentioned you are a listener [of audiobooks]. Is there anything recently that you really enjoyed or anything you're looking forward to listening to?
NO: Looking at my to-read list is like, I just... don't look at it. Because literally right now I have four that I'm listening to. Like, four. One of them doesn't count because it's my book, because I'm listening toIkenga. It is awesome. Ikenga is wonderful, but I'm also listening to The Three-Body Problem and toThe Sixth Extinction, which is nonfiction. I wish it were fiction but it's not. And thenThe Ministry for the Future and that's Kim Stanley Robinson.
I'm like listening to all three of those at the same time, which has given me a very interesting experience. I must say, Ministry for the Future and The Sixth Extinction, I'm not sure if people should read those together. I wouldn't recommend that, but it's definitely an experience. They're all amazing. Those are my current reads. Looking at my list, just let me work through these first.
SD: I am also a nonmonogamous listener/reader. So I get it. Sometimes the combination of things. Thank you so much, Nnedi, for joining us and for answering all these questions. I'm very much looking forward to all these projects that are in the works. Sounds like you're very busy, so I very much appreciate you taking the time. I'll just note that, listeners, you can listen to Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor now on Audible, as well as many of her other fantastic stories. Thank you again, Nnedi.
