Kabu-Kabu

Nnedi Okorafor's collection Kabu-Kabu presents several consistent themes, yet it does so in a very inconsistent way. These themes are post (or neo) colonial Nigeria, the role of women in Nigerian culture (past and present) and windseekers, about whom Okorafor has written in other venues. There are twenty-one stories in this collection, and most of them, if presented alone, are strong stories. However, as a collection, the themes are too similar and the order of the stories is confusing. Many of the stories begin to run together because of their similarities. For example, Okorafor has mined an unpublished novel about a windseeker Arro-yo to include four separate stories about her throughout the novel. The fact that these are short stories mars their telling as Okorafor continues to rehash the appearance and tradition associated with windseekers in each story, and this becomes very repetitive, more so for those who've read Zahrah the Windseeker. Because this collection spans works written in a ten-year period, the quality of the writing is also uneven. The Kindle edition contains several distracting typos and grammar mistakes.