review: Somadina

Review: Somadina
Author: Akwaeke Emezi
date: Knopf; 2025
main character: Somadina
YA West African fantasy

I’ve always struggled with my reviews. At the very most, they’re honest but, I can’t even tell you all the ways they fall short. I can tell you exactly how this one will fall short: I’m culturally inept.

Akwaeke Emezi is an award winning Nigerian born author who unabashedly writes for their Black people. Emezi is such a superb storyteller that regardless of the cultural center from which they write, their narrative will hit home with readers. They don’t waste time laying out the intricacies of world-building, you’re there, so keep up! And you do.

The first time I met my mother’s father, Jayaike and I were thirteen. I remember that morning well. It was cold, and I was making pap in the big pot, stirring it with the long wooden spoon as it thickened. Jayaike was frying the akara on q fire next to me, lifting them out with a metal ladle and draining the oil before collecting them in a bowl and then dropping in the batter for the next batch. We were quiet because sometimes talking spoiled things. It was better to breathe in the cold morning air and enjoy the way Mama would stroke our cheek when she walked past with a basket of wrung clothes. She was stringing up the drying line when the first apprentices walked into the compound and hesitated at the gate, calling out a greeting. They were wearing red cloth and their faces were half masks, with white chalk covering the left side. The rest of their skin was fully coated in the chalk, and some if it had cracked into jagged lines running over their bodies. Their feet were dusty.

Characters are complex, as we humans tend to be, and every literary note is finely tuned. I think there were some bumps in the ebook I read, and while I could feel petty saying that, I think someone let things down in this particular format.

Somadina is closer to no one than to her twin brother, Jayaike. They live in time and place after the Split when everyone is expected to receive a gift of magic while they’re come of age. Some, like Somadina’s grandfathers and older sister, are called to be dibia, who my AI tells me are “traditional healers, spiritual practitioners, and experts in various forms of knowledge, including medicine and divination”. Emezi has woven so much in this 304 page novel!

They were slow and mysterious in coming, but Somadina and her brother finally seemed to be receiving their gifts. After a significant event (not unrelated to their budding magic), Somadina felt that she has let down her family and her community. Her mother, who’d always been distant from her children, completely pushed Somadina away. And, then her brother disappeared. Somadina would do anything to get him back so, she set out with Nkadi and her grandfather to find him on a treacherous journey through the Sacred Forest.

This is a story about knowing one’s history, protecting the environment, ancestry, and finding one’s place in the world. Along the way, the storyteller feeds us elements of West African culture -food like pap and akara, names, chalked faces, and the color red- that were lost on me because I’m not West African, nor have I studied it. Again, we’re letting this author down by not having reviewers who can relate the story to us on a cultural level and not just examine it as an exotic fantasy. As with any authentic, well-written, culturally specific story, any reader can find meaning in it. but this reader knows she’s missed a whole lot.There are layers of meaning that are going unexplored. Emezi describes their books as being in conversation with Toni Morrison, Helen Oyeyemi, Taiye Selasi, and Eloghosa Osunde. That’s an excellent point of reference but, I hope to be better prepared for the next Akwaeke Emezi book.

Be well and do good, my friends

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