Exploring a new genre

I have always been a reader, but I have never branched into the field of science fiction, and my journey into the realm of fantasy begins and ends with Tolkien. Because of this, this class has introduced me to many new authors, some of which are quickly becoming favorites, and has also showed me the complexities of the genre and the ways in which it extends far beyond what an outsider might imagine its reach to be.

Before taking this class, I had never read Díaz, though I had heard much about him, and I had never heard of Okorafor. I must admit that I much prefer Díaz's writing, but it struck me, after reading the three short stories we were assigned by the two authors, how similar the approach of the two authors were in theme and construction. Díaz's narrator is unique in voice, and is distinctly Díaz (or is it distinctly Yunior?), while Okorafor's is more generic. But the themes present in each narrative are strikingly similar, as well as the world constructed by each author within which the events of their various stories takes place.

When given a piece of Díaz's writing, it is immediately evident that you have been plunged into his constructed world. In fact, though dealing with different characters, and decidedly more "science fiction" than Oscar Wao, it is difficult to distinguish the narrative voice and location of Díaz's "Monstro" from that of his novel. The events of either could easily take place within the other.
In a similar vein, Okorafor's stories, though affecting different women in different Nigerian villages, with different elements of science fiction, are very uniform in description, and in conflict. Much like Díaz's stories, Okorafor's seem to be two competing narratives of a time and place constructed within her writing.

But beyond this similarity (a constructed world within which the author situates many of his/her stories) the utility of science fiction plays a similar role for each author. For Okorafor, the Zombies are a physical manifestation of the oppression suffered by the Nigerian people, the bionic arm given to Anya's father an emblem of foreign "aid," both contrasted and mirrored by the AK-47 of the men at the oil spill.  Similarly, Díaz's disease in "Monstro," though fictional, is given an all too realistic response, highlighting through the extreme, our interactions with and reactions to the conflicts in the third world.

What both tempers and highlights the science fiction elements in the narratives of both authors is the addition of the mundane as well as the acceptance of the extraordinary. Anya and her mother, as well as the other villagers, do not question the technology that has produced her father's bionic arm. The villagers in "Spider the Artist" accept the Zombies as an inescapable part of life. But more than that, the narratives are sprinkled with very human problems. Anya's story is one of a family dealing with the major injury of the father. Eme is threatened more immediately by the abuse of her husband, than the Zombies that guard the pipeline. And in Díaz's "Monstro," equal narrative weight is given to the narrator's pursuit of Mysty as is the story of the outbreak of the disease. Here, again, is an area in which the two author converge, in their ability to normalize their fantastical stories they both add weight and a sense of realism to the unreal, and highlight how devastating the reality is, by mirroring the atrocities of real life in the science fiction of their stories.