Remote Control
I’ve been thinking about “active” reading, not just a let-the-story-wash-over-me thing. It’s on my mind because, lucky me, I got some (v minor) insights into student life recently.
For a relative’s university-level Arthurian Literature class, the text in question was ‘Idylls of the King’ by Tennyson. “I know you’re a literature lover. How can I relate to this more?” pinged my phone. I am far (um, very far) from a Tennyson expert, so my advice was somewhat limited, but I think something that resonated was a reminder that poetry like this might not be so much about the “story” (since Tennyson didn’t dream up the King Arthur legend), but more about how the poet uses language tricks to illuminate certain things particular to his own era or how he might slyly reference other retellings. In other words, the legend becomes a tool for something more.
The second was my son’s English class — one of the texts was the speculative fiction novella Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor. He and I had an interesting discussion about the idea of the “monster” in literature. In the case of Remote Control, the concept is turned on its head with the introduction of a young Ghanian girl who is visited by Death and subsequently given the name Sankofa [a Ghanian symbol and term that means something akin to learning from the past to inform the future] and the title of “Adopted Daughter of Death.” Okorafor is an Africanfuturist (a term she coined) and Africanjujulist, and I’m just going to quote her directly: “Africanfuturism is a sub-category of science fiction. Africanjujuism is a subcategory of fantasy that respectfully acknowledges the seamless blend of true existing African spiritualities and cosmologies with the imaginative.” Are we looking for symbols here? Interplay between technology/modernity and “tradition”? Is the “myth” a tool for something more? Yes, yes, of course.
I sort of forgot that this *is* how I read. It’s just that I don’t normally do it with poetry or books that involve “world building.” Both can catch me off guard, like, “Wait, how does this work again?” But this is how critical readers do it, with any genre. And it was a good reminder.
originally published on instagram