Nice girls don't wear cha-cha heels.

On today's docket is Everfair  by Nisi Shawl. I read this for a one of my final college courses, but I'm not mad at it. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Although the beginning, which spans several decades during what would have been the Dutch occupation of central Africa under their King Leopold, was a bit of a slog for me, part two more than made up for it. I am honestly unsure how much of the trouble I had getting into the story at the start had to do with the fact that I usually do struggle a bit with assigned reading no matter how interested I may be in the assigned text. What can I say, I'm (a loner, Dottie;) a rebel. Anyway, this story has a lot going for it - the cast of main characters seems to be well fleshed out, and there were a few who really stood out to me: I loved Lisette, Lucy, Josina, and Fwendi. That list looks gender-imbalanced, and it is, but hear me out - the women in this story are honestly just a far cry more interesting than the men. But, no...

I loved this book. Like, I fell in love with it. If I could, I would probably marry it. I think that Nnedi Okorafor is an immensely talented author with a real talent for world building. Her description of Lagos makes me feel like I have seen it, although I most definitely have not. And her descriptions of the creatures and landscape of the lagoon at Bar Beach are so beautifully rendered that my mind was working overtime trying to picture each altered bit of life. Although I found myself strongly interested in each named character, the amount of respect that I felt for both Ayodele and Adaora was transcendent. Ayodele was so regal and wise, and Adaora so strong and brilliant that I felt my feminist-self shed a few tears a la my responses to the thigh jiggle in Wonder Woman (why does that have to be the thing that does me in??? In a movie about strong women, I am so much more concerned about the fact that a fit woman's body was allowed a momentary filmic jiggle ...