100 pages • 3 hours read
Nnedi OkoraforAkata Witch
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Trouble at Home”
The funky train drops Sasha, Orlu, and Sunny in front of Orlu’s house, but Chichi has to go on to Leopard Knocks with Anatov to receive her punishment for the masquerade. Sasha expresses frustration that people are punished for pushing boundaries, but Orlu says a person shouldn’t always be allowed to do things just because they can. Orlu kisses Sunny’s cheek before she walks home.
At home, Sunny’s mom is on the phone with her sister in the United States, and Sunny talks to her Auntie Chinwe, a freethinking dancer who married an American. When her mom is out of earshot, Sunny asks about her grandmother, and Auntie Chinwe says she had secrets. She tells Sunny to look in a box her mother keeps in her bedroom. Sunny also sees a spirit grasshopper on her father’s head, but must pretend not to in order to avoid alerting him to her new abilities.
Sunny goes to her room and places a bean that the Junk Man gave her under her bed, as he instructed. In the Leopard Knocks newspaper, she reads that Black Hat stole a book from the Obi Library. In the meantime, the bean has cracked open, and a blue wasp appears. Sunny puts a package of biscuits next to the wasp and goes to sleep. At midnight, she wakes up and sees that the wasp has made a miniature castle out of biscuit crumbs.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Basic Juju”
After her punishment, Chichi and Sasha become more interested in Udide’s Book of Shadows, which worries Orlu. Chichi and Sasha also start kissing and begin a romantic relationship. Sunny learns basic knife juju.
Sunny discusses her wasp with her friends, and Orlu tells her it’s a wasp artist. Sasha warns that if Sunny forgets to praise the wasp’s work, it will sting her. The wasp venom will paralyze her so that she will have to watch it build one final work before it dies. Sasha dislikes the wasp artists because they force people to treat them well, and he thinks that treating something or someone well should be a choice. Orlu argues “[some] things should come naturally” (295). Chichi tells them to be quiet.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Seven Rainy Days”
It rains for seven days in a row, even though it is the dry season. Sunny wakes up and compliments her wasp, now named Della, on her sculpture. Sunny is shocked to find Anatov sitting with her mother at the kitchen table. Her mother introduces him as the son of a friend of her grandmother’s, but she is visibly upset. Sunny leaves with Anatov to go to Leopard Knocks, her mother watching them go. In the car, Sunny asks Anatov to tell her about her grandmother, but he says that’s her mother’s place.
Sasha, Orlu, and Sunny meet at the Obi Library, and Chichi arrives soon after, looking shaken and crying. Inside the library, no one is smiling, and rainwater leaks in, which strikes Sunny as strange. Sugar Cream leads them to a room on the third floor that has an indoor jungle with seven elderly scholars and a toucan. The toucan transforms into a man, too. Some of the scholars resent having to speak English and make comments about Americans, and Sasha argues with them. This argument settles down when Sugar Cream introduces the four children as the Oha coven brought to handle Black Hat. The scholars discuss qualities the four children possess (rage, love, lust, etc.), and they observe that Sunny is Ozoemena’s granddaughter. They also comment that Sunny has already seen the end of the world, a nuclear holocaust, in a flame. Sasha challenges them to tell them what’s going on, but Orlu asks more politely for information, which makes one woman observe they are balanced. The scholars explain that Black Hat, whose real name is Otokoto Ginny, was a Nigerian oil dealer made rich by Americans, and he has learned forbidden juju. He wants to bring Ekwensu, a malevolent spirit, to the mortal plane, which shocks Chichi and Orlu. Ekwensu is who is causing the constant rain. The elders want the Oha coven to go to Black Hat, surprise him, and stop him from killing two children, which will give him more power. The children realize that other rescuers who have tried to stop Black Hat have not returned.
Later, Sunny calls her mom from the funky train, who tells her to come home and that she loves her. Chichi explains that Ekwensu is to the Leopard People as Satan is to Christians, a powerful and evil entity.
Chapters 16-18 Analysis
In this transitional section, the characters respond to the events in Abuja and learn of the new challenge ahead of them: confronting Black Hat Otokoto and the evil Ekwensu.
Okorafor further develops the characters of Sasha and Orlu as they respond to Chichi’s punishment for calling up the masquerade, and highlights contrasting aspects of their characters. Sasha, who yearns to go beyond limits, is frustrated that Chichi is punished, pointing out that she was able to perform advanced juju and believing that this ought to be celebrated and encouraged. Orlu, who respects rules and has a more cautious nature, argues that “[they] can’t live in chaos” and maintains that age limits on juju need to be followed (286). In making this argument, Orlu makes a simile between a Leopard Person who is able to do juju beyond their age and a girl who shows signs of puberty at a young age—a comparison that Sunny finds offensive. This gender-biased remark complicates Orlu’s character: He is polite and conservative in his approach to risk, but also holds outdated ideas regarding gender and ability. His sexist simile echoes his earlier remarks in Abuja that the city was less safe for Sunny and Chichi because they are girls. Although Sasha and Orlu do not come to a resolution, Okorafor implies that both of their impulses will be necessary to defeat the antagonist Black Hat. Later in Chapter 18, when Sasha loses patience with the scholars’ cryptic statements and wants to cut to the chase, Orlu steps in with a polite, respectful speech using traditional titles. One of the scholars remarks on the “[checks] and balances” between them (307), suggesting that both approaches are appropriate at different times.
Sunny’s wasp artist, Della, further highlights the differences between characters and their points of view. Sasha believes praise should be given voluntarily and dislikes that wasp artists coerce people into praising them. Orlu disagrees, saying wasp artists are not dangerous if treated well, and that “[not] all things are a choice [… some] things should come naturally” (295). Sunny herself falls between these two points of view. She finds it easy and natural to treat Della well, but she also truly enjoys her wasp artist, choosing to praise her sincerely for her own reasons, not from coercion. The wasp artist is also an example of Okorafor’s use of insects as a motif in the text. As Sunny gains greater self-knowledge, the plot transitions from educational events concerning the four students to events with significance to all Leopard People: confronting Black Hat.
In Chapter 18, Okorafor establishes an unsettling mood with the unnatural, constant rain, creating the sense that something dire is coming. Anatov appears at Sunny’s house, an alarming blurring of the distinct boundary Sunny has maintained between her Leopard and Lamb lives. The Obi Library is leaking, and no one inside is smiling. This sets the stage for the significant plot development of the end of the section: The scholars give Sunny and her friends the task that will lead to the climax of the novel: surprising Black Hat Otokoto before he can call up the powerful Ekwensu. The revelation that Sunny, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha have been chosen from the Leopard world to confront Otokoto and prevent the end of the world dramatically raises the stakes of the conflict. With just a few months of training, the young protagonist and her companions now face an apocalyptic showdown.
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