Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Akata Witch, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Belonging
The Individual vs. the Collective
Friendship and Teamwork
Education, Power, and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
Since Anatov has to attend a scholars’ meeting, Sunny, Chichi, Sasha, and Orlu are on their own until 11:00 p.m. They return to the booth where they had lunch and glumly purchase weak palm wine. A few minutes later, a young boy steps up and asks if Orlu or Sasha want to play in the soccer match later. Sasha says he’ll play and Sunny will too. The boy argues—girls can’t play—but Sasha insists. The boy hands over uniforms and says the match starts in an hour. Thrilled, Sunny changes into her green uniform and says she doesn’t care if she has to play defense. She’s just excited to play. Sasha insists Sunny will play center forward and leads her to run a warmup lap around the field.
The gruesome end to the wrestling match casts a shadow over the four kids’ moods. Though they’ve been warned that death is common and likely when doing difficult things, it hasn’t seemed real to them until they witnessed Miknikstic die. The soccer match presents a convenient opportunity to turn the mood around and to give Sunny a place where she can succeed. She’s still up against a lot, since Leopard society seems to see her as lesser because of her sex, but her friends are here to support her and advocate for her.
Themes
Other boys gradually join Sasha and Sunny to run and soon, a tall boy calls for the green team to come to him. The boy, Godwin, is the boy Sunny hit with her backpack on the funky train. Godwin introduces himself to the team, finds a translator for the three young French players, and then starts to test the players’ abilities. Several younger boys stumble over the ball, but a few boys in their mid-teens, including Sasha, perform well. An older boy, Agaja, emerges as a skilled player, and then Godwin calls Sunny forward. He tries to kick her off the team because she’s female, but Sasha convinces Godwin to test Sunny’s skills first. Sunny isn’t able to get the ball past Godwin playing goalie, but he is impressed—so Sunny can stay.
Godwin emerges almost immediately as a good team captain. He seems relatively unbothered by having a few kids on the team who don’t speak English, and by having several more who aren’t skilled players. His goal, this suggests, isn’t winning; it’s having a good time. He isn’t immune to what the novel presents as standard sexism, as when he tries to kick Sunny off. But he’s not so prejudiced that he refuses to keep her after she demonstrates that she’s a skilled player. He’s willing to change his views when he gathers new information.
Themes
Godwin assigns Sasha, Agaja, a boy named Ousman, and Sunny to play forwards; he’ll play goalie, and the smaller and younger boys will play defense. The referee calls everyone to the middle of the field to seal a pact to not break the rules (nobody can use juju), and then the players take their places. The captain of the white team taunts Sunny and the green team for letting a girl play, so Sasha pulls out some juju powder and makes a boy named Ibou fall. After scolding Sasha, the referee starts the game. As Sunny kicks the ball, chittim falls.
Again, Godwin is clearly taking stock of the players he has and tries to assign them positions that will allow them all to be as successful as possible. This is especially important since the players can’t use juju—the small, young players may be skilled at using magic, but that doesn’t matter in this situation. The chittim Sunny receives suggests that she’s discovering how powerful she is in this moment.
Themes
Sunny realizes instantly that the white team is surprised she's so skilled. She and Agaja score a goal within minutes; Ibou looks enraged. Sunny isn’t scared, however. Ibou and the white team—all of which are older and stronger than the green team—begin to terrorize the young defenders on the green team. With a minute left, the white team has two goals to the green team’s one. In the center facing off with Sunny, Ibou snarls that girls belong on the sidelines. Play starts again and the green team manages to score one more goal. By the time the whistle sounds, the green team has lost by one point—but they don’t care. They run into a celebratory group hug as chittim falls around them. The white team doesn’t look nearly as happy despite their win, and they earn way less chittim.
The white team seems to comprise older, burlier boys who are all good at soccer, so they naturally have an advantage over the younger and less skilled green team. But the novel also suggests that the white team is kind of missing the point, especially when they win the match but receive less chittim. The point is, presumably, that each team learns to work together to support all the kids who want to play, from girls to boys who are new to the game. By prioritizing winning, the white team seems to have more in common with corrupt Leopard figures, like Madame Koto—they’re enriching themselves, rather than caring for others.
Themes
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