Twelve-year-old Sunny has never felt like she fits in anywhere. Though she, her parents, and her brothers are Nigerian, Sunny was born in the United States—so she feels out of place in the novel’s present in Nigeria, and she never felt at home in New York, either. To make things more difficult, Sunny is albino, something that her family and peers think makes her ugly and that, in Nigeria, means she attracts snide comments about being a ghost. However, Akata Witch suggests that Sunny’s belief that she doesn’t belong is, essentially, a matter of being ignorant about who and what, exactly, she is: a Leopard Person (a person with magical abilities) and the granddaughter of a late, renowned Leopard scholar, Ozoemena. But her transition into Leopard society isn’t easy: though she befriends fellow Leopard kids Chichi, Sasha, and Orlu, she still feels out of place because, unlike her, her friends were born knowing that they were Leopard People. Whereas their initiation is the beginning of their education, Sunny feels that her initiation is also the beginning of a whole new identity.
But as Sunny learns more about herself, she gradually starts to feel more secure about who she is and her place in the world. She becomes more comfortable with her albinism when she learns that it gives her the natural ability to move back and forth between the wilderness (spirit world) and the physical world, allowing her to become invisible. Being initiated into Leopard society also causes Sunny to undergo a physical change that cures her sun sensitivity, giving her the newfound ability to go outside without getting a horrible sunburn. In this sense, Sunny discovers that the things that once held her back in the Lamb world, such as her albinism, are actually the things that make her special and powerful in the Leopard world. And while the novel ends with Sunny only just beginning to learn who she is and what she’s capable of, it suggests that learning the truth about who and what she is sets Sunny up to continue this journey and grow increasingly secure in her identity as she does so.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Identity and Belonging ThemeTracker
Identity and Belonging Quotes in Akata Witch
“But I can tell there’s more to you. I just know it.”
“What do you mean, more?”
Chichi smiled mysteriously. “People say stuff about people like you. That you’re all ghost, or a half and half, one foot in this world and one foot in another.” She paused. “That you can…see things.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. Not this again, she thought. So cliché. Everyone thinks the old lady, the hunchback, the crazy man, and the albino have magical evil powers. “Whatever,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to think about the candle.
Chichi laughed. “You’re right, those are silly stereotypes about albinos. But in your case, I think there’s something to it.”
“Troublemaking black American,” Orlu spat. “Akata criminal.”
“Hey!” Sunny said.
“As if I don’t know what that means,” Sasha said, looking mildly annoyed.
[…]
“So you know,” [Sunny] continued, “I was born in the States, too. I came back with my parents when I was nine. That’s only three years ago.” She paused and looked meaningfully at Orlu. “I may not talk about it much, but most days I feel very much like an…akata.”
“But I’ve always known of my Leopard inheritance and I’ve always been able to do small things like make mosquitoes stay away, warm my bathwater, things like that. Initiation meant something different to me than to you. It’s more a mark of beginning my life’s journey. Yours was, too—but it was also the actual beginning of your Self.”
She closed her eyes and soaked in the warm light. She didn’t need to stand in there for an hour to know—she knew deep in her skin. The sunshine felt like a warm friend, not an angry enemy. She didn’t need her umbrella anymore.
“Oh my goodness,” she whispered. “I can play soccer!”
Realizing what she was was the beginning of something, all right…but it was also the end of something else.
“Knowledge does not always evolve into wisdom.”
“So because I’m a Leopard albino, I can—”
“Yes. Certain attributes tend to yield certain talents. […] Abilities are things people are able to do without the use of a juju knife, powders, or other ingredients like the head of an ebett. They just come naturally.”
“Listen. It was your grandmother, Ozoemena, who taught Otokoto all he knows. She was his mentor. And it was Otokoto who killed your grandmother in a ritual to steal her abilities as he stole her life. You want to know why he is so powerful? All you need to look at is who your grandmother was and who Otokoto was before he became the infamous Black Hat.”
“Your parents born here?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Then you from here and there. Dual thing, you know?”
She laughed. “If you say so.”
“I know so.”
“So what’s that make me, then?”
“Who cares?” he said. “You want a juju knife, right?”
“You’re neck-deep in Leopard society right now. The good thing is that it doesn’t get any deeper than this. Sometimes it’s best to just jump in. Then, after that first shock, you can handle anything.”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I—I got my juju knife today, too.”
“That’s wonderful,” he said. He looked down at her. “Use it well and true. There are more valuable things in life than safety and comfort. Learn. You owe it to yourself. All this”—he motioned around them—“you’ll get used to in time.”
One of the other boys in white laughed and said something in a language she didn’t understand. Two other boys in white laughed hard, too. There was a rise in the chatter from the audience. She was used to ridicule, but this hurt more than usual. This wasn’t just about her being albino, this was about her being a girl—an ugly girl. Stupid boys. Stupid, blockhead, idiot boys, she thought.
“That was amazing, o!” Godwin exclaimed.
“Did you see her?” Kouty exclaimed.
“Like Pele!” Sasha shouted.
The French speakers were shouting in French.
And chittim rained on us all.
The white team looked half as happy, and less than half as much chittim fell around them. They gathered and calmly slapped hands, turning to look at the green team celebrating its loss.
“You’ve made good progress, Sunny,” Anatov said.
“Thanks.”
“What I’d like you to think about, though, is who you are. Because within that knowledge is the key to how much you can learn.”
She frowned, thinking about what had just happened with her mother. “Oga,” she whispered, “these days I don’t really think I know who I am.” Anatov was silent. “What do you know of my grandmother? Who was she?”
On instinct, Sunny let her spirit face move forward. In that moment, her fear of everything left her—her fear of Ekwensu’s evil, of being flayed alive by the monster’s fronds, of her family learning of her death, of the world’s end. It all evaporated. Sunny smiled. She knew how the world would end. She knew that someday she would die. She knew her family would live on if she died right now. And she realized that she knew Ekwensu.
And Sunny hated her.
“Grandma,” she whispered. As the old blind woman at the council meeting had said, Sunny looked nothing like her. But what did that matter? She smiled to herself and carefully put the picture back in the box.
