100 pages • 3 hours read
Akata Witch
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Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Initiative”
An excerpt from Fast Facts for Free Agents explains what chittim is: the currency of Leopard People, metal rods earned by gaining knowledge.
Sunny sleeps well after her first encounter with juju, and she spends the whole next day with Chichi and Orlu. They don’t explain much about Leopard People, which frustrates her. The children take a cab and walk a long distance, finally arriving at a rushing river with a narrow bridge. Orlu tells her it’s the entrance to Leopard Knocks, a secret Leopard city, but Sunny is afraid to cross it. Chichi says they have to go to Anatov’s hut first. Anatov, a tall man with an American accent, says Sunny is “improper.” He draws a circle of powder around Sunny and does some juju, and she sees a red symbol float above her head. To her alarm, Sunny is pulled under the earth, through the water of the river, and finally lands back in the hut, where metallic objects (chittim) fall around her.
Sunny feels strangely elegant, and now wears a dress of brown raffia instead of the clothes she had on before. Chichi tells her she passed, and Orlu puts the chittim all over the floor in Sunny’s purse. Anatov tells Sunny she is a Leopard Person and a “free agent,” guessing correctly that her parents aren’t Leopard People. He explains she has been initiated, so her powers are activated. Anatov tells Chichi and Orlu to help her, but he also has a houseguest for Orlu to take home with him: Sasha Jackson, an American boy from Chicago. Sasha was sent to stay in Nigeria because he used juju against Lambs. Sasha says this was because his neighborhood was all white and all Lambs (non-magical people). Sasha did a “masquerade” on boys who were harassing his sisters, meaning he summoned a spirit to attack them, although Sunny doesn’t know this. Orlu doesn’t like Sasha and considers him a troublemaker, but Chichi is impressed by his advanced juju skills. Orlu calls Sasha “akata,” which offends Sunny. Sunny encourages them to be friends. The four children decide to go to Leopard Knocks.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Leopard Knocks His Foot”
An excerpt from Fast Facts for Free Agents describes real masquerades as dangerous, distinct from wearing costumes, and something free agents should avoid.
Sasha and Orlu cross the intimidating bridge into Leopard Knocks. Chichi explains that Sunny will need to wear her “spirit face,” a part of her identity as a Leopard Person, in order to cross. Although seeing someone else’s spirit face is like seeing them naked, Chichi shows Sunny hers, and admits that they saw Sunny’s during her initiation. Sunny concentrates on feeling elegant again and crosses the bridge in her spirit face, feeling like a ballet dancer. A river beast attacks when Sunny is almost across, but Sasha pulls her to safety by her necklace.
Leopard Knocks is an impressive, magical African city. They walk through and show Sunny shops, which sell both magical and non-magical items. Chichi takes Sunny to a bookstore and buys her a copy of Fast Facts for Free Agents. At lunch at a restaurant, Chichi, Orlu, and Sasha explain that there are Leopard People everywhere, but they’re called different names in other countries. There are four levels of magical achievement, and Ekpiri, initiation, is the first. The second is Mbawkwa, usually achieved by students at the age of 17. The third level, Ndibu, requires a trip to the spirit world and asking the permission of the masquerades, or spirits. The highest level, Oku Akama, is rare, mysterious, and only achieved by scholars like Anatov and Sugar Cream, the respected Head Librarian at the Obi Library, a powerful Leopard institution. Orlu explains that for Leopard People, knowledge is more important than money. Sasha points out the four of them could be an Oha coven, explaining they are a group of four balanced types with complementary powers who could work together to defend against something bad. Just then, something unpleasant explodes over them. Orlu explains that Leopard Knocks is full of tungwas, floating bags of body parts that explode randomly.
Sunny realizes with a start that she is late for curfew and rushes home. Her mother has been worried, afraid that Sunny was taken by the killer, Black Hat, but her father is only angry that Sunny is two hours late. Sunny reflects that she hates her father.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Sunny Day”
An excerpt from Fast Facts for Free Agents describes a clear, green, unbreakable substance that Leopard People may occasionally encounter. It is so rare that it has no name, though it is occasionally used to make knives for juju.
At home, Sunny feels “like she was full of excitable bees” (91). She reads in the newspaper that Black Hat Otokoto has killed another child, and she understands why her mother got so upset about her being late. She wants to explain, but she fears that her Catholic mother would never understand about being a Leopard Person. Sunny cannot sleep after the exciting initiation experience, and she shifts in and out of her spirit face. She studies her spirit face in the mirror and sees it looks like a golden sun, something beautiful. Eventually, she opens her window for fresh air and falls asleep next to it. She dreams of a river, then wakes up with the sun shining on her through the window. Sunny worries she’ll have a sunburn, but her skin is not burned at all, and she understands that she won’t need to protect her skin with an umbrella anymore. Excited about being able to play soccer, she reflects that her initiation is both a beginning and an end.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
This section of the novel introduces the city of Leopard Knocks, an important setting throughout the series that also represents Sunny’s new life. Leopard Knocks is the West African cultural center for Leopard People, and it is there that Sunny will acquire the knowledge and supplies she needs to understand her abilities and learn juju. At this point in the story, Okorafor is still primarily concerned with exposition, using Sunny’s initiation to the Leopard world as an opportunity to acclimate the reader to the given circumstances of the story that will unfold. Simultaneously Okorafor begins to develop Sunny’s developing confidence and sense of self. At first, she is afraid to cross the bridge to Leopard Knocks, but through Chichi’s support and encouragement, she is able to summon her spirit face and cross. This symbolically reflects Sunny’s hesitation to accept her new identity as a Leopard Person and her ultimate willingness to take it on with the support of her new friends.
Okorafor uses descriptive detail to build the world inside Leopard Knocks: buildings with windows of all shapes “decorated with white intricate drawings,” shops that are both magical and mundane, restaurants that serve food from the real world like jollof rice and magical food like tainted pepper soup. Some features of Leopard Knocks derive directly from Nigerian folklore, including the tungwas, “[floating] bags of teeth, bone, meat, and hair” (85). This combination of fantastical and everyday details helps to establish Leopard culture as both rich in its own right and enmeshed with non-magical life.
These chapters also introduce Sasha, the fourth member of Sunny’s new coven who plays several important roles in the text. Sasha, a risk-taker, serves as a foil to Orlu, who is cautious and more traditional. By contrast, Sasha shares a connection to Sunny as a fellow American. Sasha is knowledgeable about juju, having experimented with using it beyond his level, but not about Igbo or Nigerian culture, and thus sometimes requires explanation from his friend. This allows Okorafor to provide the reader with additional context about Nigeria as well, since these cultural elements would already be well known to Sunny. Sasha’s identity as an American also expands the scope of the story, providing a window into the existence of Leopard People outside of West Africa. That Sasha is a Black American, the descendent of West African enslaved people, allows Okorafor to link the story to the African diaspora even though it remains rooted in West Africa.
This section also sets up how Sunny’s new identity affects her relationships with her parents. When she is late returning from Leopard Knocks, her mother is visibly shaken, and Sunny empathizes because the serial killer Black Hat has been targeting children. Still, Sunny realizes in Chapter 5 that she cannot tell her mother the truth, no matter how much easier this would make her life. Sunny’s relationship with her father is even more troubled. She doesn’t believe her father cares whether Black Hat kills her, and she sees a disparity in how she is treated by him versus how he treats her brothers. This unusual coldness in the father-daughter relationship hints that there is a part of Sunny’s family history that is not yet revealed. Okorafor also suggests here that gender restricts Sunny’s life in unfair ways.
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