LaGuardia

May 20, 2019
The Trump administration’s travel ban gets incisive sci-fi treatment in Hugo and Nebula award–winning author Okorafor’s tale of extraterrestrial immigrants. In a near-future New York, a Nigerian-American doctor named Future has a baby on the way whose parentage is “complicated.” She flees strife in Lagos and lands at LaGuardia smuggling an “illegal” refugee in her bag—a sentient universe-traveling plant whose species was wiped out by genocide. It names itself Letme Live and takes root in the yard of Future’s grandmother’s building. Later, Future returns to the airport to join massive protests, which include sides both for and against strict new immigration laws that ban aliens and human citizens of certain countries (who are suspected of having alien blood) from traveling to America. The political-is-personal narrative, wittily illustrated by Ford with vivid colors by Devlin, mixes playful contemporary references with the Afrofuturistic inspiration of Octavia Butler. “Aliens are people too,” reads a banner clutched by a four-armed blobby creature; another proclaims “Octavia warned us.” The aliens arrive in all shapes and sizes, and bring new biotechnologies, but struggle to coexist in peace. Like the best sci-fi, the storytelling speaks to the heart of current debates, as Future and her growing family fight to create a world—or even just find an apartment—where they can all survive

Starred review from November 1, 2019

Here, the stigmatized immigrant aliens are aliens from outer space, the Nigerians are the good guys, a family's "putting down roots" acquires novel implications, prosthetic body parts bypass the usual assumptions, and genocide turns up where you least expect it. This playful allegory joins evocative, beautiful art with a wild imagination and mind-bending plot that comes off as both sad and hopeful. A creative commentary on xenophobia and recent U.S. immigration bans.

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