NOTE: This is our last week of reading, so just hang in there and finish the book and you'll be done! Remember the paper assignment is posted below, and if you get stumped on what to write about, the reading/questions should help you! I'm designing them with the Final Project in mind.
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: How does the dream-vision of Kande (the Himba girl who first encountered the aliens) inform Binti's own situation in the present? Why is she almost another incarnation of Kande, in yet another cycle of "outsiders" forced inside?
Q2: There's a great passage early on in the book when Binti is told about the Icarus grasshoppers who jump into the flames, fly with burning wings until they fall off, recover, and then do it again. When she asks why they would do such a thing, Mwinyi responds, "It's how they were programmed by science, I guess," to which she responds, "But I'm sure they rationalize it somehow." How might this metaphor relate to certain habits of the Himba or even the Meduse? Or our own society?
Q3: Why does everyone on both sides of the conflict--Khoush and Himba--insist on seeing Binta as the partner, or mate, of Okwu? Do they have that kind of relationship? Or is that simply the only way to explain/rationalize what they do have?
Q4: When Binti is before the council of elders towards the end of the chapter, she explains that she never intended to run away from home, but instead, "I wanted to add to it all...I need it all, you, school, space." Why can't the Himba accept that leaving home is an addition rather than a subtraction? And why, too, did they assume she would never come home?
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