english

Initial Post (300-500 words)

Share your reflections on “Egoli” and “Sunrise” as guided by the associated reading prompt (restated below). Organize your reflection to first offer a brief description of each short story and then move on to compare and contrast the two stories, discussing both points of similarity and distinction. 

• As you read, note any particular themes that develop in the stories as well as any particular passages, symbols, or features that serve to advance or complicate those themes. Consider which features (themes, images, concepts, commentary) are distinctly Africanfuturist and consider those that may be more indicative of Afrofuturism. Once you have completed your reading of both stories, reflect on their similarities and differences. Identify both shared and distinct themes and features and discuss the distinct ways each develops those shared or similar themes, concepts, and/or features. 

One Reply (200-300 words)

Read through the initial posts of your peers and select one post to respond to. Acknowledge your peer’s ideas and insight and add on to them with additional commentary, support, clarifying details, insightful context from your research, and/or a new or different perspective. Your reply can help to develop your peer’s post, clarify its ideas, and/or connect it to other reading or viewing material for the course, such as “Fruit of the Kalabash,” Pumzi, “Black to the Future,” “Africanfurturism Defined,” and any of the literary theories we have worked with this semester.

below is the students work that needs a reply

In the short story “Egoli,” by T.L. Huchu, a grandmother looks at the changes in technology that have happened in her lifetime and how these changes will affect the future. In “Sunrise” by Nnedi Okorafor, a Nigerian American travels back home and encounters intelligent technology that creates a divide between her and her family. In both stories a central theme examines the harmful effects of technology on our lives. On the surface, these are two very different stories told by two very different narrators. But when you dig a little deeper, there is a common core of Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism in both. Africanfuturism is reflected in the fact that both stories take place in Africa. Also, both stories incorporate references to African culture and beliefs and how they clash with how people live today and in our possible future. I believe that the story of “Egoli” focuses a little more on an Africanfuturistic viewpoint because it made African language and culture front and center in its story. I felt that “Sunrise” was telling a more Afrofuturist tale; it focuses on a conflict of cultures and beliefs between a Nigerian American and her family that lives in Africa. But underneath the differences, there is this similar thread of warning about how technology can endanger cultural and family connections.  

 In “Egoli,” a grandmother tells a story passed down to her from her grandmother, she explains how a civilization was destroyed when greed caused them to start building a tower to the moon that eventually collapses and kills the workers. They had wanted to steal the moon and give it to their emperor because he was not satisfied by any riches he had found on earth. This story mirrors how her grandson travels to space to mine asteroids for gold and precious metals to become wealthy. The grandmother believes everything that you could want or need is already in her home, her village. She doesn’t understand this pursuit for riches in the stars. This story makes the point that technology can make people forget about the riches they already have from their own families, histories, and culture.  

“Sunrise” also has a warning about the influence of technology on our lives. It is told from the viewpoint of a Nigerian American, Eze, a science fiction writer traveling back to her family in Nigeria with her friend. Part of her journey home is the downloading of a personal assistant to her phone. This intelligent technology, Sunrise, is self-aware and works to create a divide between Eze and her family.  When Sunrise makes her family believe that Eze has insulted their Christian beliefs, her uncle says, “This is what America does to our people” (Okorafor24). This story highlighted the common theme in science fiction of artificial intelligence taking over and controlling our lives. It also points to technology becoming a force that separates us from our familys and the cultural beliefs that are part of our connection to our roots. Both stories show how technology can pull people away from what makes people human, their connection to each other in their own families, communities, and culture.