47 pages • 1-hour read
Remote Control
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Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death, animal death, and death.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Death”
Sankofa wakes up when Movenpick nudges her repeatedly. Her pack is gone, but the box and seed are still in her pocket. She realizes that she is lying in a grave dug just for her in the bush near the road. However, as she looks around, she sees no one.
Sankofa walks for an hour before she comes to a stream. It has a large tree by it, so she decides it is a good place for her to stay. Another tree has fallen nearby, having been struck by lightning. She takes the box out of her pocket, then the seed out of the box, and places it on the fallen tree’s trunk. She repeatedly tries to smash it with a rock, but it is not damaged. Frustrated, she buries it a foot underground by the base of the tree.
A few months later, Sankofa comes across three farmers sitting by a fire near her home in the forest. After listening to them talk for a while, she comes out of the trees. They know about what happened in RoboTown, but they still allow her to join them. Over the next several weeks, she meets them in the same place to talk by the fire. They give her rice, a cooking pot, seeds, and more, insisting that they “respect the spirits” (138). Sankofa uses the seeds to start a garden of her own near the fallen tree. She honors Alhaja and her family by carving their names into the tree. In total, she spends seven months in the forest. She only ever uses her power for protection from the mosquitoes that try to bite her.
One night, as Sankofa makes her way back from speaking to the farmers, she is overwhelmed by a sense of danger. She runs to her tree in the forest. As she climbs it, she realizes that she has blood running down her leg and assumes she scratched herself. Before she can look at it further, a leopard jumps to the ground before her. Sankofa flees, running through the forest and to the road. Once there, she remembers that she has the power to kill the leopard. She stops and faces it as it comes out of the brush and onto the road.
As she calls on her power for the first time in months, she remembers everyone she loved that she killed with it. However, she also remembers how it has the power to save her. Her glow consumes the leopard, but it keeps coming toward her, instead of being incinerated like it should have been. As it comes closer, Sankofa is prepared to die. At the last moment, the leopard falls over, dead. Relieved, Sankofa embraces Movenpick, who was watching from nearby. It is the first time she has ever touched him.
A moment later, a bus’s headlights appear down the road. The driver sees Sankofa and stops. The driver and several women get out, checking to see if Sankofa is okay. Others on the bus record the interaction and post it online. One of the women tells Sankofa that she delivers to hospitals nearby and everyone shares good stories about the people she helped die that were terminally ill. Several people give her gifts like new clothing, a satchel, and money. One woman gives her a box of maxi pads as Sankofa realizes that she got her period for the first time.
After the bus leaves, Sankofa returns to her home. She gathers her belongings in her new bag, including digging up the box that holds the seed. She realizes she can no longer stay there, as now people know where she is and will come for her.
Chapter 10 Summary: “New Year”
In many villages, people have begun telling a story about Sankofa’s birth. They say that when she was born, both her parents were already dead. Unsure what to do with their living child, they took her to Death’s doorstep and left her with a note. Death left her there for six days and then, when the child didn’t die, finally went to her. Death chose the name Sankofa because she could return people to the past, The Essence. Now, people call her “The Adopted Daughter of Death” (149) because, as she travels, she sends people to her mother.
Sankofa hears this story many times as well as different versions of it. In some she is a vampire or some other monster, while in others she carries a magical machete. The only part that bothers her is when she hears that her parents “left” her, as she is adamant that they never would have done so.
Now 14 years old, Sankofa travels with renewed purpose. She kills only three times over the months, two of which are to ease the pain of someone who is dying. The third is the gateman who tried to shoot her after the Christmas party. Meanwhile, Movenpick begins finally trusting Sankofa, walking beside her and sleeping with her at night.
On New Year’s Day, Sankofa arrives in Wulugu. The road is newly paved and busy. As she walks down it, memories of her family push into her mind. She is relieved at the balance she finds: She remembers what happened and still feels like it is “home,” yet it is also changed. The hotel is much larger than it was before, with a pharmacy and an advertisement for LifeGen attached to it. She is surprised to see Americans there, two of whom greet her and take a picture of Movenpick. She is relieved to find that the shea trees are still there, still growing years later.
Sankofa returns to her old home. She finds that it is the only unoccupied building in the town. Everything inside is gone. As she walks through it, she has memories of the things her family used to do there. She makes her way to the tree in the backyard. She remembers spending hours sitting in the tree and, for the first time in years, remembers the words and constellations she used to draw in the dirt beneath the tree. She briefly wonders if her words are what brought the seed to her.
Sankofa digs a hole at the base of the tree. When she gets deep enough, she feels the roots move beneath her, then reach out to her. She takes the box and seed from her bag. She asks aloud what it is and realizes that it is of alien origin. In that moment, she remembers her name, “Fatima,” and insists that she is both Fatima and Sankofa. She has a vivid image of her mother, father, and brother in her mind, more clearly than she ever has before. She then places the box with the seed into the clutches of the root, spitting on it as she does so and calling it a “curse.” The root grabs the box, crushing it. She sees the seed break as it is pulled into the earth by the roots. She then goes back inside and falls asleep on the floor of her old home.
A while later, when it is dark, Sankofa returns to the yard. She joins Movenpick in the tree. She looks out over the shea tree farm and, to her surprise, sees the base of all of them glowing green. She realizes that LifeGen has taken control of the power which will give them “international corporate-level remote control” (159). She draws on her power, glowing brighter and brighter. She sees the bases of the trees grow brighter as well. She continues to build her power, this time intentionally destroying the town.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
After Sankofa’s tragic rupture with the community in RoboTown, the final chapters depict her triumph in Redefining the Self After Trauma and Change. First, she returns to the forest, surviving on her own terms and finding true happiness after leaving civilization. Then, she returns home, completing her circular journey back to the point where her trauma and rebirth initially occurred. These two chapters emphasize Sankofa’s new autonomy, while bringing together the ideas of memory, nature, technology, and belonging.
Sankofa’s awakening in a pre-dug grave functions both literally and metaphorically, emphasizing her rebirth as she leaves civilization and begins her life in the forest. LifeGen intended for her to die, yet she is instead reborn, overcoming the influence of technology and asserting her autonomy. Ultimately, Sankofa cannot be contained or exist within human systems like civilization, technology, and the corruption of LifeGen. Instead, her rebirth conveys her existence as a mythic figure, with her power tied to both nature and her own internal strength.
When Sankofa returns to Wulugu, she finally confronts the source of her trauma, both from her own actions and the manipulation of LifeGen. As she walks through her home, she embraces both the happy and sad memories of her family, allowing them to flood her mind. The moment where she places the seed at the base of the tree also becomes the moment when she remembers her birthname, Fatima, simultaneously existing as both Fatima and Sankofa for the first time. This moment reconciles her childhood identity with her supernatural one, emphasizing the value of embracing her past as part of who she is.
Sankofa’s time in the forest helps her wrestle both with issues of identity and The Duality of Technology, as she finds peace living outside the confines of an urban, highly technological community. At the same time, she finds comfort in the farmers who accept her for who she is. The narration notes that the men know who she is yet never ask her to use her powers or show them to them, emphasizing how different they are from the people she typically encounters. While they respect her and offer her gifts, their acceptance is what is truly valuable, as it allows her to live an existence that is not built on exploitation of her powers or fear of them. This sense of belonging, both with the farmers and with her own home and garden she builds, reflects Africanfuturism’s emphasis on non-technological pathways of survival. While technology is a key component in this speculative world, it is ultimately Sankofa’s return to nature and the human connections she forms with the farmers that allow her to recenter her life.
Sankofa’s relationship with The Burden of Power also evolves in this section. Her confrontation with the leopard, during which her power works differently, highlights the shift that has occurred within Sankofa’s character. In RoboTown, Sankofa represses her power, pushing it to the back of her mind and refusing to acknowledge it for months. Then, in the forest, she does not repress it but instead simply lives with it, and with the nearby farmers who accept her for who she is.
As a result, when the leopard approaches her, she is prepared to die, noting how its “eyes opened like windows. […] In the years since she’d left home, she had only grown a few inches. She would always be a small girl from a small town. All this she saw in the leopard’s eyes. It comforted her; this creature would send her home” (143-44). Instead, her power kills the leopard, causing it to drop dead instead of incinerating it as her power typically does. This moment conveys Sankofa’s ability to use her power in a way she never has before, as she has truly learned to embrace it and allowed it to become a part of herself that she accepts. She does not repress it or fear it, instead embracing both her mortality by accepting death and her power as an extension of the self.
When Sankofa returns to Wulugu and the root crushes the seed, she tries to neutralize her power by finally casting it aside, calling it a “curse,” which reflects a final moment of conflict over her power. She recognizes her powers as both a source of potential good and of destruction. As she destroys the LifeGen seeds and brings destruction to Wulugu, she emerges as someone who finally understands who she is and the ways her power can be used for good. Although Sankofa acknowledges that carrying death is a burden, it is one she is willing to accept as it gives her the strength to destroy LifeGen’s corruption.
As is typical of Okorafor’s Africanfuturist work, the source of Sankofa’s healing lies in the land of Ghana itself, as she returns to the shea tree, sees the corruption caused by LifeGen, and draws on her power to combat LifeGen’s control. While her actions of destroying Wulugu mirror those of her childhood, an important distinction is drawn when the narration notes, “this time, she did it on purpose” (159, emphasis added). Sankofa acts consciously and with deliberation, no longer conflicted about what she should do, destroying LifeGen’s plans to corrupt the seeds and their power. The final moments of the novel are not an act of reckless destruction but instead a reclamation of autonomy, marking her position as an active agent in her own destiny and defining her as someone who will resist the forces of oppression.
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