Zahrah is a windseeker. With the vines curling through her hair marking her as Dadda, Zahrah learns that her locks mean much more. The night Zahrah gets her menses she finds she can float and goes on a journey of self discovery to save her best friend and bring him the unfertilized elgort egg that will save his life. In Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Zahrah learns that being different is not something you should be ashamed of, especially if it is something that makes you special and unique, and could help you out a lot one day.
Zahrah is teased about her hair and relies on her best friend Dari to stand up for her, but she doesn’t want to cut her hair and get rid of her Dadda locks because it always felt wrong. She leaves school early when the kids tease her and she wishes she was not Dada. When Papa Grip comes in and asks if she wants to cut her hair, she immediately says no and says it without even thinking about it.
Zahrah hides her powers from her parents and doesn’t tell them for fear of what they would do. Instead, she practices in the greeny jungle with Dari in a clearing, despite being told since a young age not to go near the jungle. When practicing her ability in the jungle one day Dari gets bitten by a war snake, a venomous snake whose bite puts its prey into a coma and later kills it. Zahrah must go on a journey deep into the greeny jungle to find the only cure for Dari, an unfertilized elgort egg. Along her journey, Zahrah practices her ability in the hopes to do more than just float and with the knowledge that Dari would want her to try.
Along her journey Zahrah runs in with a pair of greeny panthers, deadly predators that kill and pairs. But Zahrah tells the panthers that she can fly,and shows them her ability which saves her, and saves her again when running from the elgort after getting the egg, when she finally truly flys and embraces her powers and believes in herself.
Although on her journey she was scared and almost died multiple times Zahrah was brave and found out who she truly was, a girl who was smart, persistent, and selfless enough to risk her life to save a friend.