Binti (Binti #1) by Nnedi Okorafor ★★★★☆

An Afrofuture tale of personal first contact, war, heritage, and understanding. I am a big fan of aliens looking, and acting, alien. The Meduse are well written as such but Binti herself, with her treeing, harmonizing, and astrolabe, is also alien to us if not to her university cohorts.

Details go unexplained, or are curtly alluded to, but the direction and heart of the story are not lost. That's about right for a short story.