The novel was inspired in part by Emily Wax's 2004 "Washington Post" article "We Want to Make a Light Baby," which discussed the use of weaponized rape by Arab militiamen against Black African women in the Darfur conflict. According to Wax: "The victims and others said the rapes seemed to be a systematic campaign to humiliate the women, their husbands and fathers, and to weaken tribal ethnic lines." Okorafor wrote that this article "created the passageway through which Onyesonwu slipped through my world."