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Who Fears Death Kindle Edition
An award-winning literary author enters the world of magical realism with her World Fantasy Award-winning novel of a remarkable woman in post-apocalyptic Africa.
In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways; yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. A woman who has survived the annihilation of her village and a terrible rape by an enemy general wanders into the desert, hoping to die. Instead, she gives birth to an angry baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand. Gripped by the certainty that her daughter is different—special—she names her Onyesonwu, which means "Who fears death?" in an ancient language.
It doesn't take long for Onye to understand that she is physically and socially marked by the circumstances of her conception. She is Ewu—a child of rape who is expected to live a life of violence, a half-breed rejected by her community. But Onye is not the average Ewu. Even as a child, she manifests the beginnings of a remarkable and unique magic. As she grows, so do her abilities, and during an inadvertent visit to the spirit realm, she learns something terrifying: someone powerful is trying to kill her.
Desperate to elude her would-be murderer and to understand her own nature, she embarks on a journey in which she grapples with nature, tradition, history, true love, and the spiritual mysteries of her culture, and ultimately learns why she was given the name she bears: Who Fears Death.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDAW
- Publication dateJune 7, 2011
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size3456 KB
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Nnedi Okorafor is a writer of Nigerian descent known for weaving African culture into creative evocative settings and memorable characters. She is know for her young adult novels, including The Shadow Speaker and Zahrah the Windseeker.
“My life fell apart when I was sixteen. Papa died.”
Those are the opening lines of Who Fears Death. I remember when I wrote them. I was thinking of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I was thinking of change, cultural shift, chaos. Okonkwo’s death. And my own father’s very recent death. Yeah, all that in those two lines.
In more ways than one, the opening scene of Who Fears Death, titled “My Father’s Face”, was the beginning of it all. Originally, it was not the beginning of the novel. This scene takes place well into the story when my main character Onyesonwu is sixteen and has been through so much. The original beginning was when Onyesonwu was five years old and happy, living with her mother in the desert. Nevertheless, “My Father’s Face” was the first scene I wrote.
Though my stories tend to be mostly linear, I’m a non-linear writer. I’ll write the middle, then the ending, then the beginning and kind of jump around until I’m done. Then I’ll tie all the scenes together and neaten it up. Nevertheless, when Who Fears Death was all said and done, I wasn’t surprised that “My Father’s Face” turned out to be the beginning of the actual book.
I started writing Who Fears Death just after my father passed in 2004. I was very very close to my father and writing was my way of staying sane. I based “My Father’s Face” on a moment I experienced at my father’s wake when everyone had cleared out of the room and I found myself alone with his body.
I was kneeling there looking at his face, thinking how much it no longer looked like him and how terrible that was. My morbid thoughts were driving me into deeper despair. Then suddenly I felt an energy move though me. This energy felt highly destructive, as if it could bring down the entire building. Almost all the details in the scene I went on to write were true, I felt them…well, up to the part where Onyesonwu makes her father’s body breath.
As soon as I wrote that scene, everything else rushed at me. My father’s passing caused me to think about death, fear, the unknown, sacrifice, destiny and cosmic trickery. Only a week or so after my father’s passing, I read the Washington Post article, We Want to Make a Light Baby: Arab Militiamen in Sudan Said to Use Rape as Weapon of Ethnic Cleansing by Emily Wax. I was absolutely infuriated. The storytelling spider in my head started weaving faster. I realized that this article was showing me why the people in my story’s town disliked Onyesonwu and why she was so troubled.
My mother, my sister Ifeoma and my brother Emezie flew with my father’s body back to Nigeria for his burial. When they returned, I learned through my siblings about the way widows were treated within Igbo custom, even the ones with PhDs…like my mother. I was again infuriated. And I was reminded yet again of why I was a feminist.
A year later, I went to Nigeria for the one-year memorial where I met my cousin Chinyere’s fiancé Chidi. His last name was Onyesonwu. I was intrigued. I knew “onye” meant “who” and “onwu” meant death. I wondered if it was an ogbanje name (these named often have the word “death” in them). I’d always been interested in the concept of the ogbanje. Amongst the Igbos, back in the day, girls who were believed to be ogbanjes were often circumcised (a.k.a. genital mutilated) as a way to cure their evil ogbanje tendencies.
I asked my cousin’s fiancé what his name meant (I thought it would be rude to ask if it was an ogbanje name. Plus it was his last name, not his first.). He said it meant, “Who fears death.” That night, I changed my character’s name and the title of the story. When I did that, it was as if the novel snapped into focus.
During that trip, I touched my father’s grave. I heard stories about the Biafran War and arguments about how what happened during this civil war was indeed the genocide of the Igbo people. I saw death on the highway and thanked the Powers That Be that my daughter (who was some months over one year old) was asleep. I got to watch the women in my father’s village sing all night in remembrance of my father. My maternal grandmother, mother, daughter and I were all in the same room at the same time- four generations. My sister Ngozi and I visited the lagoon that seemed so huge when we were kids but was really quite small. It was populated by hundreds and hundreds of colorful butterflies.
I wrote, conceived and incubated parts of Who Fears Death while in my father’s village, sometimes scribbling notes while sitting in the shade on the steps outside or by flashlight when the lights went out. I wrote notes on the plane ride home, too. When I think back to those times, I was in such a strange state of mind. My default demeanor is happy. I think during those times I was as close to sad as I could get.
When I got back to the States, I kept right on writing. Who Fears Death was a tidal wave and hurricane combined. It consumed all of my creativity and sucked in all the issues I was dealing with and dwelling on. It mixed with my rage and grief and my natural furious optimism. Yet when it came to writing the story, I was more the recorder than the writer. I never knew what was going to happen until my character told me and my hands typed it. When I finished Who Fears Death, it was seven hundred pages long. A Book 1 and a Book 2. Don Maass (my agent) felt this size was too great and suggested that I pare it down. This process took me another two years.
One of my favorite quotes is from one of my greatest idols, Nigeria’s great writer and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka: “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces.” This tiger of a story definitely pounced on me without proclamation or warning. I’m glad I was ready for it.
--Nnedi Okorafor
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Haunting and absolutely brilliant. My heart and guts are all turned inside out." —John Green, New York Times-bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars
"Who Fears Death is one of the most striking, chilling, truly fascinating, and all-around remarkable novels I've read in a very long time.” —Peter S. Beagle, bestselling author of The Last Unicorn
"Nnedi Okorafor is American-born but her Nigerian blood runs strong, lacing her work with fantasy, magic and true African reality. Many people need to read Who Fears Death, it's an important book." —Nawal El Saadawi, bestselling author of Woman at Point Zero
"To compare author Nnedi Okorafor to the late Octavia E. Butler would be easy to do, but this simple comparison should not detract from Okorafor’s unique storytelling gift." —New York Journal of Books
"Both wondrously magical and terribly realistic." —The Washington Post
"Believable, nuanced characters of color and an unbiased view of an Africa full of technology, mysticism, culture clashes and true love." —Ebony Magazine (editor's pick)
"A fantastical, magical blend of grand storytelling." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Beautifully written, this is dystopian fantasy at its very best. Expertly exploring issues of race, gender, and cultural identity, Okorafor blends future fantasy with the rhythm and feel of African storytelling. " —Library Journal (starred review)
"Her pacing is tight. Her expository sections sing like poetry. Descriptions of paranormal people and battles are disturbingly vivid and palpable. But most crucial to the book's success is how the author slowly transforms Onye's pursuit of her rapist father from a personal vendetta to a struggle to transform the social systems that created him." —The Village Voice
"Okorafor is a master storyteller who combines recent history, fantasy, tradition, advanced technology, and culture into something wonderful and new that should not be missed." —RT Book Review (top pick)
About the Author
Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a PhD in English and is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. She has been the winner of many awards for her short stories and young adult books, and won a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death. Nnedi's books are inspired by her Nigerian heritage and her many trips to Africa. She lives in Chicago with her daughter Anyaugo and family. She can be contacted via her website, www.nnedi.com, or on Twitter at twitter.com/nnedi.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
My Father's Face
My life fell apart when I was sixteen. Papa died. He had such a strong heart, yet he died. Was it the heat and smoke from his blacksmithing shop? It's true that nothing could take him from his work, his art. He loved to make the metal bend, to obey him. But his work only seemed to strengthen him; he was so happy in his shop. So what was it that killed him? To this day I can't be sure. I hope it had nothing to do with me or what I did back then.
Immediately after he died, my mother came running out of their bedroom sobbing and throwing herself against the wall. I knew then that I would be different. I knew in that moment that I would never again be able to fully control the fire inside me. I became a different creature that day, not so human. Everything that happened later, I now understand, started then.
The ceremony was held on the outskirts of town, near the sand dunes. It was the middle of the day and terribly hot. His body lay on a thick white cloth surrounded by a garland of braided palm fronds. I knelt there in the sand next to his body, saying my last good-bye. I'll never forget his face. It didn't look like Papa's anymore. Papa's skin was dark brown, his lips were full. This face had sunken cheeks, deflated lips, and skin like gray-brown paper. Papa's spirit had gone elsewhere.
The back of my neck prickled. My white veil was a poor protection from people's ignorant and fearful eyes. By this time, everyone was always watching me. I clenched my jaw. Around me, women were on their knees weeping and wailing. Papa was dearly loved, despite the fact that he'd married my mother, a woman with a daughter like me-an Ewu daughter. That had long been excused as one of those mistakes even the greatest man can make. Over the wailing, I heard my mother's soft whimper. She had suffered the greatest loss.
It was her turn to have her last moment. Afterward, they'd take him for cremation. I looked down at his face one last time. I'll never see you again, I thought. I wasn't ready. I blinked and touched my chest. That's when it happened . . . when I touched my chest. At first, it felt like an itchy tingle. It quickly swelled into something greater.
The more I tried to get up, the more intense it got and the more my grief expanded. They can't take him, I thought frantically. There is still so much metal left in his shop. He hasn't finished his work! The sensation spread through my chest and radiated out to the rest of my body. I rounded my shoulders to hold it in. Then I started pulling it from the people around me. I shuddered and gnashed my teeth. I was filling with rage. Oh, not here! I thought. Not at Papa's ceremony! Life wouldn't leave me alone long enough to even mourn my dead father.
Behind me, the wailing stopped. All I heard was the gentle breeze. It was utterly eerie. Something was beneath me, in the ground, or maybe somewhere else. Suddenly, I was slammed with the pained emotions everyone around me had for Papa.
Instinctively, I laid my hand on his arm. People started screaming. I didn't turn around. I was too focused on what I had to do. Nobody tried to pull me away. No one touched me. My friend Luyu's uncle was once struck by lightning during a rare dry season Ungwa storm. He survived but he couldn't stop talking about how it felt like being violently shaken from the inside out. That's how I felt now.
I gasped with horror. I couldn't take my hand from Papa's arm. It was fused to him. My sand-colored skin flowed into to his gray-brown skin from my palm. A mound of mingled flesh.
I started screaming.
It caught in my throat and I coughed. Then I stared. Papa's chest was slowly moving up and down, up and down . . . he was breathing! I was both repulsed and desperately hopeful. I took a deep breath and cried, "Live, Papa! Live!"
A pair of hands settled on my wrists. I knew exactly whose they were. One of his fingers was broken and bandaged. If he didn't get his hands off me, I'd hurt him far worse than I had five days prior.
"Onyesonwu," Aro said into my ear, quickly taking his hands from my wrists. Oh, how I hated him. But I listened. "He's gone," he said. "Let go, so we can all be free of it."
Somehow . . . I did. I let go of Papa.
Everything went dead silent again.
As if the world, for a moment, were submerged in water.
Then the power that had built up inside of me burst. My veil was blown off my head and my freed braids whipped back. Everyone and everything was thrown back-Aro, my mother, family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, the table of food, the fifty yams, the thirteen large monkeybread fruits, the five cows, the ten goats, the thirty hens, and much sand. Back in town the power went off for thirty seconds; houses would need to be swept of sand and computers would be taken in for dust damage.
That underwater-like silence, again.
I looked down at my hand. When I tried to remove it from my Papa's cold, still, dead arm, there was the sound of peeling, like weak glue flaking off. My hand left a silhouette of dried mucus on Papa's arm. I rubbed my fingers together. More of the stuff crackled and peeled from between them. I took one more look at Papa. Then I fell over on my side and passed out.
That was four years ago. Now see me. People here know that I caused it all. They want to see my blood, they want to make me suffer, and then they want to kill me. Whatever happens after this . . . let me stop.
Tonight, you want to know how I came to be what I am. You want to know how I got here . . . It's a long story. But I'll tell you . . . I'll tell you. You're a fool if you believe what others say about me. I tell you my story to avert all those lies. Thankfully, even my long story will fit on that laptop of yours.
I have two days. I hope it's enough time. It will all catch up to me soon.
My mother named me Onyesonwu. It means "Who fears death?" She named me well. I was born twenty years ago, during troubled times. Ironically I grew up far from all the killing . . .
Chapter 2
Papa
Just by looking at me, everyone can see that I am a child of rape. But when Papa first saw me, he looked right past this. He's the only person other than my mother who I can say loved me at first sight. That was part of why I found it so hard to let go of him when he died.
I was the one who chose my Papa for my mother. I was six years old.
My mother and I had recently arrived in Jwahir. Before that, we were desert nomads. One day, as we'd roamed the desert, she stopped, as if hearing another voice. She was often strange like that, seeming to converse with someone other than me. Then she said, "It's time for you to go to school." I was far too young to understand her real reasons. I was quite happy in the desert, but after we arrived in the town of Jwahir, the market quickly became my playground.
Those first few days, to make some fast money, my mother sold most of the cactus candy she had. Cactus candy was more valuable than currency in Jwahir. It was a delicious delicacy. My mother had taught herself how to cultivate it. She must always have had the intention of returning to civilization.
Over the weeks, she planted the cactus cutlets she'd kept and set up a booth. I helped out the best I could. I carried and arranged things and called over customers. In turn, she allowed me an hour of free time each day to roam. In the desert, I used to venture over a mile away from my mother on clear days. I never got lost. So the market was small to me. Nonetheless, there was much to see and the potential for trouble was around every corner.
I was a happy child. People sucked their teeth, grumbled, and shifted their eyes when I passed. But I didn't care. There were chickens and pet foxes to chase, other children to glare back at, arguments to watch. The sand on the ground was sometimes damp with spilled camel milk; at other times it was oily and fragrant from overflowing perfumed-oil bottles mixed with incense ashes and often stuck to camel, cow, or fox dung. The sand here was so affected, whereas back in the desert the sand was untouched.
We'd been in Jwahir only a few months when I found Papa. That fateful day was hot and sunny. When I left my mother, I took a cup of water with me. My first impulse was to go to the strangest structure in Jwahir: The House of Osugbo. Something always drew me to this large square-shaped building. Decorated with odd shapes and symbols, it was Jwahir's tallest building and the only one made entirely of stone.
"One day I'll go in there," I said, as I stood staring at it. "But not today."
I ventured farther from the market into an area that I hadn't explored. An electronics shop was selling ugly refurbished computers. They were small black and gray things with exposed motherboards and cracked cases. I wondered if they felt as ugly as they looked. I'd never touched a computer. I reached out to touch one.
"Ta!" the owner said from behind his counter. "Don't touch!"
I sipped my water and moved on.
My legs eventually brought me to a cave full of fire and noise. The white adobe building was open at the front. The room inside was dark with the occasional blast of fiery light. Heat hotter than the breeze wafted out like the breath out of a monster's open mouth. On the front of the building a large sign read:
Ogundimu Blacksmithing-White Ants
Never Devour Bronze, Worms Do Not Eat Iron.
I squinted, making out a tall muscle-bound man inside. His dark glistening skin was darkened with soot. Like one of the heroes in the Great Book, I thought. He wore gloves woven from fine threads of metal and black goggles strapped tightly to his face. His nostrils were wide as he pounded on fire with a great hammer. His huge arms flexed with each blow. He could have been the son of Ogun, the goddess of metal. There was such joy in his motions. But he seems so thirsty, I thought. I imagined his throat burning and full of ash. I still had my cup of water. It was half full. I entered his shop.
It was even hotter inside. However, I'd grown up in the desert. I was used to extreme hot and cold. I cautiously watched the sparks burst from the metal he pounded. Then as respectfully as I could, I said, "Oga, I have water for you."
My voice startled him. The sight of a lanky little girl who was what people called Ewu standing in his shop startled him more. He pushed his goggles up. The area around his eyes where the soot had not fallen was about my mother's dark brown complexion. The white part of his eyes are so white for someone who stares at fire all day, I thought.
"Child, you shouldn't be in here," he said. I stepped back. His voice was sonorous. Full. This man could speak in the desert and animals from miles away would hear him.
"It's not so hot," I said. I held up the water. "Here." I stepped closer, very conscious of what I was. I was wearing the green dress my mother had sewn for me. The material was light but it covered every inch of me, all the way to my ankles and wrists. She'd have made me wear a veil over my face but she didn't have the heart.
It was odd. Mostly, people shunned me because I was Ewu. But sometimes women crowded around me. "But her skin," they would say to each other, never directly to me. "It's so smooth and delicate. It looks almost like camel's milk."
"And her hair is oddly bushy, like a cloud of dried grass."
"Her eyes are like a desert cat's."
"Ani makes strange beauty from ugliness."
"She might be beautiful by the time she goes through her Eleventh Rite."
"What's the point of her going through it? No one will marry her." Then laughter.
In the market, men had tried to grab me but I was always quicker and I knew how to scratch. I'd learned from the desert cats. All this confused my six-year-old mind. Now, as I stood before the blacksmith, I feared that he might find my ugly features strangely delightful, too.
I held the cup up to him. He took it and drank long and deep, pulling in every drop. I was tall for my age but he was tall for his. I had to tilt my head back to see the smile on his face. He let out a great sigh of relief and handed the cup back to me.
"Good water," he said. He went back to his anvil. "You're too tall and far too bold to be a water sprite."
I smiled and said, "My name is Onyesonwu Ubaid. What's yours, Oga?"
"Fadil Ogundimu," he said. He looked at his gloved hands. "I would shake your hand, Onyesonwu, but my gloves are hot."
"That's okay, Oga," I said. "You're a blacksmith!"
He nodded. "As was my father and his father and his father and so on."
"My mother and I just got here some months ago," I blurted. I remembered that it was growing late. "Oh. I have to go, Oga Ogundimu!"
"Thanks for the water," he said. "You were right. I was thirsty."
After that, I visited him often. He became my best and only friend. If my mother had known I was hanging around a strange man, she'd have beaten me and taken away my free time for weeks. The blacksmith's apprentice, a man named Ji, hated me and he let me know this by sneering with disgust whenever he saw me, as if I were a diseased wild animal.
Product details
- ASIN : B004XFYIE2
- Publisher : DAW; Reprint edition (June 7, 2011)
- Publication date : June 7, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 3456 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 401 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #108,132 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #423 in Fantasy TV, Movie & Game Tie-In
- #501 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #938 in Magical Realism
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Nnedi Okorafor’s books include Lagoon (a British Science Fiction Association Award finalist for Best Novel), Who Fears Death (a World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel), Kabu Kabu (a Publisher's Weekly Best Book for Fall 2013), Akata Witch (an Amazon.com Best Book of the Year), Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (a CBS Parallax Award winner). Her adult novel The Book of Phoenix (prequel to Who Fears Death) was released in May 2015; the New York Times called it a "triumph". Her novella Binti will be released in late September 2015 and her young adult novel Akata Witch 2: Breaking Kola will be released in 2016.
Nnedi holds a PhD in literature/creative writing and is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, New York (SUNY). She splits her time between Buffalo and Chicago with her daughter Anyaugo and family. Learn more about Nnedi at Nnedi.com.
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There were so many issues that this novel tackled. It deal with colorism, ethnic identity, rape, sexism, religion. And there are some readers out there who’re not able to handle this many issues getting thrown at them at once. They want something simpler to devour. I think that’s the case because often the people saying this don’t understand intersectional identities or even want to grasp the concept of it. Every character in this book is a crossroads of problems and issues. To me, their depth comes from the fact that they’re not just defined by one problem. They have many problems, many societal obstacles to deal. That is part of the richness of this book.
Rape is largely at the center of this story and make no mistake, it is no glorification or justification of it. This tackles it head on, brutally and unapologetically as such a subject should be. The descriptions and violence honestly made me cringe and I’ve never been a victim of such a brutal act. The images contained within this novel are so powerful that I wonder if it would actually trigger something in a rape survivor. I don’t know. I just know that what I read was violent, bloody and held back on no details. And the consequences of rape (side note: how despicable is it that we have consequences for a victim?) are laid out in this book with a harsh, revealing light.
The rape that sort of propels the story forward is the tragic sexual attack on Najeeba. She is a beautiful Okeke (an ethnic group I’ll talk more about later) woman and is seemingly living a simple life. One day her village is attacked by a group of Nuru (the other main ethnic group) and Najeeba is viciously raped. It’s a tough scene to read and I can only imagine it being a tough scene to write. It’s one of those scenes where you have to take a break and get a glass of water after you’re done. I can’t speak for the author, but man this must have been an emotionally draining scene to write just because of how brutal it is. Najeeba’s bastard attacker has the nerve to sing, to damn SING as he’s brutalizing a woman. I don’t know why but that particular detail just raises such anger in me. Najeeba manages to survive her rape, but she is rejected by her cowardly husband so she leaves home.
Now about these ethnic groups. Okeke and Nuru in the simplest of terms are dark-skinned and light-skinned, slave and slave master. The relationship is definitely one based on colorism, but it also has its roots in some of the justification used to enslave Africans in America. In this post-apocalyptic world there is The Great Book, the religious text that everyone draws their social mores from. In this book, it is basically outlined that Okeke are shameful and deserve to be slaves of the Nuru. Sound familiar? The same kind of justification was used by whites to enslave blacks when they referred to us as descendants of Cain, the first murderer. Religion was used to enslave it and it is used in this story to enslave the Okeke. This book is used to justify the mistreatment, rape and murder of the Okeke people, driving many of them to the East where they live as exiles.
This brings me to the main character, Onyesonwu, the daughter of Najeeba. She is neither Okeke nor Nuru. Because of her mixed blood and the circumstances of her birth she is called an Ewu. It is believed that the child of a violent rape is doomed to live a life of violence themselves. I think this is a statement on the danger of eugenics because how many articles are we starting to see pop up now that are trying to link personality traits and behavior to genetics? It’s a slippery slope and if we’re not careful we could be making our own Ewus in society.
So you can’t help but to feel bad for Onyesonwu. She’s getting it from all angles. Of course she deals with ridicule as being the child of a rape and all the stereotypes that come with that. Internally, she’s dealing with issues of wondering if she’s anything like her Father. She has to deal with being thought of as romantically unattractive and as just lest aesthetically pleasing to the Okeke people she lives amongst. To top it all off, she’s a strong-willed woman living in a society where women are regarded as less than. I think the deeper part of all of it, is that her very existence serves as a reminder of the violence and torture that the Eastern Okeke have tried to put out their minds. She’s a constant reminder of the brethren they have abandoned. It’s so true that the things we hate are often because they remind us of something ugly in ourselves.
I don’t want to give too much away, but Onyesonwu’s journey reminds me very much of the character of Aaang in some ways. The group of friends she gathers and the journey she embarks really does ultimately change the world she’s operating in. If a love of Airbender isn’t enough to get you to pick up this book it’s a post-apocalyptic African fantasy. Those three words alone should spike your interest. Ultimately, this is a book that tackles powerful topics that are so relevant to today’s world. Like I said, I walked away from this story depleted and I think that’s because even as I was whisked away to another world I was forced to still think about my own.
This and other reviews can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/rrapmag
TRIGGER WARNING: The book has roots in the real-world history of weaponized rape in the Sudan. In the book, Onyesonwu is the product of militarized rape: her Okeke (Black) mother is raped brutally by a Nuru (White) sorcerer, and then her mother is rejected by her husband. Onyesonwu spends her early childhood in the deserts alone with her mother. Her mother notices the child has an affinity for juju—magic—and despite her child’s visible biracial features decides she has to seek out a township and raise her among other people. It’s not easy—people like Onyesonwu, the products of Nuru/Okeke rape are called Ewu and presumed to be inherently violent, inherently broken due to the means of their conception. Finding a village where they are accepted is the first of many battles here.
Onyesonwu grows up and grows into her magic. She becomes a shapeshifter. She demands to be mentored, going up against old barriers that would restrict her both about her being Ewu and a woman. She falls in love. She builds friendships. She learns that her world is being torn apart; she learns of a prophecy that she might be the one to heal it. She goes through an initiation that reveals her own death and unlocks her powerful magic. She prepares herself for the inevitable showdown with the powerful force of a man who created her. Across the narrative, the book manages to tackle genocide, rape, female circumcision, cultural relativism, colorism, and a host of other issues with a deft hand. Onyesonwu’s voice is always harsh, always sharp-tongued and brutal. Always questioning.
Onyesonwu was a narrator I related to immediately. She was so brash, so defiant. So deeply capable of love, and at the same time so reactive and defensive. Entitled and yet so used to being refused. So angry. I loved her anger. I was moved by anger. I connected with it. The book exulted in her anger. It was always her greatest strength. When it was positioned as a weakness—and occasionally it was—it was always done so by the men around her, and thus the weakness they claimed was undercut by the fact that they saw her as an obvious threat to their masculinity. Even the love of her life, Mwita, her healer and companion, fell prey to this. But none of the women ever told her she was too angry. And when she fought for them, when she avenged them, the men did not think her too angry then. What I loved about this book was the subversion of that trope, that Angry Black Woman trope that is so often used to discredit the work marginalized women of color do. Onyesonwu locates the source of her anger here:
"Humiliation and confusion were the staples of my childhood. Is it a wonder that anger was never far behind?"
And then her mentor’s mentor, a man who intially underestimates her and tries to turn her away, validates the usefulness and power of that anger here at the close of the book:
"Onyesonwu’s very essence was change and defiance."
Anger is an active emotion. It drives things, it pushes things. It can be abusive, and it can do wrong, but it can be a force for justice, too. Onyesonwu struggles with this in the book. Much of the book has her shaking people into righteous anger, fueling it, leaning into it and seeing it as a strength. And I loved the book for that.
Okorafor as an author also spends much of the narrative outlining how prophecies create their own ends. If you decide that Ewu people are inherently violent, and then you shun them and teach them they are evil and cast them out and leave them no choices but to turn criminal in desperation, then yes, she argues, you may see them resort to violence. If you cast spells on young women to make sexual arousal before marriage deeply painful and the spell only breaks with marriage then yes, the women of a given tribe might have a very peculiar relationship to sex and their husbands. And if you are a sorcerer and part of initiation is living through your death years before it occurs, what must that do to you? You carry it with you, you know when it happens, you dream of it—could you change your fate if the time came? Would you want to? Or, having resigned yourself to it so long ago, do you simply play the part? Even at the end, even defiant and angry Onyesonwu who does not fear death, even she submits to her own death.
All in all, I felt the pacing could have been tighter, and there are ticks of Okorafor’s writing I don’t particularly like, but the worldbuilding is so acute and profound and the scope and brutality of the questions she asks with her writing are so pressing that I don’t care. And for other readers? She will be stylistically perfect. Your mileage may vary, but likely this is a book well worth reading either way.
Narration 5/5 I loved the narrator's voice and her way of speaking.
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor is a very good book. I couldn't stop reading or listening to it. I was captivated by Onyesonwu’s quest and destiny. She is the main character of this story which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Africa, during a genocide. In this world, magic exists and can be learned. The blurb says everything you need to know about this story without giving too much away. I won't talk about the story. You have to read it without knowing too much. Your reading or listening experience will be more intense.
I will only talk about my feelings when reading this story. I felt Onyesonwu's anger as if it were my own. She was born into a world where she was not welcome. Almost everyone looked down on her and she was always forced to prove her worth. I saw her become an adult and fulfill her destiny with courage.
The author did an excellent job. The plot is fantastic, the character development is impeccable, and the writing style is perfect.
I highly recommend it!!
Top reviews from other countries
Do solo 4 stelle perché la narrazione presenta inesattezze (i cammelli vivono in Mongolia, in Africa ci sono solo dromedari...) e alcuni refusi, ma è stata davvero una lettura arricchente e per quanto possibile visti i temi trattati piacevole.
It’s an interesting setting that Okorafor plays with in this book, and one that is sadly underrepresented in genre fiction. Post-apocalyptic Africa allows for a setting that most Western readers will be largely unfamiliar with, and, if they’re anything like me, their interest will be piqued enough to get them doing some research about issues present in Africa today. Onye is the kind of character who can make you interested in anything she’s involved with, from cultural differences to gender politics to the acquisition of knowledge, simply by being the kind of headstrong and independent character who doesn’t take no for an answer and who tries to forges her own destiny. Onye is The Other, right from the moment of her conception, and how can we resist insight and investment into what makes her tick?
Much like Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, Who Fears Death is not always a comfortable read, nor is it meant to be. Weaponized rape, female circumcision, sexism, racism, torture. But it also has hope, strength, survival, overcoming adversity, love. This isn’t a book you can read lightly, nor is it a book you can read and go untouched by. It will make its mark on you, and again in the way of Wild Seed, I think an entire book could be written just to deconstruct this book.
Okorafor weaves complex themes around each other into one beautiful and unforgettable whole. Told in the first-person from Onye’s viewpoint, we see actions and consequences both large and small, a story revolving around a believable cast of characters who are selfish and sacrificing, bundles of contradictions and foibles and each one of them is so realistic you finish the book feeling like you just finished a journey yourself. Poetic, insightful, and fluid, this is masterful storytelling as its finest.
The appeal of this book crosses genres and isn’t to be missed by anyone. It’s a timeless and disturbing tale, as applicable now as it is in the hypothetical future it takes place in. Magical realism and spirituality vies with social justice for the limelight, and on the whole this is a brilliant book that will, in the end, leave a deep mark upon your mind.