Okorafor, Nnedi: Who Fears Death
Who Fears Death (2010)
Written by: Nnedi Okorafor
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy
Pages: 386 (Hardcover)
Why I Read It: I've wanted to read this book ever since I saw it on the shelf at Borders. I didn't know at thing about it at the time, but was very curious, and then the reviews started trickling in, and they were all positive. I was thrilled when LibraryThing Early Reviewers selected me to receive a review copy last year, but then I waited months and months and months and it never arrived (apparently, I wasn't the only winner who didn't receive her review copy either); I finally got this book for Christmas, and when it was selected for June's book club, I was thrilled. Talk about anticipation!
The premise: ganked from BN.com: In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways, yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. After years of enslaving the Okeke people, the Nuru tribe has decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke tribe for good. An Okeke 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 child Onyesonwu, which means “Who Fears Death?” in an ancient tongue.
From a young age, stubborn, willful Onyesonwu is trouble. It doesn’t take long for her to understand that she is physically and socially marked by the circumstances of her violent conception. She is Ewu - a child of rape who is expected to live a life of violence, a half - breed rejected by both tribes.
But Onye is not the average Ewu. As a child, Onye’s singing attracts owls. By the age of eleven, she can change into a vulture. But these amazing abilities are merely the first glimmers of a remarkable and unique magic. As Onye grows, so do her abilities - soon she can manipulate matter and flesh, or travel beyond into the spiritual world. During an inadvertent visit to this other 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 seeks help from the magic practitioners of her village. But, even among her mother’s people, she meets with frustrating prejudice because she is Ewu and female. Yet Onyesonwu persists.
Eventually her magical destiny and her rebellious nature will force her to leave home on a quest that will be perilous in ways that Onyesonwu can not possibly imagine. For this journey will cause her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, and the spiritual mysteries of her culture, and ultimately to learn why she was given the name she bears: Who Fears Death?
Spoilers, yay or nay?: since this is an Alphabet Soup book club pick, there will be spoilers. If you haven't yet read or finished this book, please skip to "My Rating" at the bottom of the review. Everyone else, onward!
From the start, I found Okorafor's adult debut (note I said adult debut: prior to Who Fears Death, she had a couple of YA titles under her belt too!) pretty engaging. There's a lot to be said for the readability of the voice, the desert setting (which apparently I'm a sucker for) and of course, strange magic. I wanted to learn right away what made Onyesonwu different, and by that, I mean I wanted to learn more than what the backcover blurb revealed, which is pretty compelling in and of itself.
I'd been warned that this was a difficult book to enjoy because of the subject matter. Considering the book deals with rape (in flashback and not of the narrator) and female circumcision (of the narrator and her friends), I can see how this would be a tough book to stomach for some people. For me, I have to push it back to the intellectual part of my brain and look at it from a cultural perspective as well as how it fits the story. I think, if I got too wrapped up in the emotions of the characters or how I personally felt about such things, this would book be difficult to continue. The good thing, however, is that while I empathized with Onye, she was still a frustrating character: impulsive, prone to violent outbursts, and unfair. She's definitely not a Mary Sue by any stretch of the imagination, unless one is looking only at her magical ability, but seriously: tremendous magical ability does not a Mary Sue make. I would not want to be Onye: she goes through too much hell and causes too much hell for me to want to be her, you know?
While it's not a comfortable topic, the female circumcision in this book is loaded with gravitas. I mean, the topic is loaded anyway, but here, in Onye's world, it's rife with meaning. Page 76, where we learn that the scapel is treated with a juju so that if a woman is aroused before marriage, she's in great pain? I can only imagine, based on what we later learn in the book, that if the woman attempts to ignore the pain, the juju would kill her if she went all the way, you know? That just floored me. I've not read a lot of fiction (or nonfiction) detailing female circumcision, but I've not seen anything like this, and it's a really nasty piece of magic. I didn't think it'd become a big deal either: I figured Onye's juju would be removed if she officially married Mwita (instead, due to her shapeshifting capability, she grew the clitoris back), but then when it started effecting her camp, with her friends resenting their inability to enjoy sex while she could, talk about a can of worms. I do question why Diti had such trouble: if she were officially married to Fanasi, why couldn't she enjoy sex with him? It'd be one thing if she were so angry she refused him sex, which strikes me as wrong and petty but right in line with the character, but I would've thought her official marriage to him would make it so she could enjoy it once more.
Or wasn't she officially married? I don't remember: I may have been reading too fast to catch details, but I didn't even think they were married yet until later on, Fanasi is referred to as her husband.
At any rate, that particular juju definitely speaks volumes not just about tribal societies, but why such a thing might be put in place, especially when you consider that girls will be girls and boys will be boys, no matter what kind of society they live in:
Girls need to be protected for their own stupidity and not suffer the stupidity of boys. The juju forces her to put her foot down when she must (page 87).
I can't even begin, because thinking about the measures any society could take (magical or not) to make sure a girl doesn't make stupid decisions because they and thier boyfriends can't control their hormones, hell, that it's own can of worms.
Moving on: I really liked that Luyu, Diti, and Binta had such a large role in the story. I figured they would simply be side characters, quick to be forgotten once Onye went on her quest, but not so. So she has female friends, some of who she talks to that doesn't relate to boys or sex, but rather her quest and her magic and what it's doing to her. So I'd say the book passes the Bechdel Test, yes? At any rate, I've heard some readers complain that the three girls weren't very well developed, that it was hard to tell them apart. I didn't have that issue so much as I kept forgetting about Luyu, who at the start, didn't have the bitchiness like Diti to make her stand out, nor Binta's horrible homelife to make her standout either. Yet Luyu quickly stood on her own once the quest started as the one friend Onye could confide in, and that was pleasing to see. I also liked how Luyu was painted as a girl with a man's appetites and a man's ambition. Her death happened far too fast, which is a shame, but I really grew to like her character.
I'm really slow on the uptake here, but it took me until part three of the book to realize that Onye is narrating her tale to someone specific, much like N.K. Jemisin's heroines do in her Inheritance trilogy. This particular structure of storytelling is one I enjoy, and for some reason, it takes a great significance when it's the narrator telling her story, not just writing it down. I'm sure I've seen other authors do this oral tradition besides Okorafor and Jemisin, but they're the most recent, so they're what I remember.
The world-building was intense and interesting. On the magical side, sometimes I really didn't understand the rules and to be honest, I still can't tell you what the Four Points were (or whatever they were called). I'm also not entirely sure why some apprentices pass and some don't: Mwita obviously saw his own death and survived the experience, yet he wasn't chosen to be a sorcerer. Was it solely because of his bloodline, or was there something else to it? If we learned, I was really too fast and missed it and would love it for someone to enlighten me, but I got the impression it was always more than bloodlines.
Mwita was quite the sympathetic hero. He wasn't perfect by any means, but he was a fascinating character, and I was especially engaged when we learned that his first teacher was actually Onye's biological father. How delightfully creepy!
A poignant observation (though some might say this is obvious) from page 218:
As we walked, that brothel not far behind us, I felt a wave of anger. To be something abnormal meant that you were to serve the normal. And if you refused, they hated you . . . and often the normal hated you even when you did serve them. Look at those Ewu girls and women. Look at Fanta and Nuumu. Look at Mwita and me.
It's poignant because we see it over and over in speculative fiction especially: the abnormal or the OTHER is often hated and treated with revulsion, simply for being different. Maybe that's why the quote is a bit obvious, especially to someone who reads plenty of spec fic where often the source of conflict is humanity versus OTHER, but that still doesn't make it any less true, does it? The ideas are further stressed later on, when Sola asks Onye on page 318: Then you have to understood the images of light and dark? Beauty and ugliness? Clean and dirty? Good and evil? Night and day? Okeke and Nuru? See?
Speculative fiction pretty much evolves around these concepts, and how they're handled is what makes one book different from another. While some fiction has one conquering the other, other fiction, like Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, stresses the necessity of both, for balance. And even though I've finished the book, I'm not sure what Okorafor is stressing here. She may be in favor of balance, but more important, I think she's in favor of treating everyone equally, and that's not quite the same as balance, is it? Any thoughts on this?
The chapters with the Red People (the Vah) were fascinating. Some reviews found these chapters a distraction from the main story, but there are important things that happen to Onye during these chapters, and if those things hadn't happened, the end of the story wouldn't have happened either. I was fascinated by the Vah, their way of life and how children were raised, and there was a part of me that wished that Onye and her crew could've just stayed with the tribe. Obviously, if that happened, there would've been no story, but it's nice to think about.
I think was fascinated me was the magic: the dust storm, Ting's tattooing ability. I loved the aftermath of the latter, when "the symbol, repelled, jumped from my hand and landed with a clack on the floor. It sprouted many black legs and ran (page 303). Very visual, very creepy, and very effective. Though I will admit, I was worried about it jumping to her face or her feet next!
I was fascinated to learn the effects of Onye's decisions had on the people at large. Some reviewers complained that she murdered thousands of people, and couldn't understand why she wouldn't kill her own father. There's a difference: her impulsive act to impregnate herself wasn't done KNOWING it would kill thousands of men. She knew there could be disastrous consequences, and she knew that once a female sorcerer's pregnancy wiped out a village, but Onye was so mad with grief she wasn't think of consequences, so genocide wasn't exactly intentional, was it? More like accidental manslaughter (erm, genocide). Whereas if she'd killed her father, that would've been a deliberate murder, wouldn't it?
More interesting is what happens to the leftover women (pages 380-381) with Onye's death:
My sister can fly. We would later find out that she was not the only one. All the women, Okeke and Nuru, found that something had changed about them. Some could turn wine to fresh sweet drinking water, others glowed in the dark at night, some could hear the dead. Others remembered the past, before the Great Book. Others could peruse the spirit world and still live in the physical. Thousands of abilities. All bestowed upon women. There it was. Onye's gift. In the death of herself and her child, Onye gave birth to us all. This place will never be the same. Slavery here is over.
A few notes on this: I find it funny that women could turn wine into water, instead of the other way around. Also, I really wish we'd gotten excerpts from the Great Book. While we're told some of the stories, I would've loved to see the writing style, to see how similar the style is to, say, the Bible. However, I think the point here is that any religion's or any people's Great Book (Bible, Koran, whatever) can lead to oppression and slavery (and before you take offense at that, one must consider misinterpretation as well as the fact reprints of any "great book" are done by man, and man is not perfect). That the Great Book needs to be rewritten is a great thing indeed.
One thing I'm not entirely sure of, though entertained by, was the idea that Onye's fate was rewritten. I don't know if that's the nature of the Great Book being rewritten itself, or because of this on page 385:
No, she was not a sacrifice to be made for the good of men and women, Okeke and Nuru alike. She was Onyesonwu. She had rewritten the Great Book. All was done. And she could never ever let her babay, the one part of Mwita that still lived, die. Ifunanya. He'd spoke those ancient mystical words to her, words that were truer and purer than love. What they shared was enough to shift fate.
Cool, but if I have any complaints about this book, it's that the ending is rushed, and that's partially why this is so hard for me to sort out. I like seeing cause and effect myself, and this wasn't as clear as I'd like.
However, it's a nice ending, especially turning the whole tried-and-true sacrificial lamb convention on its head.
A nitpick: on page 5, Onye makes this observation:
Everything went dead silent again.
As if the world, for a moment, were submerged in water.
For a girl who was raised in the desert and lives on the outskirts, I wouldn't think that water immersion would be an immediate metaphor for her to use. I got the impression that in Jwahir, water was a rather precious commodity, so I have trouble swallowing that such a metaphor would be available to Onye as a first person narrator (or even to Onye as a third person narrator).
My Rating: Good Read
I will warn it's not a book for everyone: Okorafor tackles some dark, uncomfortable subjects in this book, and it's more than enough to make some people squirm. Still, it's very well worth the read, as the magic system is interesting, and the stakes are high with an ending that turns usual convention on its head just a bit, enough to make you wonder. It's a good read, and I think I finished this book in two days. I'll be happy to check out more of Okorafor's work, which is good, since I have her YA novel, The Shadow Speaker, sitting on my shelf somewhere around here. Aside from uncomfortable subject matter (which I think people should face, because as the book stresses, ignoring a problem does not make the problem go away), the ending is a bit rushed, hence why this book is simply good instead of excellent. Still, it's quite the page turner. An engaging read. I definitely look forward to more from this author.
Cover Commentary: The cover is what caught my eye when I first saw this book in the store. The coloring more than anything, but I like the ghosted vulture wings (how very appropriate, given the content of the book) over Onye's body. Some people have thought the cover looks too amateur, too PhotoShopped, and others have questioned whether the model looks more like a man than a woman. I've never had issues with it, and since it caught my eye in the store, I say it did what it was supposed to!
More Reviews: Check out the reviews book club participants have posted! If you reviewed this book but are not featured here, please comment below with a link to your review and I'll add it below.
A Bookseller Blog: Review Here
Dirty Sexy Books: Review Here
Giraffe Days: Review Here
intoyourlungs: Review Here
othercat: Review Here
Tethyan Books: Review Here
temporaryworlds: Review Here
The Little Reader: Review Here
Book Club Poll: Quick reminders: first off, if you're not officially participating in the book club, please do not feel obligated to answer the poll. Second, there's a lot of book club participants who are NOT on LJ and I want to make sure they're able to respond appropriately since I'm tracking for points. Because I'm evil like that. So if you're a book clubber, whether you read the book or not, please click the link below!
Click here to take the Who Fears Death poll!
If you started the book but couldn't finish it, please comment and talk about the reasons why. What turned you off from the book? How far did you go before throwing in the towel?
And as you already know, the July Book Club selection is Max Brooks' World War Z. Some of you may have started it already, but if need additional details on the title, just click here. Sign up for the 2011 Alphabet Soup Challenge!
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