Who Fears Death (edition 2010)

I am so excited about Nnedi Okorafor!

Who Fears Death is one of the best SF books I've read in recent years. I won't spoil, but if you like shapeshifters, speculative future earth, feminist awesomeness, and smart storytelling, read this and tell me what you think.

Caveat Reador: If you are likely to be traumatized by graphic depictions of weaponized rape and genocide (even in the service of a critical feminist narrative), best to avoid this book. But in that case, go read her YA books, like Zahrah the Windseeker! So good! ( )

(Refers to the audiobook.)

"A journey."

This book is a journey, and it is at times an intentionally uncomfortable one. Set in a (far?) future subsaharan Africa, racially-based genocides continue between the Nuru and the Okeke. An "Ewu" girl (the result of the rape of an Okeke by a Nuru man) is given the name Onyesonwu -- "Who Fears Death". This book has magic -- in particular: shape-shifting, and traveling to The Wilderness, the space where spirits go after life -- and sand, and violence -- though this is not a book "about" magic, or sand -- and scenes which are both unsettling and gripping. The narration from Anne Flosnik here is quite primal; we feel the pain and, as often, anger of Onyesonwu and her companions and adversaries.

Okorafor's world is one where some technology remains -- portable computers with maps, water collection devices -- but this is not at all a book about technology. It is about people, and in particular the roles of women (and men) in a highly tribal culture. There are ruins -- old, paved roads -- but this is not a book about the past. It is also not a book about the future. It is a book which is quite present, and is highly recommended to readers with an interest in something beyond the beaten path, whether coming from an interest in fantasy or more mainstream fiction, and the willingness to travel on unfamiliar and rocky ground. ( )

This is a very difficult book to rate. It has a strong beginning and a very strong ending but what lies between the two is rather weak.

Onyesonwu is a bi-racial female in post-apocalyptic Sudan. The first half is her growing up as an outcast and beginning her training as a sorceress. The second half is her journeying across the desert to confront her evil sorcerer father, revenge her mother and hopefully end the racial genocide. It starts out with minor magic realist elements then slowly adds in shamanic elements until the end where it's pure epic fantasy.

It's not an easy book to read. There is a lot of rather graphic violence; the book contains racial genocide, gang rape, female circumcision and a strongly patriarchal society. But none of the violence is over the top - there's enough detail so that it feels real but not so much that you feel like you're wallowing in it. And the book, in my opinion, couldn't have been written without including these elements.

Despite the heavy subject material, the narrative voice is very simple yet filling. It read as if Onyesonwu was truly telling the story directly to me - which is good since that is how the story is framed. I also like the fact that she acknowledges prejudice is something that doesn't stem entirely from rulers - it's both the general population and the ruling population at fault and both sides of the problem are considered.

My biggest issue with it is that the middle half becomes almost chick-lit. I really don't care who's sleeping with someone else's husband or who is sleeping around with people in the villages they travel through. She's speaking out against FGM and for woman's rights. That's a cause I heartily endorse. I just wish she'd picked a different way to express the female characters' sexual freedom other than giggling gossip sessions and cat fights.

I also wish that the nature of the apocalyptic situation was described in more detail. It seems to be a exercise in contradictions. No televisions, radios, or Internet mentioned and no telephones in the smallest village, yet one staticy cell phone type device is seen in the capitol city. Severe desertification is mentioned, to the point where forests are almost a myth, yet they have water stations that pull water from the air so there's no water shortages; Even when traveling by foot for months across the desert, they have enough water to spare for washing their hair. They have motorized transport (scooters), yet the idea of using something like that for long distance transportation is completely absent; even to travel across the continent, the imagined method of travel is by foot. It is a rather incomplete view of the world. Maybe it wouldn't seem so if I'd ever seen the current state of the poorer sections of Africa first hand.

Now that I'm finished with the book and can look upon it as a whole work, those portions of the plot bother me less because I can see where all the elements tie together. Even so, the book as a whole didn't resonate with me. I liked certain parts - the ending, and how the narrator's voice (I listened to the audio book) meshed well with the writing style - but the work as a whole seems to be missing something and I'm not sure I've quite figured out what that is yet, even after a week of contemplating it. ( )

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Description: An award-winning literary author presents her first foray into supernatural fantasy with a novel of post- apocalyptic Africa.

In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.

Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny-to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture-and eventually death itself.


My Review: Who fears Death? I suppose most living things fear death. Onyesonwu, our title character, is the product of a genesis no one should have to carry with them: She is a child of rape, a product of brutality that should have made her mother hate her. Instead, her mother names her “who fears death” and never from that moment on, despite the both of them being outcast and made into The Other, never fears anything again.

I had a very hard time with this book, wanting to Pearl Rule it on average three times per reading session. I did in fact abandon it when a major major major anti-man hot button issue occurred near the end. But this is what earns the book four stars from me: I could not not read the rest. I had to know why what happened, happened.

Am I happy I read it? Not really. It was harrowing for me. I don't like man-bad-woman-good books. There are two unforgivable things in my moral universe: Abusing animals and rape. I'm no fan of supernatural/magjicqkal stuff (Onye's a shapeshifter). What on the surface of the earth persuaded me to read this thing?! I mean, it's even praised by Luis Alberto Urrea forevermore! I shoulda stood home, as the saying goes.

But Dr. Okorafor is a sorceress. She cast a spell on me. She reached out from inside this book and she made sure my brain needed to know this, and needed it so much I'd overcome my prejudices and make it part of my mental furniture.

I will step on her foot if I ever meet the Doctor in person.

She set the book in a post-nuclear-holocaust Africa! I love postapocalyptic fiction! How am I gonna resist that? And she made explicit a disdain for the rotten, evil-souled uses of religion in oppressing and abusing people of all types. I think I purred. I know I smiled.

It's also a joy and a pleasure to me to see women, and women of color, and women of immigrant parentage, enter the lists of American English-language speculative fiction. It makes me feel that this world has a shot at survival after all. Writers are not ignored because of their bodily plumbing or skin color or weird names. (Sorry, but I'm still an old white man, and this lady's name is really seriously weird to me.) This is the world I grew up wanting to live in, and now I get to...for a while anyway...and that, more than any other factor, made me stick with the book long past my usual stop.

Should you read it? Should you turn page after page of non-European-named characters, landscapes bursting with heat and searing miseries of spirit, heroes whose lives are blighted by origins beyond their control?

Yep. ( )

*non-professional, spoiler-filled review*
Good lord I had problems with this novel. It is effectively a coming of age story, set in a post-apocalyptic (though this part is barely sketched out and almost forgettable until the very end, and even then it doesn't make much sense) warring Africa and pulling quest tropes from mythology. It is trigger-y for almost all potential triggers regarding sexual violence. And I'm not convinced that the story earns the right to throw those loaded themes around with such impunity. After a 300 pages filled with rape, genocide and violence, our protagonist magically kills all of her male enemies and impregnates all of the women against their will. This is not a thoughtful reaction to the aforementioned violence. I don't know what Okorafor was trying to convey. I'm going to be thinking hard about this, whether I like it or not. But I don't think that I'll ever come to like this book. ( )