Who Fears Death?

Nnedi Okorafor

In Who Fears Death? Nnedi Okorafor uses an interesting approach for her fantasy novel. In this novel if you haven’t already read it, she uses her voice to speak on cultural topics that are still happening today. Such as female circumcision, sexism, racism and discrimination. Many people might see this novel as using fantasy genre to shine light on these topics. Although, her novel takes place in an apocalyptic futuristic world, this world is no different than the past, the now and the future world that we live in now. Okorafor not only uses these topics to shape Who Fears Death? But it is these topics that make the reader continue reading and develop sympathy for this young character.

I believe that Okorafor based much of what she grew up seeing and hearing to criticize the societies that still to this age treat women as sexual objects, by producing the novel with these things in mind she was able to empower women to the point of making them murderers. But here is where it gets tricky, I am all for female empowerment, but was the graphic murder scenes too much? Was Okorafor intentionally making her audience cringe so they could have a better understanding of what it is like to be circumcised to the point of dying from many other factors other than sexual contact? Awareness was her point. After reading this novel I’m sure most readers felt compassion for the main character whose journey is described through the novel.

I won’t say that men are the problem in the novel, but the mentally some men hold is the issue. Women are raped and shunned once they produce mixed race children, sounds familiar? I think this is the awareness she is attempting to produce. Not too long-ago women of color were raped by their masters and once they produced children they became outcasts and seen as monetary transaction.

With this science fiction/ fantasy novel apart from pointing out the obvious mistreatment against women and different races. Okorafor also touches upon the young adult mind, the fear and the self-awareness that develops at an early age of knowing that you are different from others. In Onyesonwu’s case she became self-aware after they had contact with other people. Her mother like any parent wanted to protect her from harm, the same harm she experienced. However, the young girl turned out to be much more capable of taking care of herself and in the course teaching herself that self-acceptance is important.

To conclude this complicated, yet though provoking novel. Okorafor uses this young Ewu girl to express her views in a patriotically society and criticize not only the treatment for women but all people in general. Onyesinwu although a young girl can shape shift which can serve as a representation of a person changing over time, the traveling between worlds can sere as a form of comparing the past to the new and the way they still intertwine. Over all I would give this book an A and I cannot wait to see it on the screen as it has been confirmed that it will be made into a show.