Who Fears Death Mass Market Paperback – February 4, 2014

The most powerful thing about this book was that it left me depleted. I was emotionally and mentally depleted after reading this book. Two days I spent enthralled in the story and by the end of it I was completely drained. That is a good thing. Powerful stories demand something of you. You don’t just get to walk into that world and come out the same. A good story should leave its mark on you, make you pay a price for reading it. That’s what this book did to me. It took me in and didn’t let me leave until it was done with me.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

WHO FEARS DEATH, by Nnedi Okorafor, is not a book for the faint of heart. Told in retrospect to her captors by a woman facing execution—a woman who has changed the world around her in fundamental and unexpected ways and sacrificed herself to do it—the teller does not flinch away from the grisly and vicious details of her story. She revels in them. As much a book about hope and change as it is a book about the horrors of complacency, WHO FEARS DEATH is a book that embraces anger, and for that if nothing else, I loved it.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.

Thought provoking story and characters. Interesting and complicated family dynamics. Gender bias and horrors faced by women. The protagonist's perseverance, love, family, community, ambition, finding herself. I have read 500+ books so far, ranging various genres. This is one of the best stories I've ever read. A must read for everyone.

Descripciones perfectas. Escritora con recursos literarios impecables. Narra todo pristinamente y ubica al lector en el lugar con todo y el contexto cultural.

Ik vond het een goed boek. Mooie beschrijvingen van een wereld die voor westerlingen toch vreemd is. Mijn énige bezwaar is dat er vrij veel gebeurtenissen zijn die hetzelfde zijn.

Gli argomenti trattati, così come l'ambientazione, sono davvero originali e interessanti. Da infibulazione, a religioni tradizionali, a violenza di genere e sessuale, a discriminazione di genere... è anche abbastanza breve, ma non troppo.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.

Reading this book was a real break from my usual reading fare, and indeed a break from the majority of genre fiction on the shelves today. Set in post-apocalyptic Africa, Onyesonwu, whose name means “Who Fears Death,” is ewu, a child of rape and regarded as cursed by those around her. A stubborn young woman, this doesn’t stop her from rebelling against what others deem to be her fate, and instead she rises up against adversity, against those who would keep her down because she’s ewu, or female, or young, and she takes steps along a journey that will ultimately change the face of her very culture.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.