Beyond Mere Genre

Detail from cover

"What makes you think that you should understand it all?" he asked. "That's a lesson you have to learn, instead of being angry all the time. We'll never know exactly why we are, what we are, and so on. All you can do is follow your path all the way to the wilderness, and then continue along because that's what must be."

A fascinating passage from a remarkable book, an exploration of hate and love, sex and power, male and female, life and death by a young writer in enviable control of her craft. Make no mistake: Who Fears Death is not a polemic, but it contains strong views on some very difficult subjects indeed. The author, Nnedi Okorafor, has been lambasted for her thematic explorations of the practice of female genital mutilation (I refuse to call it "circumcision": circumcision does not prevent men from achieving orgasm. This practice is the removal of the clitoris and critical nerve tissue. Its value and purpose may be debatable; the neurological result is not). This section of her book, which deals with the education and ascendance to near-godhood of a young woman named Onyesonwu (literally, "who fears death"), is but one set of wrenching, powerful images in a book filled with them.

Set in a post-apocalyptic Africa, we never quite see what has happened to Europe and Asia, although remnants of relatively advanced technologies remain among the tribal trappings. Computers still flicker to life, and odd machines seem to gather water from the clouds. But communications have broken down, there are few machines, and most technology seems archaic or on the edge of collapse.

Tribal wars threaten genocide constantly, and villages can turn from welcoming to suspicious to mob-homicidal in the turn of a page.

It is fair to say that women are the center of good in this book: you really wouldn't want to be a man in Onyesonwu's world. Men are either rapists, betrayers, helpless, or helpmates who meet ugly ends. The question of gender identity and roles looms hugely, and if one senses an ocean of boiling anger behind some of the images and linguistics, that can probably be understood, given the historical facts underlying the fantasy here.

Make no mistake, for all the post-apocalyptic trappings, this is not science fiction in any classical sense. This is fantasy, dealing with the yearnings of the human heart for individual emotional reality to be directly extended to the outer world. While Okorafor is initially coy about it, by halfway through the book, we can be certain that, yes, her characters are not hallucinating, not insane, not confusing the inner world of meditative or shamanic experience with the outer objective reality.

In this world, magic works. Human beings really can transform into animals, and summon elemental powers. It is to Okorafor's considerable credit that she slides us into that world as gradually as she does, playing peek-a-boo with our assumptions: are they or aren't they? Is she or isn't she? As her half-breed protagonist struggles to understand the power within her by seeking mentors or teachers, who she is never quite certain she can trust.

Who Fears Death is also about personal responsibility, community, and the creation of family, as the Okeke woman Onyesonwu travels through an African wasteland of deserts, tiny villages, war-torn landscapes, and waterholes, seeking vengeance against the man who raped her mother and sired her, a wizard of such power that even Onyesonwu's mighty gifts seem insufficient, and the outcome of the book held in serious doubt.

This is not a pretty world, although it holds gentle values, and is told in oft-exquisite prose. Sexuality is a respite from almost unendurable despair, and love is so volatile, so fragile, that even to hope for its existence, let alone growth and prospering, would seem to be like betting on a butterfly in a blast furnace.

And yet...hope exists, between mother...