If the Apocalypse Is Female

Abstract

Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death is the story of Onyesonwu, a girl who is an outcast from her tribe due to her status as a Ewu, a “half-breed” child born from rape, living in postapocalyptic Africa. Onye soon discovers that she has powers and these abilities only add to her struggles with her exclusion from her people due to both the nature of her birth and her status as a female. Onye continuously struggles to maintain control of her powers and over her very body as she is rejected as a baby due to her race and as a teenager undergoes FGM and loses some of her power. Who Fears Death creates a cyclical structure of the apocalypse. While the focus remains on the cycle of life and death through the desire to kill the man who raped her mother, the death at the end is limited primarily to men. Victims of rape, half-breed children, and victims of genocide are common sights in this novel, but Onye responses to this cycle by killing the men in the village of Durfa. However, she only killed those who were fertile and this power came at the cost of every fertile woman becoming pregnant. This was punishment for the rape of her mother. Furious and terrified of her, Onye is captured and sentenced to death. The novel appears to end with Onye’s martyrdom with her following burying her body and keeping her memory alive. However, in this story, the cycle is not ended by Onye’s death; in fact she rejects her own death and rewrites her story. Onye’s power restarts the world, ending the cycle of genocide and granting powers to both men and women throughout this new world. Here Onye can accept her child and give her the life Onye wished, both continuing and changing the cycle that began with Onye’s conception. Who Fears Death is the apocalypse from the female perspective, changing the focus to control over physical bodies, sexual freedom, and cycles of life and death.

Bonnie Cross

Tenure Track Professor of English

My research interests include neuroscience and literature, digital humanities, and digital media.