Who Fears Death: An Afrofuturism Book Review

Who Fears Death is a Black sci-fi novel by Nnedi Okorafor, which some have placed within the rising sci-fi sub-genre called Afrofuturism. The author, however, for various reasons, objects to this categorization of her style and writing, which we will probably get into in another article. For now, let’s just refer to the sub-genre as either Black Fantasy or Afrofuturism.

The novel deserves attention because of the rising interest in African sci-fi or Afrofuturism, as seen in the meteoric success of the Black Panther movie and the phenomenal sales of Black fantasy books like Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

In this article, we critique the book and analyze why it may encounter some difficulty in achieving the broad success of the Black Fantasy products, such as Black Panther.

Photo by Carlos Leret via Unsplash

Afrofuturism: On the verge of pop culture status

Black Panther proved once and forever that Black sci-fi could work. No more could Hollywood producers and execs claim that a lack of interest in Black main characters justified their hesitancy in putting out Black-led films.

Perhaps or rather most likely, it was the amazing success of Black Panther that spurred the willingness of major studios or film production houses to show interest in bringing Afrofuturism novels to the big or small screens.

We see this in the talk surrounding both Who Fears Death (WFD) and Children of Blood and Bone (CBB) being turned into movies or series. HBO is set to turn Who Fears Death into a series produced by J.R.R Martin, who authored the series of books that inspired the famous HBO series Game of Thrones, whereas Children of Blood and Bone is set to be made into a film by Paramount Pictures.

But we are left to wonder, Do these book-based films have the ability to achieve the cultural milestone of a Black Panther? We attempt to answer this question by analyzing the plot and themes of Who Fears and Death and comparing it to CBB.

A brief summary of Who Fears Death

Let’s begin with a summary of the novel. Please be warned of spoilers ahead. (Feel free to skip this part of the article if you wish to avoid spoilers. The remainder of the article is written without the need to reference this section.)

Who Fears Death is a post-apocalyptic fantasy set in what looks like an African country gripped by a genocidal conflict. The protagonist of the story is Onyesonwu, who was birthed from the rape of her mother (who belongs to a dark-skinned tribe called Okeke) by an oppressive tribe, the Nuru (who have White skin).

Her mother’s tribe is dark-skinned. Onyesonwu has to struggle with her painful and mixed identity and becomes an outcast who eventually exacts revenge on the oppressors of her tribe.

The story is divided into three parts. In the first part of the story, the 16-year-old Onyesonwu witnesses the death of her father in Jwhair, which is inhabited by people who belong to the same tribe as her mother. Onyesonwu because of the violent conditions of her birth is labeled as “Ewu.”

This is the name given to anyone who was birthed from an Okeke woman being raped by a Nuru man. It is an outcast status, which sees the labeled individual being shunned and mistreated. Her outcast status drives her to undergo female circumcision in an attempt to be normal and fit in

In Part 2 of the story, with help and training from another Ewu boy, named Mwita and a dramatic initiation, Onye attains special magical powers, which include shape-shifting, and resurrecting creatures.

The physical damage caused by her circumcision is even reversed. Onye’s abilities appear to reach at their peak when she uses her abilities to curse Nuru women into reliving her own mother’s past rape.

After this event, she leaves and moves West to help the Okeke fight against the oppressive Nuru. She is accompanied by a group of friends when she moves, namely, Mwita, Binta, Diti, Luyu, and Diti’s fiancé Fanasi.

In the process of traveling West, Onye discovers that she is the chosen one prophesied to liberate the Okeke from Nuru oppression and rewrite the Gret Book. Later, with the help of a tribe called the Vah, Onye enlists assistance from a goddess to launch a spiritual attack against her arch-rival Diab, who manages to poison her.

Onyesonwu is nursed back to health by Vah sorcerers. After making a physical trek through Okeke villages ravaged by the Nuru, Onye and her friends reach Durfa, where Onye has a physical showdown this time with Diab. And this time she defeats and kills him.

However, Mwita is killed in the process. Onye flees and eventually discovers the Great Book, which she rewrites with a magical script called Nsibidi to reverse the fate of the Okeke.

Unattractive politics and cultural esthetics

The politics and cultural depiction of Africans in the novel likely work against this movie gaining any broad appeal. WFD according to its author is based on the Sudanese conflict, which in the media has been portrayed as a racial or tribal conflict between dark-skinned native Africans and invading White Arabs, which mainly occurs in the Darfur region. Durfa where the main conflict occurs in the novel appears to be named after Darfur.

While Black Panther relies on the valorization of a powerful and mythical African kingdom that was able to defeat all invaders, WFD relies on the doom and gloom news reports that one often sees on CNN and BBC regarding African conflicts.

The author herself claims that she was inspired to tell the tale after reading a story about the Darfur conflict written by a White female reporter. There might be an audience for this type of trauma porn, but there is little chance that it will be a broad audience.

As mentioned earlier, one of the directors of the supposed future HBO series inspired by the novel will be J.R.R Martin. This is understandable. It is expected that the man who gave us the grime and gore of the “Red Wedding” and the gruesome death of the Viper would be attracted to the bleakness and weird violence depicted in WFD.

However, Game of Thrones is not all blood, gore, and bleakness. It also has romance. By romance, we don’t mean the incestuous relationship between Circe and Jamie. No, we are talking about the dragons, the knights, and the well-depicted medieval kingdoms, culture, and society based on the deep study and knowledge of European and British history. This lacks severely in Who Fears Death.

An anemic depiction of African culture

There is almost nothing discernibly African about the culture depicted in WFD apart from common and played-out Western media tropes related to African oppression, female circumcision, perpetual war, despair, and famine. What is even more alarming is the lack of African agency.

The heroine of the movie — Onye — is a sort of biracial, a mix between the light-skin oppressor and an African woman who has been raped. The novel seems to suggest, perhaps inadvertently, that full-blown natives are not even capable of liberating themselves, but should rely on those enhanced or genetically modified by the oppressor’s DNA.

The other thing that goes against the novel having wide appeal is just how unlikeable the main character is. She engages in a few over-the-top, cruel, and absolutely bizarre acts of violence and revenge that render her just as bad if not worse than her oppressors.

The Black Panther can hardly be described as being based on an authentic depiction of African culture. What people like about it was its glossy and hi-tech depiction of a modern African culture rooted in ancient comic-book-type African history. More importantly, it was able to imagine a modern Africa bearing no resemblance to the negative stereotypes that dominate the Western press.

WFD, by contrast, fails to soar past these stereotypes and chooses to embrace them instead. But it must be said though that the novel does end on a hopeful note, with the heroine defeating her people’s arch nemesis and oppressors. However, it is not enough to dispel the bleakness of the African culture depicted in that novel.

Afrofuturism a right to be diverse

Perhaps, HBO is just the right place for WFD. It is, after all, the home of weird, violent, and avant-garde (or fake avant-garde) sci-fi fare, such as Raised By Wolves, Westworld, The Watchmen, and so on. Typically, these types of shows make a small splash among critics, only to quickly fade into irrelevance, without ever capturing the public imagination.

It would be useful to compare WFD to Another Black fantasy novel that has caught the public’s attention: Children of Blood and Bone. It like Black Panther is less based on an authentic study of African history than it is on a comic-book-like understanding of a valorized yet fictional African history.

The book is comparable to the cartoon series Avatar The Last Air Bender. It has more action (as opposed to violence) and fun, which puts it more solidly in the young adult book category than WFD and gives it the potential to be a huge pop-culture hit. Okorafor’s novel has no such potential. It is cut entirely from a different type of cloth.

The author likely never meant her book to be that anyway. Instead, let’s hope that the book and its on-screen adaptation represent the beginning of a wide range and variety of African sci-fi being depicted in pop culture.

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Cite this EminentEdit article

Antone, M. (2024, October 04). Who Fears Death: An Afrofuturism Book Review. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/who-fears-death-an-afrofuturism-book-review