![]() These markers and prejudices shape Onyesonwu's life, fuel her anger at the world and give her something to resist. Ewu, the children of Nuru and Okeke, and assumed always to be the children of rape, apparently always look the same, are always violent, and are always unteachable. Onyesonwu and her friend Mwita-later to become her husband-are both Ewu. She herself has married, but her daughter Onyesonwu, with her sandy colored skin, hair, and freckles, is a marker as permanent as her own broken voice. Onyesonwu's mother, the survivor of one such attack, fled east, and after several years wandering the desert with her daughter has settled in an Okeke village yet to see the genocidal rage of the Nuru. ![]() The Okeke are a slave race, whose attempt at rebellion has triggered a wave of genocides. Onyesonwu is born the daughter of rape, of an Okeke woman by a Nuru man. It is also a world of magic, of small jujus and powerful sorcerers. ![]() This is a science fictional world with water captures, hard-tech computing, and newfangled biotech. ![]() ![]() For all the resemblances to our own Africa, this is a distant planet in a distant time, and the story the Okeke and the Nuru tell, in which the Nuru come from afar, might well be true. There is a hint in Who Fears Death that we are in the far future of Zahrah the Windseeker, Okorafor's debut novel. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |