Fate and Destiny in Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death

Abstract

This article reads at how Nnedi Okorafor's novel Who Fears Death (2010) rewrites the traditional narrative, cultural events progressing with time as development, offering a vision of current and prospective African identity that is not simply based on colonial history, after an apocalypse, Africa suffered with. Okorafor's imaginative use of intertextuality and subversion of "sovereign narratives" work to construct an alternative model of identity, according to the study. The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic Africa where one tribe, the Nuru, enslaves and oppresses another, the Okeke. Onyesonwu, a strong and determined heroine, sets out to rewrite the "Great Book" to strip her father, the despotic sorcerer Diab, of his powers. The novel tackles dictatorship through dictation, the influence of epistemic theories on culture and belonging, and tackling the problem of despotism and resistance in the content. The rewriting of the Great Book, which embodies the gripping storyline of oppression, makes room for a new narrative to emerge. Okarafor undermines linear notions of development within the story's structure by locating herself intertextually in a piece of research that crosses time, geography, and genre barriers along with the injustice and inequality females face. As a result, identity arises from a dynamic structure rather than from the accumulation of history.