She Who Knows and One Way Witch are the first two novellas in Nnedi Okorafor’s She Who Knows trilogy. This series, in turn, is part of her larger Africanfuturist epic that reaches back 500 years to The Book of Phoenix. I’ve read three parts of Okorafor’s epic story. Who Fears Death is the story of Onyesonwu and how she changes a racist world of endless conflict by rewriting the Great Book that all take as the true religious basis of their world. The Book of Phoenix goes back centuries to recount the story of a woman, named Phoenix, genetically engineered as a weapon, who breaks free of the corporate militarism that shaped her and take her vengeance on that world. It also tells how the Great Book came to be written. The latest trilogy of novellas, consisting so far of She Who Knows and One Way Witch, tells the story of Najeeba, Onyesonwu’s mother, who is also a great sorcerer.
As in Who Fears Death, the world of the She Who Knows trilogy evolved out of the ashes of the old one destroyed by Phoenix. There are remnants of advanced technology, like the capture stations that can pull water out of the atmosphere and portable computers, but the dominant power in this world belongs to great sorcerers. For a time, it is a violent world presided over by light skinned Nuru people who enslave the dark skinned Okeke. Onyesonwu learns to master her innate powers to bring about a vast change that rewrites the Great Book, ends racial oppression and even alters people’s memories so that they do not recall their earlier life.
Okorafor provides basic background in author’s notes to both She Who Knows and One Way Witch, so that the story of each novella can be read on its own. But it is a far richer experience if you first read Who Fears Death and understand more about the world Onyesonwu changes so completely.
She Who Knows begins with a thirteen year old Najeeba just as she becomes certain that she must do her first transgressive act, to accompany her father and brothers on their journeys into the desert to gather salt. Salt is central to the culture of her people. This family lives in a village dedicated to the goddess Adoro, and this worship gives them special knowledge of where to gather salt from a great dried lake in the desert. But gathering salt is the exclusive work of men, as is selling it in the regional market place. Najeeba, disguising herself as a man, takes on both tasks and becomes wildly successful, selling enough salt to enrich both her family and their Adoro village. But it is in her nature to push things too far, and there are punishing consequences.
Her adventures in the salt trade are not her only unusual activity. She can also step out of her body in a spiritual sense and become the kyponyungo, a fiery lizard creature that can fly great distances. She Who Knows takes the story through the time when Najeeba marries and moves away from the Adoro villages. Then it jumps ahead to Najeeba in her early forties when she is seeking the rigorous training under the tutelage of the sorcerer Aro. One Way Witch is the story of that training.
This second novella begins with a long chapter that describes Najeeba’s life just before the great change that Onyesonwu brings about. So time in this world is sharply divided into a Before and an After. The Before is the world where the teachings of the Great Book prevail, making doctrine out of the enslavement of Okeke people by the Nuru. In the After, all that is gone and only a few people, like Najeeba, with special gifts, remember anything of the old life. The story of Najeeba’s spiritual training is a powerful one, requiring her to face death in a terrifying vision and to gradually learn how to control her great powers. The novella takes us to a point where she is ready to carry out a mission of revenge involving conflict with a deadly spiritual being. That will be the story of the third and final novella.
These are all stories of great women with enormous powers to change things. Phoenix is one of a small number of humans altered by a corporation to serve as a kind of super soldier, but she breaks from the prison of her world and unleashes a holocaust that destroys most life in Okorafor’s alternate Earth. Many centuries later, Najeeba and Onyesonwu are born into a divided world that they must set right. But just as these are narratives about what these women do, they are also about how their stories are told. Phoenix has narrated her story in digital form, but centuries later a copy is picked up by a story-teller who weaves it into something completely different. Onyesonwu tells her story to a journalist before meeting her final fate, and Najeeba narrates her story to Aro, the sorcerer, partly to convince him to take her on as a student. There are subtle changes in all these versions as they are translated into worlds where men still try to dominate.
What makes these women characters so compelling to me is their lived experience and struggle to become who they are destined to be. There are many powerful women in SFF these days, but Okorafor’s characters fight through endless struggles to learn how to control the power they start with. They not only face death, but we feel deeply each time they are scorned, pushed face down in the desert pavement, scorched with fire, mauled or stoned by angry crowds or triumph in mastery of a spiritual power. We also feel every emotional shift as family members or close friends die, as they master a new power, get scared of what they are capable of doing, fall in love, burn with anguish for the harm they have caused unintentionally or use their powers quite consciously to destroy. There is a wonderful physicality and deep emotional core in each of these characters that Okorafor brings to life on every page. That’s what makes these stories so unforgettable and keeps me turning to the latest volume in her epic series.
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