Onyesonwu

Onyesonwu is the main character of Who Fears Death, and the narrator throughout the vast majority of the novel. Born out of rape, she is labeled ‘ewu’ for her visibly mixed race appearance and is thus rejected by her mother’s people, the Okeke. For the first six years of her life, her mother raised her in the desert, and then brought her to the town of Jwahir so that she could experience socialization. In Jwahir, she meets Fadil, a blacksmith who later marries her mother and with whom she is very close. She makes friends and eventually falls in love with Mwita, another ewu boy, although Mwita later reveals that his parents were in love with each other and he was not born from rape, unlike Onyesonwu. She also becomes close with Binta, Luyu, and Diti, the three other girls from her eleventh year rite group.

Onyesonwu...