Death of the Author

Death of the Author draws directly from Okorafor’s personal experience as a Nigerian American writer with a disability, marking a departure from her usual work as a science fiction writer. Okorafor was born in 1974 to Igbo parents who had immigrated to the US. In her early teens, Okorafor developed scoliosis, which worsened as she grew older. She sought spinal fusion surgery to treat her condition, but due to a rare complication, the treatment resulted in paralysis below the waist. Okorafor eventually regained limited mobility in her legs through physical therapy. 

Following her surgery, Okorafor discovered her affinity for writing. She pursued studies in creative writing, which led to her participation in the Clarion Writers Workshop, one of the United States’ premier workshops for speculative fiction, in 2001. She began publishing short stories around this time, and her early success was marked by her recognition as a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers in 2001, which honors the potential of emerging Black writers in college. She published her debut novel, a young adult work titled Zahrah the Windseeker, in 2005 and received the 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.

Okorafor has received many awards for her speculative work, including the World Fantasy Award in 2011 for her first adult novel, Who Fears Death, and the Nebula and Hugo Awards for her 2015 novella, Binti. Her speculative novels often use settings based on the African continent, incorporating, adapting, or borrowing elements from African cultures and belief systems. In her books that eschew Earth-bound settings, like Binti, Okorafor still centers African culture as the basis for the narrative elements that drive the plot forward.

Okorafor’s work is sometimes labeled as “Afrofuturistic,” but she is bothered by the fact that her work is defined within the context of the United States. In a personal blog post, Okorafor addresses this categorization. She points out that “Afrofuturism,” a term first coined by white American cultural critic Mark Dery in 1993, specifically refers to the cultural output of African Americans who were the descendants of enslaved Africans. Although Okorafor is American, she resists the notion that her work is contributing to a tradition bound by the geographic limits of the US. She proposes a new term, “Africanfuturism,” to refer to cultural output that centers the African continent, allowing the term to extend to Black artists based in Africa and in the diaspora around the world (Okorafor, Nnedi. “Africanfuturism Defined.” Nnedi’s Wahala Zone Blog, 19 Oct. 2019).

The development of Okorafor’s aesthetic within the context of Africanfuturism and the intentional centering of Africa is crucial subtext for the plot and themes of Death of the Author. While the character of Zelu is inspired directly by Okorafor’s personal experiences, her character also grapples with her Nigerian identity, especially as a child of people from different tribes and social classes. The tension of Zelu’s family dynamic is complicated by her Igbo and royal Yoruba identities. While Zelu takes after her father, who is adventurous by nature, she is often warned to maintain discretion to uphold the royal dignity of her mother’s side of the family. Zelu also wrestles with being seen as an authentic Nigerian, which becomes a point of contention in her relationship with Msizi, who was born and initially based in South Africa. Her struggle to be viewed as African, not just American, is a key facet of the novel’s themes.