From Nnedi Okorafor comes the tale of a brave young girl called Najeeba, which means She Who Knows. She Who Knows the novel is a coming-of-age story set in West Africa in a distant Afrofuturistic earth. The novel takes place in the world of Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, and is the first in a new trilogy. As such, it offers the backstory of one of the characters in that series, focusing on themes such as feminism, trauma, heartbreak, racism, and the supernatural.
Najeeba lives a carefree, gender-nonconforming life in the city of Adoro 5. Najeeba’s father is Xabief, of the small-scale salt merchants Xabief Enterprises; her elder brothers are Rayan and Ger, both of whom are married with children. She and her family are a part of a people who freed themselves from enslavement to the goddess Adoro. Other Osunu people consequently despise them. Nevertheless, Osunu by right are the only ones who can travel the crucial salt roads and sell what they collect to people from all walks of life at the salt markets, temporarily disregarding the social classes that divide them.
Najeeba’s journey begins when she commences, at thirteen years old, to venture the salt roads with her father and brothers. This is an opportunity not just for the family but their village: For every salt sale, a percentage of the profits goes to improving their village, mainly meaning more books for the village library, The Paper House.
However, society can’t seem to ignore one unwritten rule: that only men travel the salt roads. Such a rule is surprising because “[t]he origin of the prosperous Osunu started with two Osunu women travelling together who found the ghost of the lake. They were fleeing something, some say from their own village clan when they discovered the land that cracked beneath their feet”—that is, the salt roads were discovered by women. Nevertheless, since then it has been known that only men travel the salt roads—so it comes as no surprise that, when Najeeba tells her parents about her call, her mother pushes her towards the cooking yams, as if to say a woman belongs in the kitchen. Yet her parents are ultimately more forward-thinking: They actually help her prepare for this journey, with her father exclaiming that he has three sons and not a daughter, subconsciously reinforcing the unwritten rule.
Others are less broad-minded. When Najeeba informs her friend, Peter, of her plans, he rebukes and mocks her, telling her that the salt roads are for men and not women, that she should instead prepare for her husband. Her first love, Obi, also gives her a cold shoulder, stating that “I won’t be with a girl who thinks she’s a boy.” Even her brothers, when she and her father eventually catch up with them on the road, tell her that, “It’s not every call that is meant to be answered.” Still, Najeeba and her family eventually reach the salt lake safely through the desert heat and Najeeba is amazed with all that she sees, salt as far as the eye can see.
It is when they get to the salt markets that Najeeba’s complicated relationship with her gender begins to have public consequences: She and Ger are left by themselves to set up their stall whilst Rayan and Xabief go to buy some supplies. Out of nowhere, Najeeba climbs a stool and starts enticing customers to come and buy her father’s salt. She does this without any fear of being caught, as—although girls are not allowed to sell at the salt markets—at thirteen, nobody suspects anything because Najeeba has not fully come into her body yet, and wear a short haircut and baggy clothes. She sells all of her father’s salt and is surprised at herself and the boldness she displays, begging Ger to take credit for all of it. Reluctantly, he does.
Yet her secret comes out: Rayan and Xabief eavesdrop on them and rebuke Najeeba, though retain her considerable profits. Others, wondering at Xabief’s returns, figured out that it is Najeeba’s presence that corresponds with his high salt sales—and begin taking their daughters with them in the roads, believing that it brought them blessings and prosperity.
Though she is met with resistance, then, Najeeba brings change to her community, ushering in a new era for girls and women. Girls in her community were expected to “just disappear, as girls often did. We were sent to live in other towns to help relatives with housework and childcare, to have unwanted babies, to study at a non Osunu university and most commonly to be a concubine in a non Osunu marriage.” But because of Najeeba they end the novel with a chance to be seen in a different light, as something other than a burden—as individuals who bring blessings and prosperity to their homes and people.
Najeeba goes through many changes, not least significant damage to her relationships with her father and Obi. There is also the question of the witch. This figure, whom Najeeba first meets on first setting out to the salt roads, shows Najeebva that she is capable of out-of-body experiences. She discovers she can leave her physical form and travel far from it, leaving it literally behind. She discovers she can turn into the kponyungo, a beast of dust, fire, and wind—a creature with a habit of manifesting or coming out when she is being intimate with Obi, often at the point of climax, when she can see herself on top of Obi, and often starts to travel before she’s jolted back into her body.
The creature also manifests as a defense, such as when she protects her father and brothers back in the cave where they have found shelter but come under attack from weird beings that only look like people. And, when she is discovered at the salt markets that she is a woman and is thrashed, punched, and violated, it is her anger and urge to defend herself that brings the kponyungo out, sending hordes of people running away from her.
Najeeba loses everything as a result of these transformations: her father, her relationships, the pride her people felt in her. She gains a power she doesn’t fully understand. It drives people away from her and her away from people. In other words, Okorator uses witchcraft to highlight how much women of all kinds are misunderstood in society. If a man is smart, he is educated; but if a woman is smart, it is a source of suspicion—she is a witch. Indeed, men in this novel seem to think women are not able to gain the same level of achievement if they are not witches. There is a notion that, simply because Najeeba could sell so much in the salt market, she is a witch. In this world and our own, education is often policed and limited when it comes to women in her community.
A good example of this in the novel is when the librarian at the Paper House confiscates a book that Najeeba has been reading, exclaiming, “I will have to keep an eye on you.” People fear what they don’t understand—and Najeeba’s father, brothers, librarian, and society fear her because she defies traditional gender roles. Najeeba is suspected of being a witch, and called a whore by society, because she dares look men in the eye and bargain with them.
Both these methods are of course time-honoured tools for policing women, meant to shame them into socially prescribed behaviour, a power struggle in which men feel threatened. Yet as the story goes on we find out why Najeeba’s father gave her that name. As a daughter, she cannot carry her father’s name onto the next generation, but she was nevertheless born for a special purpose: To answer a prayer he made as a young man, when his family and village were destroyed by their enemies. Xabief prayed to the goddess that one of his children would avenge his clan and homeland. The name is both an homage and a burden—to avenge a wronged sister.
[Editor's Note: Publication of this review was made possible by a gift from E.C. Barrow during our annual Kickstarter.]