Death of the Author

by Nnedi Okorafor

Adjuncting was a shit job that treated you like shit. Her creative writing students always deeply annoyed her, but this semester had been especially brutal. She’d come to every class with a false smile plastered on her face and fantasies of smacking each of them upside the head with a copy of Infinite Jest—the hardcover, of course. This semester, she had a class full of creative writing PhD students who’d all convinced themselves and one another that the best type of storytelling was plotless, self-indulgent, and full of whiny characters who lived mostly in their minds.

That girl loved stories. If anyone had one to tell, she was there, ready to drink it. I was the same way when I was growing up. I loved where stories took me. How they made me feel. How they made everyone around me feel. Stories contain our existence; they are like gods. And the fact that we create them from living, experiencing, listening, thinking, feeling, giving—they remind me of what’s great about being alive.

But my focus was only on them. The dolphins. They darted around me in quick circles, bubbles rippling behind their tail fins. Underwater, I could hear them chirping and whistling to one another. I like to imagine that they were surprised, too. Delighted, even. “What is this human doing?” “Can he swim?” “Let’s bite him!” One of them did bite me, not hard, just a curious nip at my ankle. I went up for a breath and then dipped back under the water just as one was passing by me. I looked it right in the eye, and it was the eeriest moment. The sun was almost gone, but some orange rays were still shining into the water, and one of those rays caught the dolphin’s eye at just the right moment. I’ll never forget those eyes. They were large and black, with subtle wrinkles around them. Eyes full of wisdom and cunning. The moment was brief, but it was all I needed to understand that I was in that water with People.

The rusted robots in the story were a metaphor for wisdom, patina, acceptance, embracing that which was you, scars, pain, malfunctions, needed replacements, mistakes. What you were given. The finite. Rusted robots did not die in the way that humans did, but they celebrated mortality.

“You can stay angry. You can stay scared. But it doesn’t fix things. It doesn’t change the situation. My legs may not work, but the rest of my body does. My brain still works. So . . . so, onward.” She’d meant to be straightforward, no-nonsense about it. But tears started to tumble from her eyes as she spoke. She’d come to this realization a few days ago, after a sleepless night lying in bed, facing her reflection in the dark window. Then the sun had risen, and her reflection had disappeared as the city beyond came into focus. It felt like standing in fire and realizing that though it burned, it wouldn’t swallow her. This was who she was now.

“But something you said really struck me. You said you loved swimming in the ocean because it was a reminder that you were part of so much more. And that vastness didn’t make you feel insignificant. It made you feel specific and powerful and . . . you.” She’d been pretending to inspect the menu, but now she looked up. She didn’t remember saying something that deeply personal in an interview, but she must have, because it was true. I need to be more careful with the fucking journalists, she thought. The best ones could somehow get her speaking too much from her heart. “Yeah,” she said, feigning indifference. “You don’t fight the ocean. You have to trust it to carry you. And once you do, you can be anything.”

Msizi moved closer to Zelu, pressing the warmth of his body against her side. Her shoulders hunched as she sobbed. “I don’t want it to be over.” She coughed, the shudder of it shaking the snow from her coat. “What am I without my father?” For the past two weeks, Zelu had avoided thinking about this moment as much as she could. Chinyere and Arinze had taken the helm arranging things. “Just show up” was all Chinyere had told her to do. Now Zelu wasn’t even sure she could do that. “You are of him,” Msizi whispered softly into her hair. “You literally can’t be without him.” Another sob racked her body, and Msizi held her tighter. “We are mortal beings. We die. But we live first. And your father left a great legacy.”

A man wearing a white kaftan, a colorful blue-and-white wrapper, and a red-and-white Igbo cap entered carrying a talking drum, playing an aggressive beat that was so loud it hurt Zelu’s ears. He was followed by a flute player wearing the same outfit. Then a man carrying a metal staff with a cowbell attached to the top, who stabbed the staff at the floor, clanging the bell with every other step. The music was haunting, and Zelu felt it stir her spirit. “Make way!” someone shouted from the lobby. “It has come to pay its respects to Chief Secret Wednesday Onyenezi! To see him off to the world of the spirits! Get out of the way!” It was so tall that it nearly touched the high ceiling. It was wide as a carwash brush and looked like one, being made of stacked raffia and draped with an ornate red cloth. It danced into the viewing room, bouncing and swaying to the beat of the drums and the sound of the flute. Zelu grinned, tears in her eyes. A procession of men dressed in the same outfit as the first three followed. They were solemn and focused only on the masquerade making its way to the casket. When it reached the front, the nine-foot-tall masquerade suddenly slapped its entire body flat on the floor as if prostrating. The drumming, fluting, and bell clanging stopped. All the men stepped back, leaving the open space empty except for the masquerade. One of the men shouted again and the drummer began drumming a slow, deep beat. Several of the men shouted, as if to egg on the masqu...

“What better time to listen to a story than when the world is about to end?”

The end of the world is a good place for stories to reside.”

I’ve acquired a unique skill; dare I call it an art? I’ve proven to myself something that humanity could never bring itself to believe. Writing my novel taught this to me, as well: creation flows both ways.