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. [loc. 989]
Nigerian-American Zelu, at the start of the novel, is thirty two years old, paraplegic after falling out of a tree twenty years ago, a creative writing tutor, a novelist, and single At her sister's destination wedding, the last three of these change: she loses her job, her latest litfic novel is rejected, and she hooks up with Msizi. And, sitting on the beach in tears, smoking weed, she decides to write a novel about 'a world that she’d like to play in when things got to be too much, but which didn’t exist yet'. This novel -- extracts from which are intercut with the Zelu-focussed narrative -- is called Rusted Robots: it's a story of AIs ('NoBodies') and humanoid robots ('Humes') in Nigeria after the extinction of humanity, and it is wildly successful.
Not that her family believe her when she tells them she's scored a million-dollar book deal. Instead, they accuse her of being high (accurate, but not the point). Though they've protected and supported her since her accident, they also harbour very traditional Nigerian attitudes to disability: 'more interested in who was to blame than they were in how she lived her life.' They infantilise her, patronise her, try to prevent her from making choices about her own body. It's hardly surprising that Zelu is angry with everyone -- family, fans, random strangers -- though her anger does sometimes make her difficult to like.
This is a novel about family and culture, storytelling and identity, technology and how we use it. There's plenty about the publishing industry and the film industry: Zelu is horrified by and furious at the movie's Americanisation (Ankara and Ijele, her protagonists, become Yankee and Dot) and thoroughly fed up of all the fans clamouring for the sequel. There's also a strong theme of how humans use technology, and whether a 'mechanism' can truly create. And it's a novel about disability and how it shapes self-image, as well as how others behave. Having read Okorafor's account of her own disability (Broken Places and Outer Spaces) it was interesting to see how she fictionalised aspects of her experience.
Death of the Author is suffused with Nigerian, and Nigamerican, culture (including the nightmarish masquerades). Okorafor doesn't rose-tint Zelu's visit to Nigeria, which is quite a different sort of nightmare. It's clear that Zelu's success gives her a lot of options that others, especially of her background, don't have: and she is refreshingly selfish about her ability to make her own choices.
A slow novel, and one which, rather than having a dramatic denouement, simply ... ends. I really liked the different character voices -- there are excerpts from interviews with Zelu's family members, as well as from Rusted Robots -- though I wasn't wholly convinced that Zelu's novel would be that successful. (But who understands popular taste, eh?) I'm looking forward to discussing this for book club: there's a lot to think about here.
I have come to understand that author, art, and audience all adore one another. They create a tissue, a web, a network. No death is required for this form of life. [loc. 6522]
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