Point of View

The point of view throughout the novel is in the first person, although with different narrators. Onyesonwu’s voice is dominant, as she narrates the entirety of the novel except for the epilogue and the final three chapters. Onyesonwu is an unreliable narrator, since her perspective is highly subjective and she is a child for the first half of the novel. She often laments the discrimination she faces as an ewu girl, and critiques the norms of the society around her. As she grows older, her perspective matures. She notices more of the world around her, such as the impact of her words on her mother and the root causes of the tension among her friends during their westward travels. However, as Onyesonwu is herself often confused by the causes of her own powers, her perspective does not offer insight into the workings of her...