The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor, is a young adult, first-person novel that takes place in the year 2070. The Shadow Speaker was a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/2008, a Tiptree Honor Book, a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, the Andre Norton Award and the Golden Duck Award and an NAACP Image Award nominee.

Plot

Ejimafor "Ejii" Ugabe is a fourteen year-old Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 half Wodaabe

Wodaabe

The Wodaabe or Bororo are a small subgroup of the Fulani ethnic group. They are traditionally nomadic cattle-herders and traders in the Sahel, with migrations stretching from southern Niger, through northern Nigeria, northeastern Cameroon, and the western region of the Central African Republic....

  half Igbo

Igbo people

Igbo people, also referred to as the Ibo, Ebo, Eboans or Heebo are an ethnic group living chiefly in southeastern Nigeria. They speak Igbo, which includes various Igboid languages and dialects; today, a majority of them speak English alongside Igbo as a result of British colonialism...

 girl. She lives in the Nigerian village of Kwàmfa. Her father was once the hated dictator

Dictator

A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...

-like chief. She lives in the year 2070. The whole world is falling apart after a nuclear fall out

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

 in , quote, “the early twenty-first century”.

Characters

• Ejimafor Ugabe - The 14 year-old daughter of the former Kwamfa Chief and One of the trusted advisers of the Sarauniya Jaa, the Red Queen.
• Sarauniya Jaa - The Red Queen. She is not an actual queen, but is treated like one. She witnessed the Great Changed while under the captivity of a tribe who claimed her to be their queen. She was fourteen at the time. When she speaks a red flower always accompanies her words.
• Chief Ugabe - A hypocritical chief. He is said that he is of the fierce Woddabe tribe. When Jaa came to Kwamfa, the chief came along as an apprentice. He came back 1 month later. He seated himself chief in, quote, “...the name of our nurturing queen, Sarauniya Jaa!”. He apparently used that as an excuse to carry out his evil deeds. One day, Jaa came to Kwamfa and confronted the man and accused him of using her name in vain and doing things that she would never agree to do. After, she sliced his head off and it rolled into a meat-eating plant which ate it. All in front of his oldest child, Ejii, and oldest Son, Fadio (Ejii's Half-Brother). He was eventually buried without his head.
• Gambo - He is a Co-Husband of Jaa. He used to be an Aejej. He was turned into one when he was a child. Jaa was being attacked by him and she started talking to him. A Red flower fell as he calmed down and he turned back into a human. He would still be an Aejej in our time because according to the novel, he was an aejej a short while before the 21st century. That would mean that the Aejej is not a product of the Great Change.
• Buji - From the Northern portion of the Ooni Kingdom on Ginen. He is Jaa's first husband. They met while watching the "burning bushes" (Carnivorous bushes that feed on bugs that are a cross between wasps and fireflies which gives them a yellow, orange glow). Buji's Family expects to be a traditional wife. Showing respect to her husband, etc. But Jaa Marrying Buji, and Buji marrying Jaa are different. In this case, Jaa married Buji.
• Mrs. Ugabe - She is the chief's first wife and the divorced adviser to Jaa following the chief's execution.
• Dikeogu- A 14 year old former slave who ran away from his camp. He is a Rain-maker, and because of the anti-powers mentality his parents forced him into slavery.

Notable Places

• Kwàmfa - The village which Ejii, the chief's family, and Mrs. Ugabe all live.
• Agadez - A real city, but notable events take place there.
• Ginen - Another world, not dominated by humans, but by plants. Religion seems to be of little interest. A Mass majority of humans live in the Ooni Kingdom. The most of human life outside the kingdom is in a village here and there.
• The Burning Bushes - One of the few odd things in the book that have a scientific reason. Every 25 years wasps that light up migrate to the fields and get eaten by these Carnivorous plants who get their glow.

Notable events

• The Great Change - A black supremacist and extremist in Haiti
  Haiti
  Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
  
   creates a bomb with magic and nuclear power gathered from an African country. He calls it the Peace Bomb because the radioactivity will mutate everyone to look the same and have the same skin and therefore there would be no diversity and that also means no racism. He wants to use it, but it can easily be traced back to him through investigations. He uses trickery and makes the leaders of the world turn on each other, causing a total nuclear World War. He drops the Peace Bomb, but at the same time several other nuclear bombs have been dropped. The whole world starts to turn inside out. Forests pop out of nowhere, and then succeed. Children are born with magical powers, borders are smudged to the point that you walk out of your house in Texas and cross the street into Nigeria. Worlds are colliding.

Religion

The author uses many references to religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

. She uses the Many Minor Signs of the Apocalypse

Apocalypse

An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...

said in the Quran, such as guns not being available, a green haze that smells like flowers, among others.