What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Identity is how people define and present themselves, often based on such identifiers as family, race, culture, religious background, gender, and sexual orientation. The characters in Oyeyemi’s stories vary widely with respect to these categories, framing Interculturalism as the Natural State of the World. However, identity as a motif primarily emerges as they search for truths about themselves, their pasts, their families, and often their own abilities.

“Is Your Blood as Red as This?” examines identity in a more abstract way through the living puppets Rowan and Gepetta. Gepetta symbolizes a loss of identity. As she is transformed from a human being into a puppet she literally loses her voice and autonomy. Her voicelessness is only resolved when she is given a voice by Radha, the only person who is willing to hear her. The story illustrates the interconnectedness of voice and identity; without the ability to express herself to others, Gepetta is no longer herself. This suggests the importance of art, which gives voice to the voiceless.

Rowan’s story shows the flip side of the social aspect of identity, as everyone Rowan meets projects an image onto them: Rowan can be any gender, depending on which gender or genders the beholder is attracted to. Rowan sits at the intersection of male and female, but also of human and puppet, living and inanimate. Oyeyemi uses these fluctuating identities to comment on how the society in which a person lives bestows or withholds identity. 

While each of the nine stories in this book is unique, Oyeyemi uses a cast of overlapping characters to create an interconnected story world. As a motif, the concept of connection between family, friends, and romantic partners appears throughout the text, though its meaning constantly shifts.

Connection lies in how the characters touch each other’s lives. Some characters, like Montserrat and Lucy, form a connection in their individual story, representing a turning point for one another. Others, like Tyche, appear in multiple stories and touch many lives in different ways. The world that Oyeyemi has created through such connections is an example of verisimilitude. Much like in the real world, people move between different “narratives” easily, touching various people’s lives to different degrees.

Romantic and familial connections are especially central to the collection. Montserrat’s search for her birth mother and Lucy’s search for Safiye lead them to find each other. “Presence” is about the bond that individuals have with their loved ones, which Jacob is searching for a way to maintain even in death. Both “Drownings” and “Homely Wench Society” explore connections between “found family,” or people who choose to have close bonds outside of the family in which they were raised. More than just plot devices or Easter eggs, these connections within and between the stories suggest the theme of Love in Its Many Stages, as the connections between characters change form but also endure. 

Death, dying, and life after death appear as motifs in many of the stories in this collected work. Oyeyemi explores what happens to people after they die and how their deaths affect the people they knew. The stories answer the afterlife question in both practical terms, like inheritance, and in fantastical terms, such as transferring the soul to a new dwelling space. Oyeyemi challenges the reader to consider how humanity imagines and processes death.

In the practical sense, the stories explore what happens when a person dies through stories that follow surviving loved ones. Though Montserrat’s mother is never confirmed to be dead, Montserrat is raised as an orphan in an abbey. Later, she receives an inheritance from the wealthy family who loved her mother once. Arkady is forced to work multiple jobs to survive because his parents died when he was young. Chedorlaomer grows up without a father and is treated poorly because of it.

The book also presents different versions of an afterlife with death serving as a transition or even a figurative door. Radha’s ability to communicate with a ghost that haunts her bedroom suggests the reality of life after the death of the body in story’s world. Similarly, Eirini the Fair sees her mother among the drowned in the water, where they are said to have built their own communities. “Presence” likewise seems to present a virtual afterlife, while “Freddy Barrandov Checks…In?” has the setting of the Hotel Glissando, which has an uncanny valley quality that suggests it may be a type of purgatory.