Explain how Onyesonwu uses this maxim to help her understand her own identity, and contrast it with how Valerie Rye eventually finds and asserts her identity in “Speech Sounds.”

1. “Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel. This marvel must be treated very impressively and deliberately—with a careful emotional “build-up”—else it will seem flat and unconvincing. Being the principal thing in the story, its mere existence should overshadow the characters and events. But the characters and events must be consistent and natural except where they touch the single marvel.”
—-“Notes on Writing Weird Fiction”, H.P. Lovecraft
After first explaining what Lovecraft means by this, explore the juxtaposition of realism and the supernatural to simultaneously create weird horror and social commentary by contrasting “Covehithe” and The Ballad of Black Tom.
2. Contrast how indifference by “the Other” in The Ballad of Black Tom creates a discomfort different from the lack of an Other present in “Nine Lives.”
SECTION B (CHOOSE ONE)
1. “If you don’t recognize yourself, then who is the one who reminds you of who you are?” (Who Fears Death, Chapter 31, 211). Explain how Onyesonwu uses this maxim to help her understand her own identity, and contrast it with how Valerie Rye eventually finds and asserts her identity in “Speech Sounds.”
2. Contrast how the Afro-futurist influences on Who Fears Death create a specific future dystopia different from the Weird miasma of “The Night School.”

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