What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Oyeyemi is a Nigerian-born British author who currently lives in Prague in the Czech Republic. She was 32 at the time of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours’s publication and had already released several works that could be placed within the magical realism subgenre; in 2013, her work earned her recognition as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Oyeyemi’s fascination with mythology and fairy tales informs the worlds that she creates in her work, surfacing in fantastical details like the living puppets in “Is Your Blood as Red as This?”

Oyeyemi’s experience as an African immigrant growing up in Europe also informs her stories. Her characters come from diverse backgrounds, and their names, traditions, and beliefs are culturally specific. Usage of these cultural markers is important, but so is the way that Oyeyemi silently incorporates them into the stories, making them just as matter-of-fact as anything else in their world: No character explains their ethnicity or culture to the reader because Oyeyemi understands that real people should not have to explain these things.

In What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Oyeyemi offers a glimpse into the diversity of 2010s Europe. The European settings of her stories reflect both the world that she is used to seeing around her and the cultures and identities of the people whom she has likely encountered in her daily life.