Review of "Black Girl Unlimited"

Echo Brown’s debut novel, Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard may have been one of my favorite books of 2020, and I don’t give those titles out to just any book. 

Black Girl Unlimited is described as a magical realism memoir. If this sounds counterintuitive, I promise it works. Echo, the protagonist, is growing up on the East Side of Cleveland with her mother and two brothers. As she navigates through life, she frames her experiences with elements of magic. What I love about this book is that it fights, and succeeds, to stand out as a unique reading experience. 

Instead of chapters, the book is split into nineteen sections, or “Lessons” of wizard training that Echo learns throughout her life, including “Evading the Black Veil”, “Performing Miracles of Unity”, and “Forgiving Yourself”. 

Although this book tackles a lot of heavy topics, including rape, depression, poverty, and drug use, Brown still manages to hold onto the magic throughout the book. 

The character Echo refers to herself and her mother as wizards, thus the lessons of wizard training at the start of each section. Although this is the magical realism element of the memoir, as I read the book I felt as if Echo and her mother truly were wizards. This book isn’t just being silly, but the use of them as wizards feels purposeful and real because this is based on her real life. 

Brown states that these lessons (the chapter titles) were healing work that she has done through her life due to her trauma, so each of these lessons was inspired by, as Brown states, her therapeutic and spiritual work to heal herself. She continues, “I also think some of the lessons are rooted in bigger themes I have aspired to in my real life that readers also may find useful. For example, the last lesson, “you are unlimited, be fearless in your pursuits” is something I remind myself of over and over especially when fears and insecurities rise. My hope is that some of the lessons will be inspirational for readers, reminding them of their own potential and abilities” (We Need Diverse Books, 2020). By putting in these lessons she learned based on her real life, they feel relatable and attainable. 

Although dealing with magic, the book breaks down real life stereotypes. Beautifully said by Karen Valby in the New York Times, “Brown’s greatest gift is evoking intimacy, and as she delicately but firmly snatches the reader’s attention, we are allowed to see this girl of multitudes and her neighborhood of contradictions in full and specific detail. Stereotypes, like the bitter myth of the strong black woman, wither on the page” (Valby, 2020). 

Echo the character is balancing the worlds of stereotypes, school, her home life, and her magic, while also dealing with a “black veil”. 

There is a reoccurring image of “black veils” that Echo sees over all people. She first sees a disembodied veil: 

“At first, I assume it’s a bird, but it doesn’t move like a bird…I see it, the black veil, right outside, hovering in the dark of night. I see clearly now that it is an ominous creature with no face, shaped like a rectangular piece of fabric, that ruffles and moves like a flag in the wind.” (Brown, 77)

Her mother reveals she also has seen the veil in times of intense trauma: “Black and scary-like, hoverin’ right ova me. I started screamin’ at da top of my lungs ‘cause I didn’t know what it was…I would see it e’ry night, until finally, I sank so far down, at da bottom of myself, it finally swooped on down and covered me, my whole head. I felt like I was suffocatin’. I couldn’t breathe.” (Brown, 80)

Author Echo Brown Brown highlights an interesting metaphor of generational trauma. Like the trauma Echo’s mother passes to her, her mother also passes what I would describe as an ability to see the veil, but Echo’s mother emphasizes that the black veil must be evaded. 

Brown worked with tweaking this metaphor throughout the writing process: 

“It felt like the black veil needed to descend somehow and submerge the victim, so it eventually changed the black veil that wraps itself around its victims. This was another instance where it wasn’t enough to just describe depression as it is, which is so challenging in real life. I needed a magical concept to really describe its impact and effect in a way that straightforward reality would miss, which is how the concept of the black veil came about.” (We Need Diverse Books, 2020) 

Ultimately, Brown landed on a way to convey her trauma to the reader in such a concrete and innovative way, and in my opinion, an incredibly effective way as well. 

Only wizards, like Echo and her mother, can see this veil, but they must fight to keep the veil off: 

“Only way you can keep it off is to stay lifted. Got to stay spirited and in da light….Only way I can get mine off now is drankin’ and druggin’, othawise it’s always on me. I done learned how ta live in it mostly, but sometimes, I just cain’t control it, the darkness inside of me.” (Brown, 83) 

This section truly spoke to me. The depression is so powerful it has become a physical object that practically suffocates Echo, and appears to have pushed her mother into a deep addiction, something her mother struggles with throughout the novel. It is so real it turns into a physical black veil, almost described as a menacing creature or spirit, that must be evaded. Brown takes this portion of her life, potential trauma, and creates this metaphor of an object that can finally be understood or have logic applied to when these emotions can feel anything but logical. 

I think this is part of the importance of the magical realism in Brown’s novel. She has these events in life that she could not control and turns them into physical objects that as the author she can control. This book isn’t just Echo overcoming trauma, it’s the author rewriting her own trauma experience, as this is a memoir. Although I do not know to what exact extent the trauma in the novel is based on her own life, in this case the character Echo explores the idea of trauma to show how suffocating it can feel, while also how it is possible to overcome. 

Magical realism is a tool for Brown to portray trauma, and she uses that tool like an expert. In a way, the trauma as a physical object makes it feel possible to overcome. Trauma can feel incredibly abstract and therefore almost intangible to understand or simply deal with. By making her trauma a physical thing, it both shows the reader the overwhelming aspect of trauma, while also showing that it is possible to manage, in this case through “magic”, or her writing. Ultimately, a step of overcoming this appears to be through writing her own memoir. She wields the genre like a wizard controlling magic. 

I also notice Brown challenges the very nature of how books are written. She does this fascinating technique where she ends midsentence, then starts a new paragraph finishing the sentence but with a completely new idea. This sounds complicated but she still makes a full sentence.

Brown is not only turning what we think of memoirs on its head, but she even challenges the structure of how a book is written, as seen above. The character is not the only magic, this book itself is a magical experience made of careful artistry. 

An important aspect of the novel is she is challenging what a memoir is. We as the readers are not privy to knowing what truly did or did not happen because of the fantastical elements, so Brown is now in control of not just her narrative, but she can finally control her trauma at least to some degree. Brown takes her story and is finally able to control it. We are being guided through her story by her. Brown is there to control what is or is not seen of her in her story, something that through her experience she was initially powerless to. 

Although this is her first book, Brown has already made a name for herself in the book community. Brown shows care and expertise in her writing, creating a novel full of love and magic. I cannot wait for her sophomore novel, The Chosen One, set to publish in 2022. 

-SS 

Brown, Echo. Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard. Holt/Ottaviano, 2020.

“Q&A With Echo Brown: BLACK GIRL UNLIMITED.” We Need Diverse Books, 17 Jan. 2020,                diversebooks.org/qa-with-echo-brown-black-girl-unlimited/. 

Valby, Karen. “In Hollywood, Stories About People of Color Are Still Rare. These Y.A. Fantasy                Novels Pick Up the Slack.” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 2020,                                                                  www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/books/review/dark-and-deepest-red-anna-mari-mclemore-black-            girl-unlimited-echo-brown.html. 

Author and cover photo from goodreads.com

Clap When You Land Book Review

Fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, including myself, had been anxiously awaiting her junior novel, and second novel in verse, Clap When You Land. Following the May 2020 release, Clap When You Land received high praise including winning the yearly Goodreads 2020 Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction, and the 2020 Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award for Fiction and Poetry.

As a huge fan of Acevedo’s first two novels, The Poet X and With the Fire on High, I had incredibly high hopes, and somehow, Acevedo went beyond my highest expectations for her most recent novel.

Clap When You Land follows half-sisters, Camino Rios in the Dominican Republic, and Yahaira (Yaya) Rios in New York, connecting over the recent death of their father, who died in the American Airlines flight 587 crash.

AA587 is not of Acevedo’s invention; it was a flight going from New York to the Dominican Republic in 2001. The accidental crash, taking place only two months and one day after the September 11 attacks appears to have been somewhat ignored or overlooked by the media, but nonetheless brought devastation to the New York-Dominican community. It is the third deadliest aviation accident in US history following the 9/11 attacks (Aviation Safety). There were 260 fatalities and zero survivors in this awful New York City crash, and yet, I had never heard of it before. 68 of the passengers killed were from the Dominican Republic. About 90% of the passengers were of Dominican descent (The Guardian).

Acevedo herself was greatly affected by the flight. “I was 13 years old when that plane crashed. It rocked my community. I mean, everyone knew someone who was on that flight.” (NPR)

Providing this information is not just to give historical background, but to emphasize the real pain associated with the topic of this novel, and the pain Acevedo is working to convey. Although Camino and Yahaira are not real people, I know there is a Camino or a Yahaira or another child who lost a loved one in this crash, and can probably relate to one or both of these characters.

I have to hope that people impacted by this crash find some sort of healing in this book, but I also hope that readers like me who were not impacted by it can find solace in the universality of grief, while also empathizing for those like the sisters even if the reader may not have experienced something similar. I think reading about experiences we may not be able to fully relate to is an important exercise in listening to the situations of others with kindness and openness. No one will ever have the exact same emotions or experiences, but through reading we can learn about the emotions and experiences of others to not only broaden our mind but hopefully practice an ability to listen to and accept others of differing experiences.

I didn’t originally know this was based on a true event. Having Acevedo contextualize it by showing this was a real plane crash with real people brought out more empathy from me than I would have thought. I empathize even with fictional situations, but knowing this book stemmed from real pain and trauma serves as a reminder that this pain happens both in fiction and in real life.

By the way, when I say these sisters are connecting over this death, I mean they had no idea the other sister existed for sixteen years. Both never knew their beloved father had a secret family in a different country 1,534 miles away.

I was worried going into this book there would be some sort of lasting taboo of having a half-sister or of not sharing a parent. I am by definition a half-sister, although I never think in that term. I have learned through growing up, and what is presented by Acevedo as well is, the importance of who loved you and raised you, or who comes to love and accept you, not necessarily who created you. Family isn't always the same parents or the same genes, it's love, and these sisters love one another. Although there was shock between the two characters, they grew and adapted to a new and possibly scary situation. Legally, Camino and Yahaira are half-sisters. But just like my sister and I, they are not half-family, they are family.

Elizabeth Acevedo

Full of grief and love, Acevedo does not caution from showing the pain that the two families are feeling, and yet, these true emotions being evoked, even including pain, seem to create comfort. By showing these two families, it is emphasized that everyone may have different experiences, but grief is universal, although it may feel isolating at times.  

In a book dealing with such heavy topics, I was impressed by is the careful balance of detail and space to imagine when reading the poems. There are no titles for the poems, but I was drawn to the detail on a specific poem from Camino’s perspective.

“I keep rocking next to her. Sometimes words

need time to form; the minutes like slabs

building a ramp out the mouth.” (Acevedo, 192)

I continued to mentally repeat the phrase “minutes like slabs/building a ramp out the mouth”, a line beautifully bringing the physical (ramps) with the more abstract idea of forming words or time passing, to create an image of a ramp being built. For me, I was drawn to the imagery created in such a short phrase, and the impact of these words.  

For those who have read Acevedo’s first novel, The Poet X¸ the prose-like sparsity of the poems is a style readers have seen before. However, the sparsity is not at all a downside to Acevedo’s work, because it brings emphasis to what is being said. Acevedo evokes so much emotion with every word, with space on the page almost like Acevedo, or the reader, taking a breath between these difficult topics.

I also found the lack of titles interesting. Although I do not believe titles make a full work less cohesive, but the lack of titles made it feel like one 400+ page poem to me. Although reminding me of a very long poem, I did not at all feel a drag of 400 pages. Instead, I sped through it and could not put the book down. By only indicating the speaker (Camino, Yahaira, or both) of the poem, I felt as if I were being sat down and told a story by Camino and Yahaira about their journey together. No titles to separate the poems remind me of someone telling their life story, which does not often have a title.

Throughout the novel, the sisters learn that their late father was far more flawed than the two had thought. Acevedo shows girls growing up from idolizing their father to being upset and confused by his choices to forgiving and still loving him. I think the arc the sisters have of learning not to idolize their father, while continuing to love and mourn him, is an incredibly realistic yet complex view of growing older and losing a loved one. The balance and struggle of accepting faults while mourning someone is something I can relate to, and I appreciated seeing this represented. These characters acknowledge the faults of their father while learning to accept their own grief among other mixed emotions, and I think this is incredibly important.

With aching emotions Acevedo creates a beautiful portrait of grief and love. I was yet again impressed by her and I continue to look forward to her future writing.

-SS

Works cited: “ASN Aircraft Accident Airbus A30.” Aviation Safety Network, Flight Safety Foundation, 20 Apr. 2014, web.archive.org/web/20140420004450/aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20011112-0.

Acevedo, Elizabeth. Clap When You Land. Quill Tree Books, 2020.

Garcia-Navarro, Lulu. “Tragedy Reveals 2 Secret Families In 'Clap When You Land'.” NPR, 10 May 2020.

Review of “We Are Water Protectors” by Carole Lindstrom

“We Are Water Protectors” written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade is a new picture book you need to look out for.

“We Are Water Protectors” is a book full of vibrant, eye catching images and powerful prose to match.

The author, Carole Lindstrom writes the books from passion and experience. She identifies as Anishinaabe (also known as Nishnaabe or Anishinabe)/Metis and is tribally enrolled with the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe (Carolelindstrom.com). Lindstrom also published the children’s book “Girls Dance, Boys Fiddle” in 2013.

This book has not gone unnoticed by book bloggers. A popular blog, Book Riot, lists the book under “Ten Picture Books for the Budding Environmentalists”, and Lindstrom’s book is also featured on CBC, The New York Times, and Publisher’s Weekly.

The phrase “We are water protectors” may sound familiar. “We are water protectors” says Don Sampson to tribes opposed to the movement protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Sampson is both the head of the climate change program from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI), and a traditional chief of the Walla Walla Tribe of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (Seattle Times). Sampson and his family fought with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe during the Standing Rock protest against the pipeline.

                                    

Photo from Dakota Access Pipeline protests in October of 2016

However, Lynda V. Mapes’ article continues “The fight isn’t only about one pipeline, but the larger battle for clean energy in a world in grave jeopardy because of emissions from fossil fuels that are heating the planet.” Sampson concludes “How can anyone look into the eyes of grandchildren and say, we did nothing.” Although popularized protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline have passed, the fight to protect water and the legacy of the protests continue.

Lindstrom takes this popular quote, “we are water protectors”, to invite readers into an important project and movement taking place in the United States. 

It is important to also remember these pipes is a twofold threat of the environment and the culture of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s homeland. “An oil spill would permanently contaminate the reservation’s water supply and that construction of the pipeline would destroy sacred sites where many of their ancestors are buried” (Medina, 2016).

Given the background of the book, Lindstrom has a big shoe to fill, and she truly succeeds with her touching and beautiful work.

“We Are Water Protectors” is narrated by a young, unnamed girl. At the beginning of the book, she is told “Water is the first medicine” by Nokemis, who appears to be a grandmother or an older maternal figure.

Right off the bat Lindstrom emphasizes the importance of water, while Goade highlights its beauty and power through the illustration. Lindstrom continues, “We come from water. It nourished us inside our mother’s body. As it nourishes us here on Mother Earth. Water is sacred.” These short sentences remind me of water washing on and off of the beach, ebbing and flowing through the book.

She continues, “The river’s rhythm runs through my veins. Runs through my people’s veins.” Again, the importance of water is established. The protagonist states the river runs through her people’s veins, connecting them altogether in a water system as unique and complex as the individuals within her community. In the illustration her dark hair flows across the page into a blue-green body of water, complete with fish, bright coral lily flowers, and lily pads.

This photo not only emphasizes how the river “runs through [her] veins”, but the river is part of her identity and her people’s identity. She finds love and joy in the water, but also a need to protect what is being taken from them.

The narrator continues, “my people talk of a black snake that will destroy the land. Spoil the water. Poison plants and animals. Wreck everything in its path…Its venom burns the land, courses through the water, making it unfit to drink.”

Here the water and land are threatened, as is perhaps the characters’ identity as water protectors. As opposed to the previously calming blues and greens, the snake is on this bright orange background, almost reminiscent of the sky during fires that California has come to know. This orange cloud seems to suffocate or suppress the flowers on the bottom left which bend over the pipe, as if weeping its petals away. The portrayal of the pipe as a snake emphasizes the real danger that these pipes being built have on the plants and animals, as well as the people. The snakes [or pipes] not only poison the living, but the water itself is unfit to drink. Water, a necessity for organisms to live, is being taken by this snake pipe.

However, the protagonist does not lose hope. She says “TAKE COURAGE! I must keep the black snake away from my village’s water. I must rally my people together.”

The protagonist calls the reader to action in her our actions. She is saying take courage to herself, her village, and everyone reading this. In the face of black snakes and threatened land, she tells herself to have courage in order to save her village.

“We Are Water Protectors” is a powerful, resonating, and timely book that I think readers of all ages should pick up.

-SS

References:

Carole Lindstrom - author of children's literature. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.carolelindstrom.com/

Mapes, L. V. (2020, August 6). What’s next for the Dakota Access Pipeline? Recent court rulings cast doubt on future. The Seattle Times. Retrieved from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/whats-next-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline-recent-court-rulings-cast-doubt-on-future/

Medina, D. A. (2016, November 4). Dakota Access Pipeline: What's Behind the Protests? NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/dakota-access-pipeline-what-s-behind-protests-n676801

My Love Letter to Magical Realism

 Still from Pan’s Labyrinth

I love magical realism.

I think I read my first magical realism book in middle school. I got “Green Angel” by Alice Hoffman from my sister’s bookshelf and ended up crying because of how much it lingered with me. My heart ached not only for the characters, but the beauty created in their sorrows. I didn’t know what magical realism was, but I couldn’t get the writing out of my head.  

If I were in a magical realism book, it would be obvious that my life was all falling together for me to become a total MR nerd. Without knowing, I was drawn to the genre in so many forms of media. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is one of my favorite movies, partially because I can’t explain it. I don’t understand the world completely, so I keep learning more about the bizarre world director Guillermo del Toro created. I love not completely knowing, because then I continue to want more. Rule #1 of writing: don’t give the reader everything.

After discovering this “weird in-between fantasy and real” was a common theme, I started researching the actual term.

I had two questions:

“What’s magical realism?” 

And

“Where can I get more?”

Art by Tomek Setowski

I read what I believe was my second magical realism book, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton, after I graduated high school, and discovered the term “magical realism” for the first time. I found so much vulnerability in the poetic language, as if I were being shown the deepest secrets of the author’s mind through their words. I felt intimate with the world they found in this genre. I was one of the only people in my course who liked Bless Me Ultima (my third known encounter with MR); the majority of the class argued that it was “too weird” and “didn’t make sense”, while I argued this suspension of reality is what we search for in literature.

My next encounter with magical realism was in graduate my class Theorizing Queer Adolescent Literature when we read “When the Moon Was Ours” by Anna-Marie McLemore, a book about a young girl with roses growing out of her wrists, and (spoilers!) a young trans boy who eventually is transformed into the body he always desired, and all I wanted was for that to be true. I wanted to see this beauty in real life. My heart strings were tugged, and my mind begged for more. At this point, I knew I loved magical realism. I love the suspension of reality, the focus on the beauty of language. Most of all though, I loved the magic.  

At this point, I started researching more books in the genre.

Falling into Gabriel García Márquez showed me an inkling of why I love it. First, before knowing about the background, I was just immediately drawn to the beautiful language.

Although I fell in love first and foremost with the actual language and books of magical realism, there was more that drew me to it. I loved learning of the connection between magical realism and Spain. I am Spanish, but not super connected to my culture; my Spanish grandmother lives across the country, I refused to learn Spanish until tenth grade, and let’s be honest: I don’t “look Spanish” according to people, (or stereotypically Spanish, which is another issue on its own) and my love of magical realism has been questioned because of that. This made me think more about why I love it.

Hearing inklings of my family’s journey moving to America from Spain captivated me, and I saw this genre as a tiny way to be more connected to my culture across the ocean. I felt transported.

I read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by the king of magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez. While I was carrying the book around, my mom told me it was her favorite book, and reading it made me feel a little bit closer to her as well. Everything was just falling together. Finally, I started researching the actual genre of magical realism, also known as magic realism, marvelous realism, or fabulism.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, magical realism is a “chiefly Latin-American narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction”. Although Latin-American, its roots are in Germany, and the term “magic/magical realism” was first used by German photographer, art historian, and art critic Franz Roh in 1925 (Slemon, 9). Although it is most popular in literature, it can be found in any form of art: paintings, movies, et cetera.

As Maggie Ann Bowers beautifully puts it in “Magic(al) Realism”, the genre “magic realism” is “the concept of the ‘mystery [that] does not descend to the represented world, but rather hides and palpitates behind it” while “magical realism” is “commingling of the improbable and the mundane” (Bowers, 74). I love this mystery that doesn’t need to be explained. I’m okay with it hiding and never truly being discovered.

There is some contestation whether the term “magic realism” should only apply to Latinx authors, but the issue in this requires each author to disclose their identity, which if they want to is great, but I really think that’s another issue in this: a policing of the genre, by all identities. This policing forces some authors to validate their writing and divulge potentially personal information, which for some is perfectly fine, but in general, I think that’s pretty weird to insist upon.

Why is their background your business?

For some authors, they don’t want their identity to be central to the reading of the novel, or simply they don't want it as a public fact in general, and that should be respected. Varying identities in authorship is amazing, and something I would love to see more of, but an author, like myself writing this blog, should not have to immediately preface their work with their identity. But I do.

Nonetheless, I still love the genre, and writing about it.

My journey in this genre has helped me discover more about my family, myself, and the world.

Magical realism for me has become an escape from the world. In times where I felt like life didn’t make sense, everything fell together in this genre, because things didn’t have to follow the logic of our world. When life didn’t make sense, when I stared at the hate in our world, I wanted just a glimpse of beauty. Beauty was found in times of hate and oppression in these books.

Magical realism is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I want to emphasize something: It is for everyone, no matter their background. I think everyone should at least try it, and I think those of any age or identity should at least experience it once. If you love it, read about it, research it, honor the background and roots of it. It is not only beautiful; it is necessary to be accessible to the world. The whole world. For some, it can be an escape, an exploration. A reader can escape this world and explore another one more fantastical, more beautiful, more magical. A world like in When the Moon Was Ours where flowers grow from wrists and a trans boy born in the body he doesn’t align with can have the body he always should have had with a drink of a potion. A world like that.

There’s something so beautiful about that. The possibility.

Magical realism is full of possibility.

For me, reading magical realism is a reparation of some of the darkness in life, by seeing that reparation happen in books. This can be seen in When the Moon Was Ours, when a trans boy can magically transform to have the body he always desired. Magical realism brings light to my world, and I think it can bring light to others. This escape that I found, this suspension of disbelief, became a way of coping, because for a little while during my reading, I could believe that anything was possible.

I was right.

Anything is possible. It doesn’t matter if that anything is in a book, because a book is real to me.

-SS

Sources:

“Magic Realism.” ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, https://www.britannica.com/art/magic-realism.

Slemon, Stephen. Magic realism as post-colonial discourse Archived 2018-04-25 at the Wayback Machine. In: Canadian Literature #116 (Spring 1988),pp. 9-24, p. 9 http://canlit.ca/canlitmedia/canlit.ca/pdfs/articles/canlit116-Magic(Slemon).pdf

My Defense of “Blood Heir” by Amélie Wen Zhao

Ever since the delayed release of Blood Heir I have been following the novel’s rocky road to publication.

After reading, re-reading, and researching, I’m here to defend the book.

For those who haven’t heard, Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao was called “this year’s most controversial YA novel” by Slate Magazine.

Fellow author LL McKinney of A Blade So Black blasted Zhao’s book on Twitter calling it “anti-black”. The original blurb for Blood Heir read: “In a world where the princess is the monster, oppression is blind to skin color, and good and evil exist in shades of gray…” In a string of tweets from January 2019, Author LL McKinney states (after reading half of an advanced copy) “I don’t give a good god damn that this is an author of color. Internalized racism and anti-blackness is a thing and I…no” (Twitter, 2019). I have to admit, this is probably not the best pitch for a novel and I can see why McKinney was upset, but I was disappointed to see an author of color being torn down before her book was even published.

People responded to McKinney’s tweet saying they were immediately cancelling pre-orders of Zhao’s book.

McKinney was not the only person upset by Zhao’s novel. According to The New Yorker, “critics felt that Zhao’s slavery narrative had erased a specifically African-American experience, and they objected to a scene in which an apparently black slave girl dies in an apparently white character’s arms, in an act of self-sacrifice. Zhao, who emigrated from China when she was eighteen, said that her book drew on ‘the epidemic of indentured labor and human trafficking prevalent in many industries across Asia, including in my own home country’” (Waltman, 2019). For the “black slave girl” I believe refers to May, who is never described other than a young girl with “turquoise eyes” in the final copy. I cannot confirm that May was black in the advanced copy reviewers read; in the final copy, May’s skin tone is never referenced.

Map of the imagined Cyrillian Empire in Zhao’s novel

From the point of sending drafts to beta readers, negative reviews flooded Goodreads before she even published the book. She sent drafts to beta readers from 2014-2017 to perfectly finetune her novel (Zhao, 452), so some of the following reviewers may be beta readers.

A Goodreads reviewer addresses one controversy of the novel: “Another generic fantasy that appropriates Russian culture by twisting the tragic history of Anastasia Romanova. NO THANKS.” The reviewer shelved this on a shelf called “Cultural-Appropriation”. I also want to point out there is no direct reference to Russia in Zhao’s book besides her saying [online] that she was inspired by the story of the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia, and I see no obvious relation to Russia, but people have argued the novel is Slavic-inspired. The map above, which can be found in the book, shows Zhao’s fantastical world does not appear to be one exact country.

Cultural appropriation is not a new criticism for young adult novels. By “another fantasy” the reviewer is referencing Leigh Bardugo’s popular young adult fantasy novels set in the make-believe Grishaverse, especially The Shadow and Bone trilogy, which has been accused of appropriating Russian culture. I am not well-versed enough in the culture to know whether Blood Heir nor Bardugo’s books have Slavic influence or not, but I have not seen anything from Zhao mentioning Slavic culture in any form on social media or directly mentioning the culture in the novel.

Another review simply states “horrible and racist” [published before the final copy’s publication].

Yet another: “the magic system in the book just felt like a rip off of the Grishaverse” [referencing Leigh Bardugo’s novels].

And finally: “I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole mess earlier in the year with the book. Yeah, that’s a personal one. I just couldn’t disconnect that, and all the vitriol from that, from the book itself. But like I said, personal. And, not having read the first version of it, I don’t know the changes that were made so. It’s a me thing.”

This last review resounded with me, because Zhao isn’t being given a second chance from everyone. She heard criticism from reviewers and changed aspects of her book, but nonetheless, Zhao has been somewhat ostracized in the YA literature community for doing something new and different.

Following the backlash, Zhao pushed back the publishing date and sent her book through many sensitivity readers and editors to address concerns.

According to Katy Waldman’s article, In Y.A., Where is the Line Between Criticism and Cancel Culture? published in The New Yorker, the intentions of the book are not as sinister as they may seem. “The book’s allegories seem mythic, not historical. They are about discovering one’s hidden potential, celebrating the liberation of the self. If anything, the damning readings of Blood Heir seem guilty of something that the Y.A. community mitigates against: the misapprehension of a cultural context unfamiliar to one’s own”.

Clearly, there was a lot of controversy before this book was even published, and that’s why I decided to pick it up. I barely touch the surface of the expansive novel and its controversies in this blog, but I wanted to address them.

Here is your spoiler warning.

The inspiration for the novel, the young

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia.

At the start of the book, Anastacya Mikhailov has been convicted of a crime she didn’t commit: killing her own father.

Zhao creates such an exciting plot and world in the very first page. From the very beginning, Zhao throws the reader into Princess Anastacya’s world. Anastacya is in prison, waiting to be sold off to a work contract or indenturement (Zhao, 12). Anastacya, disguising her identity by calling herself “Ana”, is in hiding from being accused of murdering her father, the Emperor Aleksander Mikhailov. It was rumored Princess Anastacya was executed or drowned while fleeing execution.

Blood Heir is inspired by the compelling true story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. The inspiration from the infamous story of Anastasia is seen in Anastacya’s story: A royal family was murdered, but rumors spread that the Grand Duchess Anastasia escaped the assassination.

From the very beginning, Blood Heir keeps the reader on the edge of the seat. After being convicted of murder and thrown in prison, Ana convinces a fellow inmate, Ramson Quicktongue, to break out of prison. Through hijinks and mayhem Ana and Ransom break out of prison to avoid being forced into “Employment Contracts”, essentially, being trafficked and forced to work.

After breaking out, fiercely independent Ana teams up with Ramson and fights to get her friend May back from the Playpen, a place Affinites are taken to perform, often against their will.

With exciting tension on every page, I had to know what happened next. With regards to the story itself and the character developments, I really loved the novel, except for the romance, but this is a common critique I have. Ramson is this bad-guy-gone-good from the Navy who is enlisted by Ana to help her find May, and of course, they fall for one another, when all I wanted was more Ana and May and less romance.  

There is an arguably forced storyline of Ana and Ramson both being damaged people fighting the urge to fall for one another, and in the end they do. That being said, I do have to appreciate Ana’s fierce determination throughout the novel never being smothered by Ramson. Through it all, Ana still is a fiercely independent woman determined to get her friend back, but I think the book would have been excellent without the love story.

While breaking out of prison, it is discovered that Ana is an “Affinite”, or a person with a special ability or connection to physical or metaphysical elements. In her case, Ana has a blood affinity, which is seen as deadly and a curse.

Back to the issue of slavery or indentured servitude, there are “employment contracts” with Affinites in the Cyrilian Empire. The employment contracts are what stirred up the controversy. Never does Zhao directly call it slavery in the book, but it has been compared to slavery by outside sources.

There is a very eerie scene for those who are familiar with the history of slavery in America. After being found without papers proving their “employment”, Ana’s friend May, another Affinite, is taken to be sold. At this trading/trafficking post, creepily called “the Playpen”, Affinites are put in glass domes and forced to perform while people bid on them.


However, some are not there against their will. “The Ice Queen”, a woman in pale blue with white hair is one of the few performers not forced to perform at the Playpen:


            “She looks like she’s enjoying it,” Ana whispered.
            “She’s a regular…She works with the brokers.” [Ransom said]
            “Under contract?”
            “Right, but…She’s not contracted against her will.” [Ransom said]

In this passage, The Ice Queen serves as this false image that those in the Cyrillian Empire are all performing of their own free will, but The Ice Queen is being paid, and from what we know of, she is not forced to dance or entertain. After learning May is scheduled to perform soon, Ana goes back to the Playpen.

This is probably one of the eeriest parts of the story, as we watch young May trapped in a glass stage being forced to show her Earth Affinity. She is advertised as the “Child of Earth” (Zhao, 223). People in the audience delightfully request for May to grow a fruit tree, juggle rocks, and make a statue from the earth, almost as if she were a circus animal. I honestly can see this being likened to a historical slave auction, and it’s truly a scary thing to read; people are ready to bet on a child, a child originally described as black. 

May breaks her glass cage when rebels storm the Playpen, and in the same scene a knife is thrown into her stomach, and May dies in Ana’s arms, as May begs Ana to carry on the Revolution of the Affinites (Zhao, 241). This is, most likely, the scene McKinney is referencing in her tweet. Although May is no longer described as black, it is interesting, and maybe problematic, to think of how May was originally written black. I don’t know how I would respond to this scene with the original details, but for those trying to attack Zhao still, I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt. Although I am sure she, being a college-educated woman, knew about American slavery, we need to be reminded Zhao did not grow up around the narrative of American slavery, she grew up in Beijing, and in the end, she listened to criticism and made changes.

Author Amelie Wen Zhao

So why did Zhao choose this controversial topic in the first place?

Zhao grew up around the narrative, and reality, of modern human trafficking.

In an interview with NPR, Zhao states: “these are forms of modern slavery that continue to impact 20 to 40 million victims around the world in countries such as North Korea, India, Thailand, Russia, Eastern Europe…And the main character, Ana - she is one of these vulnerable populations, and she's in danger of being trafficked and exploited. And that's what she fights against in the book. I really wrote her to be powerful and to be an angry girl, to really be a champion of justice and what she thinks is right.”

She continues, “At the time [of her ARC’s being read], it was really overwhelming because a few early readers had said that it was - believed my book was a portrayal of chattel slavery in America. And it snowballed into a lot of people who hadn't read the book, and there was just so much critique coming from people who hadn't read it. So that was really devastating to me because these are some real issues that draw from my background and from global issues that are ongoing and continue to affect so many people. So it was particularly devastating because it felt to me like my perspective wasn't welcome in this country. And honestly, for a while, it just felt like I wasn't allowed to have a voice in exploring deeply poignant subjects that were personal to me. Like, my fiancé is the descendant of a Chinese indentured laborer. And I believe these are difficult truths and ugly histories that need to be confronted through literature.”

On Goodreads, Zhao shared the Dear Reader letter included in the ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) of Blood Heir. A passage of the letter reads as follows:

I emigrated from China when I was 18. Drawing on my own multicultural upbringing and the complex history of my heritage that has incidences of bias and oppression. I wrote ‘Blood Heir’ from the immediate cultural perspective. The issue around Affinite indenturement in the story represent a specific critique of the epidemic of indentured labor and human trafficking prevalent in many industries across Asia, including in my own home country. The narrative and history of slavery in the United States is not something I can, would, or intended to write, but I recognize that I am not writing in merely my own cultural context. I am sorry for the pain this has caused.

Zhao also touches on those attacking her for trying to victimize herself or her characters. “I am an immigrant. I am a woman of color. And I am an ‘Other.’ In my time in the United States, I have never experienced the sense of crushing fear about my identity that I have recently. ‘Get out of my country, communist!’ is only one of the slurs I’ve had screamed at me from across the street. What I’ve experienced personally and seen across social media outlets and national television broadcasts has all amounted to a hyperawareness of my foreignness, my Otherness, and the possibility that because I am different, I am not worthy of belonging” (Goodreads, 2018).

The full letter can be found below my citations. I cannot speak to if this book is offensive or not. I don’t think the original blurb that McKinney read was a good pitch for the novel, but what is incredibly important is this author is not a western author. She grew up in Beijing and likely did not grow up with as much knowledge of the history of slavery in America as many Americans did; what she instead grew up with was the reality of human trafficking, especially in Asian countries. I think the topic Zhao is writing about is incredibly important, especially for a Western audience who may not be familiar with modern day trafficking or slavery.

Zhao’s book goes beyond just slavery. Blood Heir has brought up issues of cancel culture as well as western-centric views of slavery pushing away any other narrative of trafficking or slavery, like the narrative Zhao is trying to bring forward. Her book being “cancelled” almost proves why her book is important: people aren’t talking about the issue of modern trafficking in young adult novels. Successfully cancelling the publication of Blood Heir could have been detrimental to readers in the United States being educated about the relevance of slavery and trafficking.

With Zhao’s book, we are reminded that men, women, and children around the world are being taken and sold even today, not just historically.

We are reminded how people are discriminated against and dehumanized for being “different” from the majority. We are reminded of the cruel truth that Ana has to face head on, and Zhao and others have faced as well.

I don’t think the final copy of Blood Heir should be shot down, especially without being read. In fact, I think Blood Heir is an excellent book discussing important taboo topics such as trafficking, and I think it’s presumptuous to assume that aspects of this novel are based strictly on western slavery, especially when it is written by an author who is not from North America. I recommend those opposed to the novel in some way to actually give Zhao’s final copy of the novel a read with an open mind before jumping to criticize it.

There’s all this talk about me saying what others are saying about Blood Heir, people attacking the author, but right now, I want to say something to the author.

To Miss Zhao, who will probably never, ever read this blog:

Congratulations on a great debut novel, and I can’t wait to see the sequel.

You kept fighting to tell your story, and the story of so many other people.

Keep fighting.

I’m fighting for you, too.

-SS

Works Cited:

Garcia-Navarro, Lulu, editor. National Public Radio, 17 Nov. 2019,                                              https://www.npr.org/2019/11/17/780231746/am-lie-wen-zhao-on-blood-heir.

McKinney, LL (ElleOnWords). “I don’t give a good god damn that this is an author of color.   Internalized racism and anti-blackness is a thing and I…no. Square up.” 28 January 2019, 11:07 AM. Tweet.

Waltman, Katy. “In Y.A., Where Is the Line Between Criticism and Cancel Culture?” 21 Mar.           2019, https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-the-line-between-       criticism-and-cancel-culture.

Zhao’s letter to the reader on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2279470600?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1