Tag: historical black fiction

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deep lit

‘Wildblood’ Writer Lauren Blackwood Brings Magic to the Jamaican Jungle in Historical Fantasy Novel

⚠️ Trigger warning! The story and the post below mention sexual assault.

Following the success of Within These Wicked Walls, Lauren Blackwood returns with another vibrant story, this time set in a magical Jamaican jungle.

Wildblood, which is out now from Macmillan’s Wednesday Books, takes us to the late 19th century and builds a unique story that serves as an extraordinary sophomore novel after weaving the thread of the Charlotte Brontë classic Jane Eyre into an Ethiopian retelling with her debut novel. Within These Wicked Walls earned the recognition of being a Reese’s Book Club Fall 2021 YA Pick.

The new young adult book centers on Victoria, an 18-year-old woman who was kidnapped at a young age and forced to serve as a guide within a tourist company that specializes in venturing into the jungle. Except the jungle has creatures that could be dangerous to mortals such as spirits that can snatch souls without remorse. Victoria is a Wildblood, meaning she has the magic to communicate with the creatures and, in her professional standing, can ensure the safety of tourists.

When a well-known Black gold miner named Laertes Thorn becomes a client with his rather large party, Victoria is tasked with her fellow Wildbloods to bring these foreigners to a mountain allegedly full of gold. The gold is a legend since survivors have never exited the jungle to tell the story of reaching the treasures.

On the trip like back at home, Victoria tries to remain a motherly figure to Bunny, a young Wildblood who cannot control his magic, and a girlfriend to Samson, a Wildblood who was kidnapped by the company after her. But new emotions arise as she finds herself falling for Thorn and battling her former love Dean, the main Wildblood in charge who seems like he’ll do anything to keep their abusive boss happy like saying yes to such a dangerous trip.

The fight for survival underlies the story that places Victoria in a spot where she’s trying to understand love from different angles and trust in her inherent magic.

Author Lauren Blackwood talks to she lit about how she came up with the story and the art of making sure the characters, the plot, and the tension remain engaging until the very end. Check out the conversation below:

she lit: The story’s main character, Victoria, is a Wildblood who possesses the magic to communicate with the precarious jungle. Her touring company kidnapped her at a young age to take advantage of her magic. How did you come up with this story and figure out how to convey the difficult subject of abuse?

Lauren Blackwood: I wanted to write a book about a girl finding her strength. Anytime I portray an issue or trauma I want it to be done sensitively and respectfully, but also honestly. I don’t think showing SA* on page is ever necessary—there are ways to get the message across without that type of triggering imagery. So with that in mind, I then let Victoria guide her own journey on the path that felt right for her. 

she lit: While on the dangerous tour, Victoria finds herself tangled in a love cube with her partner Samson, her ex Dean, and her new client Thorn. Can you describe your writing experience with creating the tension between these characters?

Lauren Blackwood: You’re the first one to ever describe their situation as a love cube, haha! Writing relationships is my favorite thing, and I purposely wanted to use this book to explore different kinds of love. But I think the issue is that all three boys have different intentions for Victoria, which puts them in conflict with each other and with Victoria herself, who’s really just learning to live her life on her own terms.

Photo Credit: Terri LaShae

she lit: Victoria takes it upon herself to be a mother figure to Bunny, a younger Wildblood who rages with his magic. How would you describe this source of love for Victoria as a counterbalance to the love she’s getting from Samson and Thorn?

Lauren Blackwood: Victoria’s relationship with Bunny is more of that of a mother and child—she’s extremely protective of him, which is a love he doesn’t necessarily appreciate. It’s the opposite of her relationship with Samson, who in his own loving way tries to look out for her but ends up being a bit overbearing. So you have those two opposites of the spectrum, and then you have Thorn, who sits right in the middle. They have mutual respect and love for each other, and they don’t doubt each others’ abilities but look out for each other equally.

she lit: Greed is an overwhelming theme with Thorn and his team endangering their lives to mine gold in the Gilded Orchard that has never been mined by survivors. Can you explain the historical significance of making the team members Black and their desire to gain riches before the turn of the 20th century?

Lauren Blackwood: If you’ve read my debut Within These Wicked Walls, you’ll know I love writing about wealthy Black guys who have the freedom to do as they please. I suppose the historical significance is that when Black people owned business, all the staff would be Black because they weren’t welcome in white spaces—whatever business ventures white people were up to, Black people were usually doing it too and just not getting any credit for it. But honestly, I just wanted to write about Black people, regardless of history.

she lit: The book’s cover is vibrant, featuring Victoria in the jungle. Victoria looks a lot like you. How much input did you have in the cover design and the way the character is portrayed on the cover?

Lauren Blackwood: I wanted to write a character who looks like me (who’s Jamaican like me) because growing up there were never any fantasy novels about girls who shared my heritage. So, the only thing I really requested was to feature the Jamaican flag colors—black, green, and gold. The rest of the genius design was handled by my amazing cover designer Kerri Resnick and brilliant artist Colin Verdi. They interpreted Victoria perfectly, so I really didn’t have to say much.

*SA is an acronym for sexual assault.

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’ by Dawnie Walton

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton reexamines the trials and tribulations of a fictional 1970s soul rock band fronted by a White British man and an Black American woman who see their rise decline during a racial riot at a major concert. Marked with exquisite detail, the story trips up on telling multiple perspectives to the point it’s difficult to connect with the many characters and their worlds.

Sunny Shelton is a music journalist and the daughter of Jimmy Curtis, a drummer who was fatally beaten during a 1971 concert featuring the top talent from up-and-coming label Rivington Records. What sparked the melee was the conflict between Opal & Nev, an interracial soul rock group, and the Bond Brothers, a Southern White band who brought the Confederate flag on stage. Opal, a Black woman from Detroit who summered in Alabama when she was young, hated that the Bond Brothers had the audacity to bring this oft-perceived offensive symbol of oppression on stage. The history of how the concert went south becomes fascination for Sunny who revisits all the players decades later to write a book about the events that led to her father’s untimely death. And the fact that Opal was having an affair with Sunny’s father at the time of the concert blurs the emotions of Sunny’s journalism as she tries to revive a music magazine as editor in chief.

The book is packed with details that the story of Opal & Nev feels authentic. The story focuses on this band, but the story comes full circle with the band’s influence on the deadly concert that becomes part of music history on the level of Woodstock. The details also become problematic where the characters become sidelined by telling their stories to Sunny, who as a narrator fades in the background but reappears toward the end as she pieces who was at fault for her father’s death. The plot is reminiscent to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but in that masterpiece the journalist with the dead father and the Hollywood actress are the only perspectives the reader receives with their stories intertwining at the end as well. In Evelyn Hugo, the characters’ truths flow well with the same story backdrop of a journalist’s interview process highlighting an icon’s journey where in Opal & Nev that technique fails especially with the characters’ truths changing almost every page, so a character’s thought process gets amputated by another character’s thought process.

Opal is supposed to be the main character, but when the story is not told from her point-of-view, it seems like a loss for the reader to really get to know how magical she seems to be. She is presented to us as this badass Black female singer struggling to become a star amid the civil rights movement who has elements of Betty Davis or Tina Turner, overshadowed by a male musician but finds her voice. But her voice is misconstrued when she tries to plot revenge on the Bond Brothers and destroy the Confederate flag at a high-profile concert. This part of the story feels all too real of a Black woman trying to raise awareness about racial insensitivity yet is the scapegoat for the disaster that results from the explosive anger.

Overall, the novel features an extraordinary fictional music saga, but the characters contributing to the story get lost in the shuffle of a pretend journalistic venture. The elaborateness of the fake historical account can be awe-inspiring as well as destructive to the story’s resonance.




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Book Review: ‘Kindred’ by Octavia E. Butler

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Kindred by Octavia E. Butler takes time travel and blends the science fiction concept across race, gender, and DNA with the main character going back to the antebellum South to save an ancestor in order for her to live in the future.

The story starts with Dana, a Black woman in 1976 Pasadena, California, who is in the hospital recovering from the loss of her left arm and waiting for her White husband Kevin to finish with the police. How she loses her arm is a journey that begins on her 26th birthday when she finds herself in 1815 Maryland saving a White boy from drowning. When she asks the boy’s name, she learns it’s Rufus Weylin. The name rings a bell because the boy is her ancestor, the father to one of her foremothers, Hagar who was born in 1831. Dana needs to save him, so he can eventually plant the seed for Hagar with his slave Alice Greenwood to make sure she will exist.

Before she gets in trouble for being a free Black woman in 1970s attire, she finds herself back home to a worried Kevin. She is later summoned again by Rufus where he is burning the curtains in his bedroom. Dana realizes she returns to the past under Rufus’ control when he is in trouble and the only way back home is her own fear. As fear controls the time travel, Dana returns to the past again, but this time Kevin holds on for the ride. Now, she and her husband are stuck in the antebellum South where their interracial relationship is illegal. Kevin tries to find his place as a White man in the prior century by spending time with the slave-owning Weylins while Dana is adjusting to life as a slave and befriending Alice and the other slaves. The inhumanity and cruelty of slavery motivates her to uplift the slaves with her futuristic ideals, but it results in Dana receiving a punishment so severe that it scares her back home—without Kevin. She is determined to return to save her husband and her ancestors to make sure her existence comes into being.

This masterpiece is categorized as science fiction, but it exceeds the genre by having the main character return to the past to save herself instead of traveling to the future to save the world. The story emphasizes the complicated nature of African American ancestry with the slave master being a part of the bloodline and Dana needing Rufus to survive in order for a Black branch of the bloodline to lead to her birth.

There is a dependency between Dana and Rufus as Dana wants to exist while Rufus, who accepts Dana as a time traveler without knowing their shared lineage, also wants to exist subconsciously despite his tendency to fall into life-threatening situations. Dana sees Rufus grow up, and as Rufus becomes a man, he begins seeing Dana in a sexual light, especially with her resemblance to Alice. That development confuses Dana, who wants to keep Rufus happy for her survival and the survival of the slaves on the Weylin plantation.

What also adds another dimension to the story is Dana having a White husband in a time when their marriage is legal but still receives negative attention. Her family and his family were not too happy when they married, so as she navigates her contemporary world in an interracial couple, she finds herself 150 years in the past dependent on Kevin to save them. Also, at home she depends on Kevin, the successful author with his best-selling book giving them the money to buy their new home where Dana begins her time travel. Dana wants to be an author, too, but her dreams take a hit in boosting Kevin’s career. For survival in both worlds, Dana has to work with her husband and her forefather because the color of her skin impedes what she can do.

The more Dana drops into the early 1800s, the more she realizes she can’t present herself as a free Black woman on a plantation. She gets closer to her other ancestor, Alice, who also needs assistance especially as a slave, but their connection reaches the frustrated friendship level since Alice knows she can’t trust Dana with her disappearing acts and her tendency to stand by Rufus, Alice’s owner and rapist. Dana gets complaints from other slaves for wanting to be White and using that alleged privilege to her advantage.

The empathy fight Dana struggles with in having Rufus’ back when he follows the slavery law of the land becomes overwhelming. Every time she returns home to 1976 California, she has physical and emotional bruises and scars trying to make sense of her surroundings that are over a century and thousands of miles apart.

Overall, Kindred packs a multitude of elements into a novel that has a Black female character straddling two worlds in two different time periods and facing racism for her choices to survive in a world not set up in her favor.




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Book Review: ‘The Vanishing Half’ by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing HalfThe Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a riveting tale of two Black sisters who are so light-skinned that one decides to pass as White while the other accepts who she is. It delves into race and complexion but also into family ties ruptured by one person leaving the family by choice.

Desiree and Stella Vignes are twins living in Mallard, Louisiana, a town purposely populated by light-skinned Blacks. Desiree, the more outgoing and outspoken twin, conjures up a plan for her and Stella to leave town at sixteen. They sneak away from their home and end up in bustling New Orleans in 1954. They find work until one day Stella disappears without a trace.

The novel moves ten years forward with Desiree making the journey back to Mallard with her young daughter Jude. The townspeople notice right away how dark-skinned Jude is. When Desiree returns to her mother, she tells her she hasn’t seen Stella in years.

Unbeknownst to her family who she kills off when anyone asks about their whereabouts, Stella is making a life in Los Angeles with her husband Blake and young daughter Kennedy. Except Stella is living a lie: She is passing for White. Her struggle to keep the secret haunts her as she’s known around their White neighborhood in Brentwood as sometimes being moody and quiet. When a Black actor and his family fight to buy a home in the neighborhood, Stella worries her life will be ruined since she’s avoided her own people for so long to avoid her cover from being blown. Putting her Karen tendencies to the side, she decides to make friends with the Black mother living across the street from her and they become fast friends—something neighbors start gossiping about.

Years later, Jude heads to UCLA with the goal to find Stella. She doesn’t tell her mother that she thinks the missing twin is in LA, but she stumbles upon Kennedy and makes the connection that it’s her cousin. The two try to be family as Kennedy is conflicted about who she is, now knowing that her mother has been lying her entire life.

The literary fiction novel jumps timelines intersecting the twin sisters and their separate lives with their daughters who know the emotional strain the separate lives have brought upon the family. It’s reminiscent of Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng with the writing and storytelling style through characters’ various secrets. It’s definitely a graduation from the author’s debut novel The Mothers, which is a great debut novel also diving into secrets within a contemporary community.

At the end, the author says she was inspired by Imitation of Life, more the 1959 film rather than the novel by White Jewish author Fanny Hurst, who came under fire at the time for stereotypical presentations of the Black mother character as a Mammy figure and her light-skinned daughter as a tragic mulatta passing as White. The “passing” technique has left holes in Black families since the end of slavery, and it’s a topic that’s still relevant today as people may or may not defend their ethnicities based on their looks. With the conversation of race, this novel is a good choice under the anti-racism reads to emphasize how some people give up their old lives as one race for new lives under another race due to the opportunities they feel they couldn’t get before.

Overall, it’s an engrossing piece interlacing the lives of two sisters who don’t know where the other is because one becomes obsessed with dodging obstacles surrounding race until she evolves into a new person with a new past that subtracts her bloodlines.

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Book Review: ‘The Water Dancer’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates


The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The summoning of a story, the water, and the object that made memory real as brick: that was Conduction. What I might do with such a power was not my immediate concern, so much making it through that day.”

Tales of magical realism and the harsh reality of the Atlantic slave trade becomes intertwined in “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It tells the story of a man trying to recall memories of his long-lost mother and escape enslavement on a dying tobacco plantation in Virginia owned by his white father. Coates’ first novel moves slowly through the overuse of prose but emphasizes the decision of freedom and what it exactly means to the different characters.

Hiram Walker’s mother had been sold off years ago by his white father, Howell Walker, and Hiram wants to remember his mother. Other slaves in the community, called the Tasked, tell him he has this power to conjure the memory of his mother through the water.

The story really starts with Hiram riding over a bridge with his white brother, Maynard, where they fall into the water. Maynard doesn’t survive, and everyone is surprised Hiram survived in the water so long. He returns to his father’s plantation, but eventually decides to run after he’s blamed for Maynard’s death. Hiram runs with the girl he loves, Sophia, but they’re captured.

After weeks of torture, he’s returned to Corinne Quinn, a wealthy white woman who was betrothed to Maynard. It turns out Corinne is a part of the Underground aka the famous Underground Railroad. Hiram joins the effort, always wondering of Sophia’s fate and of the purpose of his powers as he figures out what it means to be really free.

Hiram seeking freedom and expecting everyone Tasked wants his version of freedom, regardless of who’s left behind, is an interesting concept that plays throughout the novel. It focuses on the division of families and how it was a fact of life, and if someone ran away, they would have to create a new life in the North and research where their loved ones had ended up. Not knowing the fate of a loved one haunts Hiram with his mother, an underdeveloped character that keeps getting mentioned yet there’s no sense of who she is. It’s reminiscent of Cora in “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead because Cora’s mother had escaped but never sent for Cora, so there is anguish toward the mother; she’s not present, but the reader feels her impact.

This book made me appreciate Whitehead’s book more because the characters are better developed there. Hiram in Coates’ book tells the story in first-person narrative, but there are personality elements missing; he’s mostly stoic. He’s one of those narrators who falls behind other characters though we follow his actions.

The freedom definition theme saved the book. The magical realism gets muddled until the end where the history of African folklore related to water comes up. Though it’s brought up a lot, the water dancing leading to what you need isn’t believable enough, like the folklore isn’t fitted correctly to this story.

Length-wise, It’s a 400-page book that could’ve been done closer to 300 pages. Slavery in the Americas will always be a fascinating topic because of the legacy of not acknowledging its profound generational impact. The history itself in many cases overshadows a fictional story.

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Book Review: ‘The Underground Railroad’ by Colson Whitehead

The Underground RailroadThe Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first started the novel, I couldn’t get into it. There was too much going deep into some characters and not others, and it wasn’t clear which characters would return in the story. This disjointed storytelling continued throughout, but the story picked up once Cora and Caesar began their journey toward the Underground Railroad. Then there was action with the tension building up until another character’s background interrupted the present. This is a good literary tactic to dangle what’s happening next over the reader, but I was conflicted on my investment in the characters.

Cora was the main character but Ridgeway’s background and presence sometimes made him appear as a stronger character. Caesar faded out of the story along with so many other characters I had to read the long backgrounds of. It’s about 75% background on multiple characters—some who won’t matter later—and 25% of the present. If the background on most of the characters were limited and weaved in better with the present instead of being placed in separate chapters, the story would’ve moved along smoother.

Seeing Cora’s journey to freedom with waiting in some places too long not in safer Canada because they seemed ideal until they weren’t, and her dealing with the impact of her choices enlivened the novel. The garden plot she had at the Randall plantation is a stronger symbol than the Underground Railroad, in which the idea of it actually being a train line seems unoriginal. Remember when Porsha from Real Housewives of Atlanta thought it was an underground railroad seasons ago? A lot of people think that.

Overall, the writing is well structured, but the way the story was structured annoyed me as a reader more than pulled me in.

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