Shreveport native celebrates novel’s return home
When Shreveport native Destiny O. Birdsong’s debut novel, “Nobody’s Magic,” was published early last year, her bucket list included having it chosen for Shreve Memorial Library’s One Book One Parish book celebration.
“I’d contemplated emailing someone at the library to ask about the selection process, but then I thought, ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t be that forward.’ I figured that if it was meant to happen, then it would. Of course, when it didn’t happen right away, I thought, ‘That’s okay. Maybe the next one will be chosen,’” she said. “So, it was the strangest and most lovely surprise” to find out that novel had been selected for 2023. “It came at just the right time, and I’m grateful for that.”
John A. Tuggle, executive director of Shreve Memorial, said the response to “Nobody’s Magic” has been tremendous. “This year we were fortunate enough to not only highlight a book that was set in Shreveport, but a book that was also written by a Shreveport native…Having Destiny be a part of our kickoff event really added to the excitement.”
Birdsong, who holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry and a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt, serves as an artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee, and as the One Book One Parish month winds down, reflected in warm and generous words on the experience. That includes the happiness of having her mother, Joan Birdsong, attend a discussion of her work and interacting with creative people in her hometown. “Coming back home to talk about my book was the best because I got to meet other writers and artists who are doing work right here in the place that made me a writer. It was really beautiful to connect with a thriving arts community and hear about what other folks are doing. I want to come back now and hang out with them.”
About her novel
“Nobody’s Magic” is about three Black Shreveport women with albinism. It explores womanhood and sexuality and dismantles Southern literary stereotypes and preconceptions about people with albinism. As “The New York Times” said, “The magic here is not the supernatural kind, but rather an attention to the grace of the ordinary. It is the magic of watching these women come into their power.”
Birdsong herself has albinism and weaves that into her work. “Physical differences often make people see you as either more than or less than a human being. Some people think you’re magical; others think you’re a tragedy. So, I’ve had to define for myself what I believe makes me beautiful, what it means to be a Black woman and how I define living fully. This is what ‘Nobody’s Magic’is also about: How do you build a life for yourself that’s separate and distinct from what people assume you deserve? … I think if I had to sum up my writerly obsessions, I’m most interested in how we live our lives together and how that living shapes who we become.”
Choosing the Shreveport setting
“You know, I never thought I’d write fiction about Shreveport. I’ve written plenty of poetry about home and my family, but for fiction, I was looking at other places like Nashville, Tenn., where I lived for nearly two decades, and the locales of writing retreats I’ve visited in previous years. But when I began writing about these women, their families and their journeys to becoming themselves, I asked myself, ‘Where can I put them where they’ll be safe? Where they can exist in families filled with complicated but loving people who give them the raw material to build their own lives?’ And I couldn’t think of a better place than Shreveport. I didn’t know of a better place than home.”
More about the author
She was born on New Year’s Eve 1981 at what was then LSU Medical Center. “I, both a procrastinator and someone who shows up right on time, was born on a gurney in the hallway about 90 minutes before the new year,” she said. “All my immediate family and most of my extended family still live here.” She attended preschool at 81st Street, then went to Eden Gardens Elementary, Caddo Middle Magnet and Magnet High.
Birdsong’s work has appeared in such prestigious publications as the Paris Review Daily, Poets & Writers, African American Review and “The Best American Poetry 2021.” Her debut poetry collection, “Negotiations,” was published by Tin House Books in 2020.
“Nobody’s Magic” is available in paperback, as an e-book and on audio. Released by Grand Central Publishing, it was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.
For more information: www.destinybirdsong.com.
Columnist Judy Christie is the author of 18 books, including the nonfiction “Before and After: The Incredible Real-Life Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society,” now in its fifth printing in trade paperback. For more, see www.judychristie.com.
This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: Shreveport native celebrates novel’s return home
