Tomi Adeyemi on 'Children of Blood and Bone'
Almost a year before it hit shelves, Tomi Adeyemi's novel Children of Blood and Bone was making headlines. In March 2017, Deadline reported that Tomi had earned a seven-figure book deal for her young-adult trilogy, and even then, plans for a movie were already in the works.
Now the book is finally here, and if you've read it, you know that it lives up to the hype. Set in the magical land of Orïsha, the story focuses on a young woman named Zélie who goes on a quest to restore magic to her people. Prior to the events of the book, Orïsha had been home to maji, individuals with supernatural powers gifted to them by gods, but a despotic king outlawed magic and destroyed almost all the maji. After having a chance run-in with Amari, a runaway princess who holds the key to restoring magic, Zélie and her brother Tzain begin an action-packed journey that takes them all the way across Orïsha. Here, Tomi talks about what inspired Zélie's world, what she hopes the book will mean to young girls, and who she dreams will star in the movie.
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Tomi wrote and revised the book so quickly that she started having "episodes."
If anyone ever recovers my notes for my first draft it’s like, "Insert fight in the desert here," but the second draft had to be good and that’s when I actually went insane. If I’m in a painful part of the writing process I like to put on background noise, so I was binge-watching The Good Wife as I was writing this and I was on so little sleep because I was already behind, and there was this one day where my boyfriend called me and I had an episode of forgetting who I was. I was like, "Why are you obstructing my case? Why won’t you support me in this?" I thought I was a lawyer and somehow, I had gotten very confused. Obviously I don’t remember all of this because I was so out of it, but I kind of snapped back into reality like ten minutes after yelling at him like, "Why won’t you support my legal career?" It was like a fugue state. First drafts in a month I recommend. Second drafts in a month I do not recommend.
The book is fantasy, but it was largely inspired by current events.
If someone asks where this book came from, on one side I can talk about the beauty of seeing [Yoruba deities called] the Orisha, seeing these beautiful depictions of black people that lit my imagination on fire. The other side of the story is all of the pain and the helplessness I was feeling from police brutality and...the constant fear. Because there’s anger, there’s hurt, there’s dejection, but I was at that point where I’m like, "Why are we doing anything? Why am I doing anything? What is the point if my life ends at the barrel of a police officer’s gun? What is the point if any day that hashtag could be my dad or my brother? Why do anything if this is actually what our world is?" I was in a real place of hopelessness and a real place of pain. There are parts of the book that are just diary entries from me reacting to what was happening in the real world, because this was being written alongside some really, really horrible weeks and times of police brutality. That’s not even to say that that’s over, but it coincided with that. It was a very painful process.
Her biggest inspiration comes from anime.
I am a firm believer that the craziest stories that have been told and are being told are in anime. They have character arcs that go over like 400 episodes, like a 400-episode character arc. Avatar: The Last Airbender is my favorite animation of all time and this is kind of my love letter to that. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan but I still think there is a lot of anime that is crazier than Harry Potter, and that was a seven-book masterpiece.
And if you're interested in getting into anime, she has a suggestion.
Death Note is the one I’d recommend for adults because it’s a really twisty thriller. It has some fantasy elements but it’s very based in our real world. But not the Netflix adaptation! The actual anime.
The book's hype didn't freak her out, but she put a lot of pressure on herself for another reason.
I will always be my hardest critic. Nobody else will ever be able to come at something I do harder than I come at myself. I really killed myself for this book. There were lots of points where my body gave out on me. The book is like 140,000 words and I needed all 140,000 of those words to be perfect. I felt pressure but I didn’t feel outside pressure. It’s like, this has your name on it. This literally has your name on every page. I forgot that they do that in books! When I opened the book for the first time I was like, "Why is my name everywhere?" I was so confused. I felt pressure to get it right because I know that for many people, especially kids of color, this is going to be their first time getting something like this. It’s going to be their first time seeing themselves as a hero in a big way...it was going be like their Black Panther. Black Panther was never going to be anything less than a success because Ryan Coogler and the cast involved didn’t have the option. Part of it is the double standard on people of color to be perfect - we’re not allowed to give you a mediocre project because then we never get to do it again and then anybody who looks like us, they go, "Well, Black Panther actually didn’t do so well so let’s not make any movies with black people for 20 years." People really sit in a room and do crap like that.
So one, we don’t have the option, but two, it’s like, we’re not gonna mess that up. I’m not going to put Zélie’s face on the cover of this book and give you anything less than an incredible story, because for the kids who have never seen themselves, they need to see that, and they need to know that they are beautiful and that they are powerful and that they can rise up against all the things that upset them and do something about it. And then for the kids who are used to seeing themselves, they need to see other people and they need to see them in the most human way possible.
I’ve been writing stories all my life. My very first story had two little black girls riding horses. They were both me, too, so that’s how into me I was. But every story from then on was a white protagonist or a biracial protagonist, and that’s because I had subconsciously internalized that those were the only people who got to be in stories and those were the only people who got to have magical adventures. If I’ve internalized this, how am I really gonna be surprised when someone’s like, "How is Hermione black? I don’t get it." Five or six years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to get that, either.
She designed the layout of Orïsha herself (illustrated in the book by Keith Thompson).
I actually designed the map on this online program and it was really helpful to me, because it’s a big story and they go so many places and then I was trying to be like, "How long would it take to get from this village to this city, if horses ride this many miles per hour over the course of this, and this is the meters and we can superimpose that on how fast a lion runs," and I would do all this math. Then I was like, "You know what? I’m just gonna make decisions, come at me." Just go with it.
She's almost done with the second book in the trilogy.
I’m actually like seven to ten scenes away from finishing the first draft of book two, which I need to do, like, tomorrow. I have to have it done for my own peace of mind. I want it to be done just because when you put a book out into the world it’s not just yours anymore, so it’s very important to me to have a very clear sense of where the story is going before I get influenced by other people’s desires for where they want the story to go.
She has a very specific person in mind for the role of Saran in the movie.
The one person my heart would explode for would be if Idris Elba was King Saran. I would have pictures of him on my screen and then I would write a scene with [Saran]...but I’ll see pictures of anyone together and I’ll be like, "Oh look, it’s Zélie and Amari!" There was a picture of Zendaya and John Boyega and I was like, "Oh my god, it’s Tzain and Amari," and then there was a picture of Tessa Thompson and Michael B. Jordan and I was like, "Oh my god it’s Tzain and Amari." You know how plays have multiple casts? I want multiple versions, with everyone I love.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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