Tomi Adeyemi Opens Up About "Children of Virtue and Vengeance"
By now, we’re all used to hearing about those smash YA successes. The kind that get huge multi-book deals, say, or become the first Lucasfilm series ever to not star Harrison Ford. But while Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone series has become all of those things, what it needs to be known for is what it depicts: and not just representation, the kinds of faces we’ll read about and one day see on screen, but the kind of story it is. Not just diverse, but profound. Not a good old-fashioned fantasy romp, but a mirror held up to us, and the real, cruel world in which we live.
Children of Blood and Bone introduces us to the land of Orïsha, and an ethnic group called the maji: boys and girls with dark skin and snow-white hair, who have inherited the power of magic, and whose parents were killed in an act of genocide by the king of Orïsha. The series centers on three protagonists: Zélie, a maji, and the king’s children, Inan and Amari. Far from being a light and breezy swords-and-dragons tale — though it is, to be clear, plenty entertaining — Adeyemi’s series is, as the author tells Teen Vogue, “an allegory for the modern black experience.”
This is a world built on oppression, and racism, and an ouroboros of hatred that goes on and on. But when magic starts to return to the world of Orïsha, and finds itself imbued in the prince, of all people, we find that the easy lines of good and evil, or violence and victim, are much more complex than we imagined — that something must change, fundamentally, for these cycles of violence to stop.
To celebrate the release of the second of three installments, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, we spoke with author Toni Adeyemi about the creation of her allegorical universe, the limits of experience and empathy, and what surprises she still has in store.
Teen Vogue: It's always fascinating to hear from the creator of a fantasy universe, about how they concocted the various systems of culture and magic that we, as readers, love to geek out on. What led you to make this world, and the different maji, the way they are?
Tomi Adeyemi: The world of Orïsha is a blend of my Nigerian heritage, the rich religions and mythologies that stem from the orisha, my favorite fantasy worlds, and a desire to see a fantastical setting that celebrates blackness. I’ve been a lover of magical stories and worlds since I was a kid, but I went through my entire childhood and early adulthood without ever seeing someone like me in one of those settings. The first time I encountered the orisha, I was in a gift shop in Salvador, Brazil. I saw an image of Sango — a dark-skinned black man breathing fire — right next to Yemoja, a beautiful black woman commanding the oceans. It was the first time I’d seen blackness depicted in such a beautiful, fantastical, and sacred way, and it made fireworks go off in my imagination. Those two images were the seeds of this story, and the reason I named my fictional kingdom after the orisha.
Teen Vogue: In writing a narrative with three different protagonists and perspectives, how do you differentiate between and balance their points of view? Did you imagine that readers would gravitate toward one of the characters over the others?
T.A.: Writing from three perspectives is a struggle! There are so many times when I wish the story was only from Zélie’s point of view because she’s so similar to my voice/personality that she’s fairly easy for me to write, whereas I always struggled when it came to Inan and Amari. But the way I balance writing their perspectives is making sure I agree with every single character. For example, in Book 1, I agreed with Zélie that she and the maji needed magic to have a fighting chance at building a better life for themselves. But I also agreed with Inan that magic was volatile and unpredictable and too great a potential weapon to be reintroduced back to their world. To write with conviction, I make sure that I actually believe what each character is fighting for.
Teen Vogue: In Children of Blood and Bone, I found the king to be an intriguing character. How did you find the right balance when writing that character?
T.A.: Similar to how I write POVs: I make sure that I agree with him. Saran is cruel and he is violent, but not without reason. Maji murdered every member of his family. His parents, his brothers, his wife, his firstborn son. When he says magic is bad for the kingdom, he’s not spewing empty indoctrinations. He’s acting out of his own painful history.
Typically, there isn’t absolute good or evil in the world. There are multiple sides, multiple beliefs, and multiple paths people are willing to take to get what they want. Saran and characters like him aren’t bad to be bad — they believe they’re doing the right thing. If written correctly, readers should understand him as well as they understand Zélie. Readers should even agree with him. No one is simply right or wrong — they’re all trying to do what’s best for their people and their kingdom, but they’re letting negative emotions like fear, anger, and revenge guide them, and that's where they go wrong.
Teen Vogue: Similarly, this story also manages to avoid the simple cliché, of the magic users being some kind of good or natural thing and the non-magical people being the bad guys. We do see the violent nature of magic in action, and Inan in particular struggles with his sympathies throughout the story. Was this an essential element to the story as you saw it?
T.A.: Yes! Two-dimensional stories paint one thing as good and one thing as bad, but that’s not how anything works in real life. Free will itself can be a weapon or a blessing, it’s about what someone chooses to do with that free will. Magic is the same. It can heal and it can bring light and life. It can also destroy and bring darkness and death. As a Reaper, Zélie literally carries both of these dualities within her. I think Children of Virtue and Vengeance also expands on the idea that magic itself is not good or bad. How it’s deployed is completely up to the user.
Teen Vogue: In the first book, Inan's magical bond with Zelie allows him to see her memories, which allows him to gain empathy for her and the atrocities that his father inflicted upon the maji. There's a particularly poignant moment where he thinks, "It doesn't matter if I'm in her head. I'll never understand her pain." What do you think he means by that?
T.A.: Whenever a friend is discussing an issue with me, sometimes “I understand” or “I get it” slips out. That’s always followed with, “Sorry. What I meant to say is that I empathize with your situation/what you are going through.”
I think we’re too quick to dismiss someone’s pain or trauma with “I get it,” because unless you have experienced that same type of trauma, you don’t. You can read about it. You can talk to people about it. You can literally walk through someone’s head and relive it, like Inan. But at the end of the day, you will never know what it means to carry that pain and that trauma and those wounds with you every day of your life. However, he can still empathize with that experience and work to make it better. I believe that is the best way to be an ally.
Teen Vogue: And despite that connection, this burgeoning romance doesn't play out the way the reader might want. What prompted that choice?
T.A.: I want my stories to be real. You can love someone and still not have things work out. You can love someone and still end up on the opposite sides of extremely important issues. You can love someone who isn’t truly good for you. And you can love someone who has caused you a tremendous amount of pain. I think occurrences like that are much more common than a happily-ever-after.
Teen Vogue: Some reviews of the series highlight possible real-world inspirations behind it, with the Atlantic, for example, calling it a "transparent parable of oppression" in the vein of segregation and Black Lives Matter. Would you agree with that? To my eye, at least, it's perhaps more complicated.
T.A.: When I wrote my author’s note for Children of Blood and Bone, I wrote with great intention. I didn’t want it left to opinion or discussion or hypotheses about what the inspiration and meaning behind the text was. CBB is an allegory for the modern black experience. Every conflict is the book is a conflict black people are fighting today, or have fought as recently as 30-50 years ago. It was important to me that I craft an immersive, epic adventure. But it was also important to me to make sure that all the emotions and empathy the book creates didn’t stay in a fantasy world, because that empathy is what we need in the real world to start making these important changes.
Teen Vogue: In addition, Children of Virtue and Vengeance seems to complicate the allegory even further, when members of the nobility become tîtans, with magical abilities of their own. What do you see as the role of magic in this story, now that it doesn't belong to one "side" alone?
T.A.: Often in life we have a goal and we delude ourselves into thinking that goal will change everything. I know a lot of people in the United States thought the election of President Obama signified the end of racism, yet those eight years were when Trayvon Martin was killed. Those eight years were when police brutality came into the national spotlight. And we all know what happened after those eight years were finished.
Book two is like that. Zélie and Amari believed getting magic back would fix the kingdom, only to learn it was never about magic at all. The oppression of the maji face is institutional. It’s centuries old, and has successfully marginalized them whether they had access to their gifts of not. Book two is a story of individuals with power facing the realities of the system they are trapped in and deciding how best to change it or break it.
Teen Vogue: And finally: any hints as to what we can expect next?
T.A.: I can tell you that the final installment may be really really long … I know more or less what happens. What I don’t know is if that’ll end up being 500 pages, 600 pages, 700 pages, or worse. The one thing I do know is that I’m going to take my time! I’m committed to enjoying my last adventure with these characters and ending this series with a BANG.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
