An Aspiring Author’s Thoughts on Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn is the first book in a young adult (YA) fantasy series I wish I’d read as a kid. As an avid reader since childhood, I'm embaressed to say that it wasn't until I attended Spelman College that I started intentionally seeking out fiction by authors of African descent. Through my primary and secondary school education, I read every trendy YA fantasy series that was marketed to my demographic. As a child of the late 90s, born in 1998, it was the Harry Potter, Twilight, Lord of The Rings, Mortal Instruments, Percy Jackson series and the like, for my fantasy consumption. In attempts to see myself in these magical stories and the worlds they existed in, I was left to rewrite, or skip past, the physical descriptions of protagonists and their cast of supporting characters. The film interpretations of my favorite books were confirmation that, if someone that looked like me did exist in these stories, we were limited to the background. I felt quite left out. Poor younger me. Poor us brown girls.
As an adult, in my eager consumption of Black and African fiction, coming across this popular book sparked joy in my middle school heart. Legendborn “is a 2020 debut young adult fantasy novel by Tracy Deonn. Called a modern day twist on Arthurian legend, it follows a Black teenage girl who discovers a secret historically white magic society. The book is the first in the Legendborn series. It was released on September 15, 2020 and published under Simon & Schuster/McElderry. Legendborn was critically acclaimed and received the Coretta Scott King Award/John Steptoe Award for New Talent as well as a nomination for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize” (Deonn).
Confirmed by the number of accolades this debut book has received, it’s my opinion that Deonn has successfully shown us readers Bree’s story without telling it. My favorite example of this is the author’s exploration of the African American experience on a historically white college campus. Our protagonist, Bree, faces racism from magical and non magical students and faculty alike, all while grieving the loss of her mom. Most pointedly, she is often ostracized by members of the historically white magic society she’s joined.
At first, I thought that Deonn was inserting Bree’s encounters with racism as teachable moments for the young audience of her guaranteed-blockbuster of a YA fantasy. How wrong I was! – Deonn uses every piece of information to reveal Bree’s story to the reader. Her collection of well written prose on the African American experience throughout the book, aggregate to reveal a beautifully lush world of Bree’s maternal, ancestral power – Root magic. The protagonist’s encounters with racism also come to a head while the historically white magic society is in conflict. Revealing the said “head” of this conflict would spoil the story, so I implore you to read this book!
To conclude, while reading and annotating Deonn’s book, I wrote on page 375, that “I couldn’t be more upset to be on page 375 of a 500 page story,” because I didn’t want to finish reading. Given that book two in the series won’t be published until November 2022, I was not eager to leave the world any time soon. As an aspiring author, I hope to inspire the same feeling in readers with my own stories.
