The beginning of 2019 seems a lightyear away. Yet, as we approach the beginning of a new year, of a new decade, I’m also struck by the quickness of time. Even though January feels like forever ago, I’m still not really sure how I made it all the way to December. In many ways, I feel like 2019 was a year that I navigated with my eyes mostly closed, blindly wandering through the final year of my twenties and hurtling toward the new decade that will herald my thirties.
One of my favorite books of the Women of the World series this year was Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone, which I read in April. Even then, I was breathlessly anticipating the coming of December, which would bring with it both a new Star War and the second novel of the Land of Orïsha series, Children of Virtue and Vengeance. The return to Orïsha felt right. After all, human beings have a tendency to love the cyclical. The seasons, the day, the week, the beginning of each new year—they all exist as metaphorical restarts, opportunities for change and renewal, even as we move linearly through time.
The same freedom that we seek with each new opportunity is the same freedom that Zélie seeks in Children of Virtue and Vengeance. Though she succeeded in returning magic to Orïsha, Zélie quickly discovers that magic will not be the silver bullet she desired. For Zélie, the false promise that a simple solution provided ultimately leads her to question the motivations of those around her, seeking the best way to address larger, systemic problems, when no easy answers exist.
Children of Virtue and Vengeance
Tomi Adeyemi is a Nigerian-American author and Harvard graduate who wrote and published her debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone, by age 23. A child of first generation immigrants, Adeyemi was not taught about her home culture or language and did not begin to explore her heritage until age 18. However, while at Harvard, Adeyemi earned a fellowship that allowed her to study her West African heritage in Salvador, Brazil. There, she would be inspired by the positive presentation of Black culture, as well as the ongoing violence of police brutality and the controversy of the Black Lives Matter movement in America, to write the Legend of Orïsha series. In an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Adeyemi remarked, “The older I get, the more I realized the power of institutions. And institutions are old. They’re powerful for a reason. They have been set up a long time ago by very rich and powerful people to disenfranchise you systematically. […] It’s like: Yes, you can focus on getting magic, but then you’ll see that magic wasn’t completely the problem. The entire system is against you. So what are you going to do?”
Throughout Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Adeyemi constantly asks her characters this question: “So what are you going to do?” It is the same question that we must ask ourselves as we look to a new year, a new election year, a new chance to do things better, to make the hard choices.
Yet, Adeyemi’s characters do not merely face difficult choices, they do the hard work of reflection. Amari, who was herself an important part of magic’s return, still must learn the impact of her own royal heritage, her privilege that both separates her from Zélie and makes her ignorant to the needs of those around her. Though she believes that she is not being heard, Amari must learn the importance of listening to and trusting the words of others. She must also learn that the experience of her privilege does not always make her right.
Like Amari, I want to enter 2020 asking in what ways I’ve failed to listen and trust over the past decade. How have I allowed my privilege to blind me? When have I given in to others simply because I devalued my own voice and experience? There are many questions that we all must ask ourselves as we move toward January 1. Perhaps though, like Amari and Zélie and Tomi Adeyemi, we must look at the future and ask ourselves, “So what are you going to do?”
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