I love reading YA, and back in mid-May, I saw the gorgeous cover of A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow. It features two Black girls looking mermaid-esque, and when I read the book description, I was hooked: it’s about Black sirens, a story about friendship and family, set against the backdrop of today’s racism and sexism. There are protests and discussions of police profiling, brutality, and racism, all in a world based on mythology and magic. I pre-ordered the book, and by the time it came out, George Floyd had been murdered by police, and protests across the country were underway. Art and life were reflecting each other, as they so often do. Morrow was gracious enough to answer my questions via email.
Although this is a book about elokos and sprites and sirens, it is also a book about intergenerational trauma and racism and being a Black woman in America. How did you choose to write from the perspective of a siren and weave in the fantasy elements?
I feel like everyone’s heard the story by now, but I said, “My voice is power,” while talking to my sister as we watched Twitter abusing a Black woman for telling a truth in 2017. It wasn’t a new phenomenon, of course, and I was speaking to the way the world is so vehemently opposed to the specific and insightful power of a Black woman’s voice, and why they try to hard to get us to believe we have no power—while they consume and emulate our voices, why they gaslight and denigrate actual Black women. Immediately I decided that phrase belonged to a Black siren in a world where only Black girls are sirens, and Tavia’s predicament was immediately clear. As I’ve said, fantastical elements are not separate or divorced from the real world, particularly where Black writers are concerned. We use it often to elevate a “hidden” truth and alleviate a uniquely oppressive burden. ASBW is simply another in that long tradition of indicting the real world through the lens of the fantastical.
You wrote this book before this summer’s re-igniting of protests and activism, before the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Have your vision or hopes about the book and its message or impact changed since its publication?
No.
You’ve written for adults and edited a YA anthology, but this is your YA debut. Did you set out to write a YA novel? How do the experiences differ, and do you prefer one over the other?
Yes, I set out to write this as a YA. It isn’t my first YA, just the first one published. I don’t really experience a preference, but I suppose I could imagine a default, which would likely be adult market speculative literary fiction, like my 2018 debut [Mem], but since then I’ve written adult, YA, contemporary fantasy, historical, social horror, science fiction… The experience of writing isn’t horribly different for me in any of those because despite that, when I write YA I’m possibly more prescriptive, or intentional, and certainly more gentle with my protagonist and audience. I’m writing Black girls, and I don’t take them lightly.
Do you have a writing routine? If so, what does that look like?
After the past year and a half, I can’t say I have a writing routine; I think I routinely get into a habit and assume it’ll last forever, and then of course find that it doesn’t. The thing that is always true is that concept comes first, character follows, and either the story follows from realizing from those two things what kind of project it is (adult or YA, what blend of genres), or, as the story begins to emerge, it informs me of that. I always start by writing an opening chapter, always brief. I learn a lot about the character and their place in their world from that, and I can usually say how the first act ends, or perhaps I’ll know the climax. Anyway, I write, and read, and write, and read, and do rolling revisions throughout because I can’t keep going if things are locking into place. The when and how of the writing itself isn’t a huge deal. I write mostly in bed because I need my legs elevated, and then sometimes if I need a change of scenery, I’ll write downstairs, or go to a library. I can listen to music or rain sounds or nothing, it really isn’t very precious for me.
How do you think the creative community can support women, and mothers, especially?
There’s no way to support women without telling the truth about the misogynistic practices of creative industries and communities. You can’t support women if you don’t interrogate why their confidence turns you off, why you assume their work isn’t strong, why you think women can’t and don’t write science fiction, et cetera. I’m not so much concerned with initiatives as I am with deprogramming socialized norms, because otherwise those initiatives can be well-intentioned (which is a word I say with much more disgust than comes across in text) and ultimately failures.
What are you struggling with, as a parent and as a writer, right now?
I’m struggling as a person with PTSD specifically related to my experience not of being Black but of the world’s abuse and oppression of Black people. I’m struggling with trauma fatigue and a very noticeable reduction of mental and emotional bandwidth, which I suspect is true of everyone, whether or not they’re aware of it yet. And I still have to forge a career, and raise a son, and build and encourage and support and acknowledge him, and occasionally, because we are all home all of the time, I find that I am not processing for myself because I am mindful of how my presence and experience can further traumatize him. I think that’s major, and a lot of parents will have so much work to do, unpacking all of the things they couldn’t really respond to for themselves for concern of how that vulnerability might have impacted their kids. We won’t recover from this era quickly.
What books inspire you, and what are you reading right now?
Reading hasn’t been something I can do with pandemic distraction making prolonged concentration quite difficult, but I just yesterday read Tiffany D. Jackson’s Grown, which is forthcoming, and it was such a great read and reading experience. I followed the #MuteRKelly and Surviving R Kelly movement, and this book was really inspired by that documentary, and is so vital. There are conversations and overhauling work we need to do as a society, and I think so many young girls are going to be able to put a name on what’s been happening to them, on how they’ve been preyed on, on what grooming looks like.
Books like Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, and Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi, and Ring Shout by P.Djeli Clark inspire me. These authors of doing their own kind of magic, in the tradition I referenced before, and the stories are so vivid and vital and the worldbuilding is so lush, and the messages are so powerful. The level of their craft is not only inspiring, it’s rehabilitating for me.
What’s on the horizon for you?
So much, lol. Next year, I have two YA releases: A Chorus Rises, again from Tor Teen; and a Little Women remix from Feiwel & Friends. A Chorus Rises is something of a companion novel to A Song Below Water, and I’m so excited to dive even deeper into the nuanced experience and discussion of what it is to be a Black girl in this country, and in the world, through a familiar character. In 2022, my next adult novel releases with Harper, presently titled Cherish Farrah, and it’s pitched as Get Out meets My Sister the Serial Killer.