YA Author Tomi Adeyemi Wants To Show Black People 'They Can Be The Heroes'
First-time author Tomi Adeyemi channeled her outrage over shootings of unarmed black men by police into her young adult fantasy novel “Children of Blood and Bone.”
Here & Now‘s Robin Young talks with Adeyemi (@tomi_adeyemi) about the book, a bestseller that has been optioned for a film.
Interview Highlights
On what the book means to Adeyemi’s readers and fans
“When you’re writing for young adults, they take this seriously, and the stories they love, they will defend those stories. So it’s really an honor to write for such a passionate and engaged group.
“I think the other part is being black and doing something to really show black people that they can be the heroes, that they can ride the giant lion, that they can have that epic adventure and love story. There’s a collective ‘we’ in that identity, because when one black person wins, we feel like we all win, because we know what we’re fighting against.”
On how “The Hunger Games” influenced her writing
“My mission as a writer started after ‘The Hunger Games,’ after seeing the backlash against characters in the adaptation, just because they were black. It was like, ‘Oh, OK, well I’m going to write something so good and so black that even racists have to see it.’
“There’s always an intense backlash when a character that people, that at least was historically white, is
