Behind the Cover Afrinomenon

This week, we are going Behind the Cover with Roseanne A. Brown as we discuss A Song of Wraiths and Ruin! Roseanne first got the idea when she was walking back from a therapist appointment- thinking about everything she had gone through. She remembered thinking to herself, “If a ghost tried to possess me right now, they'd be like, “Oh, you have a lot going on in there. I don't like this. You could have this back.” There's so much to cover about this instant NYT Bestseller! We discuss her tweet that caught our attention, stigma towards mental health in the Black community and the impact Roseanne wanted to make with this book.

The Gilded Ones is what happens when the Dora Milaje of Black Panther were stuck in The Handmaid’s Tale fantasy and decide they weren’t going to take it anymore

The idea for The Gilded Ones came to Namina Forna while she attended Spelman College. She kept having dreams of a girl in Golden armor, on a battlefield and about to jump up and do things - but every time she wanted to make sense of it, the dream cut. So she decided to pen the dream to life on her pages making this book - one that embodied her rage at a society that objectified women and a story that drew from her experience growing up in a war-torn Sierra Leone. But this was a story no one said yes to until...

10 years later, Namina’s book The Gilded Ones is on the top of popular 2020 and 2021’s Most Anticipated book of the year. 

So what changed?

Let's look Behind the Cover!