‘Legendborn’ Review: Even When Magic Exists, You May Still be the Only Black Girl in the Room

What a Way to Open Tracey Deonn’s Legendborn opens to death. Black Death. Sixteen year-old Bree Matthews is stunned by the news that her beloved mother has left this earthly plane of existence tragically, by way of a car accident. She can recall feeling like the world has stopped, for her, it has as she sits in the hospital with her father trying to process this new world. This new world without her mother. It is a perhaps a risky way to start a novel and a heartbreaking circumstance in which to introduce our protagonist Bree, who is attempting to move forward while trying to forget who she was before this tragedy.  I want to paraphrase a quote that in my heart I want to attribute to Jason Reynolds or Jacquline Woodson (Heaven help and forgive me if it is neither one of them!) :  “When I start writing, I begin with a trauma and work through 200 pages of getting to the heart of it to bring  healing.” I thought of these words as I pressed forward and thought of the bigger picture. I thought of how this tragic event had an interesting event towards the end of this soul compressing event at the hospital: Bree, on this night saw a bit of magic. On a night when her world was ending, she was seeing a bit of what would shape her life in the world to come, this new world without her mother–this new world of figuring out who she is now, this new normalcy. It is a situation that so many of us are finding ourselves in now, and Bree’s story comes at a relevant time when ev…