Adeyemi First Half

Joshua Singh

Dr. Ellis

EN 376

16 October

Adeyemi First Half

Adeyemi introduces her protagonist in a unique way in Children of Blood and Bone. Zelie already is presented as an outcast, someone set apart from the rest of society through systemic and indoctrinated othering of a particular group of people within Orisha. Zelie’s diviner ancestry and white hair serve to denote her as Orishan’s societal outcast, and the king perpetuates this stereotype that Orishans must treat diviners as below them. Yemi, her sparring partner in the beginning of the novel, is described to have “much lighter skin…of Orishans who've never spent a day laboring in the sun, a privileged life funded by hush coin from a father she never met” (Adeyemi 4). The dynamic of othered diviners against privileged, controlling, and discriminatory Orishans is displayed early on.

One thing I noticed is her desire to strike back and resist the Orishans’ discrimination with violent acts. She’s very impulsive, emotional, and often dreams about what life would be like with her magic or if her mother had magic during the raid: “She chokes as they drag her from the hut like an animal, kicking and thrashing. Except this time, she could win. I close my eyes and let myself imagine what could have been” (Adeyemi 79). It is clear that her internalization of how society views diviners and her family has been so bottled up that she views magic as a way to seek vengeance and, in a way, inflict the same pain on Orishans as they had against her mother.

 

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