A CHORUS RISES

A 17-year-old magical influencer tries to recover after her life is turned upside down.

With “perfect deep brown skin, big eyes and thick eyelashes,” Naema Bradshaw embodies what it is to be an Eloko: an attractive magical being with the ability to charm people with her melody. After Naema is Stoned, “the thing where you’re consumed by gray rock due to a gorgon’s curse, not the more fun thing where you’re high,” by Effie Freeman, a teenage gorgon under the influence of her best friend Tavia Philips’ siren call, Naema finds her popularity sullied. Some claim that she callously and dangerously outed Tavia as a siren. Frustrated with a lack of empathy at home and concerned about a magical wind that has been whipping through her body since her Stoning, Naema heads to a family reunion in the Southwest to recuperate. In the quiet away from Portland, Oregon, she learns to listen and understand that her Elokoness doesn’t disconnect her from racism or from the responsibility to protect other Black women who are being targeted in her name. The story builds slowly but includes timely humor and deep introspection. Morrow unpacks the ways Black women are exploited and pitted against each other by a society that despises their magic—in all its forms. She brilliantly shows her protagonists learning to communicate and collaborate to rightfully disrupt that same society.

Considered and focused, this book encourages readers to look inside to help their truths rise.