For her debut novel, Wings of Ebony, Houston writer J. Elle teamed up with children's book editor and publisher Denene Millner to help Black girls find their wings.
By Kelundra Smith
“Bullets don’t have names.” Writer J. Elle heard her grandmother say these words so often when she was growing up in Houston that they became the beginning of her debut novel, Wings of Ebony. For protagonist Rue, there might be a bullet waiting for her, since she’s upset the Chancellor of Ghizon. She’d never even heard of this magical, imaginary place hundreds of miles off the coast of Madagascar until her mother was killed and the father she’d never met took her there to live with him.
In Ghizon, she discovers she’s part human, part magical being, but she was forced to leave her younger sister, Tasha, behind in her old neighborhood. Determined to get back to Tasha, Rue and her new friend Bri figure out a way to bring magic to the human realm, but not without consequences. With the Ghizonis at her heels, Tasha’s life in danger, and external magic not being what she thought it would be, Rue must depend on the power within her and her community to survive.
In Wings of Ebony, Elle pays homage to the community that raised her and to the tenacious, indomitable spirit of Black girls everywhere. She says she especially wanted to reach her two teenage sisters, who struggle to see themselves in books — something to which Elle can relate. Growing up, Elle says, she was bused to a private school across town where her “nickname was n------ throughout all of the third grade.” That experience, coupled with reading lists that contained only books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, fueled Elle to want to infuse more diverse narratives into the world.
“I read a ton of Goosebumps when I was little, but there wasn’t really YA [young adult] when I was a kid,” Elle says. “You went from middle-grade books to Eric Jerome Dickey and Sister Souljah. There weren’t books that allowed me to engage with coming-of-age narratives.”
Growing up in Houston’s 3rd Ward in the ’90s, being alert and aware of danger were essential for survival. At the same time, the community looked out for and supported each other — a spirit that Elle has carried with her as an educator and, now, young adult fiction novelist.
Elle’s book is written as part mystery, part superhero action thriller, which is a rare setting to have a Black girl at its center. As a lifelong lover of YA novels, I thought about the books I read as a girl. I jumped from African American picture books such as Boundless Grace, At the Crossroads, and Saturday at the New You to a whitewashed YA space. Many of the books I read and loved told coming-of-age stories from the perspective of white girls. Wings of Ebony is not about a girl who falls in and out of love with a boy, but rather about a girl who fiercely loves herself and her community. Wings of Ebony is the book I wish I’d had as a teen. It's written in African American Vernacular English, capturing the linguistic nuance that sounds like conversations between my friends and me. Rue doesn't code switch, and she stands up for what is right no matter the short-term consequences. She does not try to make her Blackness palatable, because for her that would dim her inner magic.
“When I was thinking of Rue, I didn’t think of her as a superhero,” Elle says. “I thought of her as a girl from my hood. The essence of a superhero is someone who is seemingly capable of things ordinary people are not. I wanted to normalize that … regular Black people are magical. I wanted to normalize this idea of what being super means in everyday life.”
Wings of Ebony caught the attention of Atlanta-based journalist, author, and publisher Denene Millner and is the first young adult novel under her Simon & Schuster imprint, Denene Millner Books. Elle participated in #DVpit, a Twitter book-pitching event for writers from historically underrepresented groups who don’t have agents. In her tweeted pitch, Elle described the novel as The Hate U Give meets Wonder Woman in a Black Panther world. Nearly two dozen publishers expressed interest, but Millner was the first.
Creating positive images for Black children through books is Millner’s passion. She started her site MyBrownBaby as a parenting blog for Black mothers. Her own search for books for her two daughters spawned her interest in writing and publishing books that speak to the experiences of Black children while preserving their innocence.
“When you think about Black children’s books, you tend to have books about the civil rights movement or slavery, but not about everyday Black existence,” Millner says. “I care about our history, but I’m not necessarily trying to read those stories when I’m putting my daughter to sleep at night.”
Picture books have been her main focus with Denene Millner Books, but Millner says that the mix of magic and grit in Wings of Ebony excited her. Her hope is that it also awakens something in the kids who read it.
“You may not have magic coming out of your fingertips, but the passion and strength [Rue] finds in herself are important to a community,” Millner says. “You have magic to bring a community together and help.”
For Elle, it was just as important for her to work with a Black editor on the novel. She says she wanted to work with someone who was as invested as she was in providing positive representation for Black girls and who would understand the language of the novel.
For both of them, it was important to collaborate with an illustrator who would honor the girl power in the book. The two selected Jamaican-born visual artist Taj Francis, who also created digital cover art for “Lovecraft Country,” because of his fantastical, colorful style. Millner says that they were deliberate in making sure that Rue had “chocolate skin and kinky hair.” Elle also wanted to dress Rue in a black hoodie to honor Trayvon Martin and give Black teens a chance to reclaim the hoodie, which in the book allows Rue to move between worlds.
From the first pitch to the book’s now becoming a Junior Library Guild selection, Elle’s intention has been to uplift Black girls.
“Rue is every Black girl who has ever felt that the world sees them a certain way and all they want is the freedom to be themselves,” Elle says. “Rue is who I want my two [daughters] to be — tough, strong, and aware.”
The sequel to Wings of Ebony is set to come out next spring. Elle says that in Ashes of Gold, readers can expect favorite characters to return, and some new ones. I look forward to seeing Rue's wingspan continue to widen as she lives by her own rules.
Kelundra Smith is a theater critic and arts journalist whose mission is to connect people to cultural experiences and each other. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, Food & Wine, American Theatre, and elsewhere. She is the co-chair of the American Theatre Critics Association EDI Committee, and she also teaches workshops about addressing cultural identity in cultural criticism at theaters and universities across the country. Follow her on Instagram @anotherpieceofkay for musings on life, art, and everything else.
