She sees how eager the culture is to set the two of them, Tavia and Naema, against each other–not for who they are, two girls who don’t get along, but for what they represent: two Black girls, both magic, one good, one bad, because the culture doesn’t have enough love to give two different Black girls, which means of course that they never loved either of them in the first place. Every time Naema sees the positive press on Tavia, the movie that’s made about what happened in those days, it’s her attacker she’s seeing praised. But in between those two events, Tavia turned her to stone. Yes, she threatened Tavia and Effie (after years of protecting Tavia, a schoolmate she personally couldn’t stand).
Yes, Tavia’s song saved her and the other kids from being stone. There’s just one piece of the story that’s being left out: Naema’s story. Even her friends are talking about Tavia’s strength and bravery, telling and retelling the story of how Tavia’s song saved all the children in Portland who had been frozen in stone. Naema’s been uninvited from the network of protectors. Everyone knows, or thinks they know, that Naema threatened Tavia’s secrecy. Whereas in the olden days, Naema was part of a magical network that protected the secrecy of sirens’ identities (including Tavia’s), now she’s kind of an outcast. In the aftermath of the events of A Song Below Water, it’s suddenly become fashionable to be a siren. It opens not long after the climactic events in A Chorus Rises, focusing on mean girl Naema and her lasting trauma over having been turned to stone by Tavia’s sister Effie, a gorgon.
It is no coincidence that only Black girls and women can be sirens.Ī Chorus Rises is a companion novel in the best, best way. While the world is friendly to some types of magic–particularly the charming and melodical eloko, of which Tavia’s school’s resident mean girl Naema is one–they’re acutely hostile to sirens.
The heroine of A Song Below Water is a siren, though she dedicates a lot of energy to hiding this fact about herself.
Anyone who didn’t read A Song Below Water last year missed a trick, and I would also like to report that I, while reading it, missed a trick.
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