Cover Reveal for Rise of the Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste
I am honored and ecstatic and OVER THE MOON to turn over my blog for the day to Tracey Baptiste. Congratulations, Tracey! I cannot wait to read Rise of the Jumbies, the sequel to The Jumbies.
Black mermaids.
They exist. With their full hips, and their elaborately braided
hair.
Though dark-skinned mermaids are largely absent from popular
culture, these creatures are not exclusively European. African, Caribbean,
Native, Latino, and North and South Asian cultures all have stories of these
lithe, graceful creatures. But Google images of mermaids and you are more
likely to find skin tones of blue and green than brown. If images allow us to
see possibilities, being brown and a mermaid seems incompatible. People of
color have been ascribed “magical” roles in popular culture while being simultaneously
held apart from a childhood of magical creatures—especially those that evoke
beauty and wonder.
On the cover of RISE OF THE JUMBIES they are bright, gorgeous, and
represent the spirit of sirens, calling more readers to wade into the magic.
In this sequel, Corinne LaMer comes face to face with danger once
again. After defeating Severine, things haven’t gone back to normal in her
Caribbean island home. Everyone knows Corinne is half-jumbie, and many of her
neighbors treat her with mistrust. When local children begin to go missing,
snatched from the beach and vanishing into wells, suspicious eyes turn to
Corinne.
To rescue the missing children and clear her own name, Corinne
goes deep into the ocean to find Mama D’Leau, the dangerous jumbie who rules
the sea. But Mama D’Leau’s help comes with a price. Corinne and her friends
Dru, Bouki, and Malik must travel with mermaids across the ocean to the shores
of Ghana to fetch a powerful object for Mama D’Leau.
The only thing more perilous than Corinne’s adventures across the
sea id the foe that waits for her back home.
Enormous thanks to Vivienne To for capturing my vision of
Afro-Caribbean mermaids, the entire team at Algonquin, especially Elise Howard
and Sarah Alpert who kept me in the loop from initial sketches to final art,
and to John Schu for hosting the cover reveal.
Thanks for doing the cover reveal! Nice job with the teasers yesterday. Even I was hyperventilating!
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing the cover reveal! Nice job with the teasers yesterday. Even I was hyperventilating!
ReplyDeleteI cannot wait to read this book and I LOVE the cover. In BAYOU MAGIC there are black mermaids. While I write about Louisiana, I knew about Caribbean and South American black mermaids (all purported to have accompanied the captured Africans to the New World). I highly recommend the museum book Mami Wata ("mother water"): Arts for Water Spirits in African and its Diasporas based upon an exhibit curated by UCLA's Fowler Museum and then shown again in 2009 at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and in 2011 at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford.
ReplyDeleteBravo Ms. Baptiste!!! Cheers, Mr. Schu! Thank you for telling & spreading diverse stories.
Sounds like another winner!
ReplyDelete