Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable True Story of a Teenage Wizard by Echo Brown (review)

Echo Brown is twelve when she realizes that she, like her mother, is a wizard, and that her ability to tap into the "in-between" might be the only way she'll be able to steer herself through the poverty and pain of Cleveland's East Side neighborhood. This connection to something outside of her reality allows her to witness her mother's spiral into drugs with compassion; to attempt to guide her younger brothers away from a life of crime and violence; to withstand the pain of losing the boy she loves; to survive her own rape; and to ultimately find confidence in her creativity, agency in her Blackness, and a path toward an empowering future. The timeline shifts among different points in Echo's life like a dream (sometimes nightmare) sequence, and though the dialogue is occasionally stiff and workmanlike, Brown's prose is searingly beautiful and painful in its imagery: "The fifth lesson of wizard training is everything you have buried inside will rise from the dead one day. Nothing can stop you from bleeding over into the corridors of your own flesh." The relationships between Echo and other wizards—all women of color, all with their own tragedies—are messily complex and authentic, replete with blame and shame, and pointing toward the unceasing ripples of intergenerational trauma and systemic racism and misogyny. The magical realism element presents a type of spiritualty built on forgiveness and resilience, but Echo's suffering at the hands of those more powerful than her is honestly told with brutal authenticity and tender compassion. Tough but furious she has to be so tough, loving but too often disappointed by those she loves, Echo is an unforgettable heroine, and her tale makes a compelling counterpart to Nikki Grimes' memoir, Ordinary Hazards (BCCB 10/19), or a first step toward Octavia Butler.