Here, Portland not here, the Southwest Community Center, specifically. If the mythos is to be believed - and as far as any nonmagic people are concerned, most of it isn’t - I should be able to hear my grandmother here.Įarly sketches of the two friends show the evolution of the 'A Song Below Water' cover. The story goes that sirens originated by the water, that once we used our calls to damn seamen, and that when we die, our voices return to the sea.

The problem is I don’t know exactly what I’m listening for. It was one of the first things I learned when I finally found “the network,” so despite my lack of results thus far, I close my eyes now too. It’s never made a difference but it’s part of the ritual, and I guess it must mean something that I did it even before I knew there was a way for living sirens to listen for their dead. I always close my eyes, and today’s no exception. I’d stand on the cold sand, burrowing my toes beneath the surface as though there’d be some warmth there, and I’d listen. Back home I went to the beach on more than one cloudy day. It feels redundant to be at the pool on a rainy Saturday, even though it’s spring, and even though it’s Portland, but maybe I’m just more of a California snob than I want to be. Morrow has created a world full of ASL-using mermaids, gargoyles, and justice movements, and focused on a Black-centric narrative within it. Can these two friends keep their magic - and each other - safe, while still fighting against injustice?Ī Song Below Water is the social-justice-minded YA fantasy about mermaids and misogynoir that you've been waiting to read. Tavia has the support of her sister-friend, Effie - but she's also struggling with her demons. Tavia finds herself panicking, because her support for justice in Rhoda's case be used to identify her as a siren. Her world flips upside down when coverage of a news story she's been following about a Black woman killed by her boyfriend becomes complicated by the discovery that the victim may have been a siren.

Instead, she's stuck in a place with only a handful of Black folk, and a smaller few who have magic, like her. She should be able to hear her in Portland, where she lives, but she can't. Tavia just wants to hear her long-lost grandmother, who, siren myths have told her, can communicate with her through a body of water. In a world populated with creatures that are only myths in ours, Tavia is a siren - a girl whose powers are supposedly so great that she can lure men to their deaths.

Morrow's A Song Below Water, a young adult novel about Black sirens, is coming out next June, and you can start reading it right now.

If you're excited for The Little Mermaid reboot, have I got news for you: Bethany C.

A song below water bethany c morrow