Hidden Black Conjure University: Delinquents or “What the Hell is the Negro Spirit?”

I’ve always loved the narrative trope of beginning texts with the phrase “if you’re reading this…” I love the air of urgency that it adds to whatever the person reads, as if they were a spy on a secret mission, or the loved one of some person about to embark on a grand adventure. I like to think that the reader of this blogpost is such an audience, for while this does concern an entertaining story written primarily for the youth, this is also serious business.

If you’re reading this, you’ve likely encountered some reference to Delinquents or the narrative device underpinning it, the concept of a Negro Spirit. I confess that I may have been somewhat vague in expressing what either is in the past. But now that I’ve entered the final stages of writing Delinquents, created my website, and am promoting Aww…Sookie, Sookie, Now! I think it best to explain the matter further.

Hidden Black Conjure University is a series I’m developing, centered around students at an all-Black school of magic. Because it is quite a feat to get our people to agree on anything, the school has gone through a number of name changes throughout it’s history, but among the Negro Spirituals of the US and Caribbean, it’s known simply as The HBCU, the definitive HBCU. Other magical schools exist, other HBCUs exist, but The Noire Occult Laveau Academy is the only one specifically created to educate people in the ancient and modern mysteries of the Negro Spirit.

I devised the idea of the Hidden Black Conjure University at a time where the Black corner of Twitter was feeling especially nostalgic about a certain other magical school. Black netizens from across the country memed and headcannoned what it would be like if this certain school weren’t a primarily white institution in the United Kingdom, but a historically Black college in the United States. There were some parts I agreed with, and others I did not. In sharing my thoughts with some friends of mine, they helped me realized that I’d inadvertently built an entire little world. I did the only thing I could think to do in that case, and kept building and expanding on the idea, until finally I arrived at something far different than a reimagining of a popular magical school franchise.

Still, there are similarities that others may point out. The main character of Delinquents, Marquise Blood, is an orphan. And before the events of the first chapter of the book, he had no idea that magic was real or that he possessed magical ability. A mysterious stranger takes Marquise away from the adults in charge of him, and Marquise’s world expands beyond the confines of his previous philosophies of reason and logic. At school, he meets a boy and girl far more advanced in their magical studies than he, and the three of them begin a series of misadventures which land them in trouble. I think fans of that other series would rather appreciate these similarities, but if they are expecting a direct copy I fear they may be disappointed. For while that other series includes a smattering of Black characters, there is no influence of Black culture. The same cannot be said of Hidden Black Conjure University.

I did not intend to create a ‘Black’ version of that other series, exploring what magic would look like under Black culture. I wanted to explore what Black culture would look like in a world of magic. Underlying every decision I made in writing this story was the question “What would Black people do in a world of magic?” I didn’t just look to African spiritual communities for inspiration, I also looked to Black media, Black pop culture, folk culture, music, literature, fashion and humor. I thought about how much of who we are connects us to our Family across the globe, even in ways which are not always obvious to us. I considered that adage among Black spiritual people that many African languages have no word which translates directly to “religion” (debateable), and how identity among Black people is inherently tied to the spiritual and religious beliefs that we create and are raised with. And in exploring all these Black things, I stumbled upon an idea: The Negro Spirirt.

In speculative fiction, it’s not uncommon for magical systems to be divisive. ‘Magic’ is one thing, but science, art, culture, and religion are often other things, sometimes related and other times not. Some people ‘have’ magic, but others don’t, those are the mundanes, the muggles, the humans. Where the Negro Spirit differs is that it unites Black people. All things created by Black people become part of the Negro Spirit, and the Spirit empowers everything Black people do. It’s the collective conscious and unconscious of Black people throughout the world. It is not essentialist; I don’t argue through it’s use that all Black people are the same. Rather, the Negro Spirit is a force born out of the necessary, strategic essentialism that Black people have had to practice to protect ourselves in an anti-Black world. It is the Negro Spirit which compelled various West African people under slavery to play their music together and create what would eventually become Jazz, Rock, and Hip-Hop. The Negro Spirit then helped spread this music throughout the Diaspora, and later throughout the continent. Because of the Negro Spirit, there is Ethiopian jazz and South African rap. Because of the Negro Spirit, Black people from the Northern states rediscover Southern Hoodoo, and are still compelled to incorporate Egyptian figures on their altars. The Negro Spirit unites us in our assertions that both Piccolo and Jesus were Black men, and in our suspicions that Ben Carson may not be. In my anthropological work, I plan to explore the Negro Spirit along lines of cultural and political transnationalism, but in these tales of the Negro Spirit, it is magic.

This is what I offer to you in Delinquents and its sample chapter, Awww…Sookie, Sookie, Now! A world where Black people do not simply have magic, but where Blackness, Africaness, Niggatry and Hood Shit are all magic itself. I present a world where magic is an open secret among Black people, because it is all around us in different forms. Along with Marquise, you will learn that the Negro Spirit contains the power of Black hope, joy, and pride. In the later books, you will see that it is also the power of Black despair, trauma, and anger. Above all, I hope you will come to see in these stories that the Negro Spirit, like Blackness itself, is far too large for any one person to define. And so I hope that this story inspires not just a fandom, but a new focus in Black thought which dares and challenges us to reconsider how we’ve understood ourselves for so long.