My Reality: A Guest Post by Kamilah Cole
Atmospheric and thrilling, this haunting tale bends logic and reason. When the past resurfaces, Ellory Morgan must piece together the truth to finally understand where she belongs. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Kamilah Cole on writing An Arcane Inheritance.
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An Arcane Inheritance (Deluxe Edition)
An Arcane Inheritance (Deluxe Edition)
By Kamilah Cole
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$14.24
$18.99
Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones—and forbidden magic—of its most prized BIPOC students…hiding the rot of a secret society that will do anything to keep their own powers burning bright. No matter who they must sacrifice along the way.
Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones—and forbidden magic—of its most prized BIPOC students…hiding the rot of a secret society that will do anything to keep their own powers burning bright. No matter who they must sacrifice along the way.
From a young age, I was convinced that I lived in a fake reality.
I was not a dark-skinned Jamaican-American immigrant with a “weird” accent and “weirder” food, trying desperately to catch up to a culture I wasn’t born into while other children made fun of me during my entire journey to assimilation. I was a fairy adopted by a human family, waiting to be reclaimed. I was a young witch, waiting for her magical powers to assert themselves. I was a princess in hiding, waiting to become famous and beloved.
It’s probably no surprise, then, that my Adult debut, An Arcane Inheritance, uses my main character, Ellory Morgan, to ask “what if your world wasn’t real—and That Sucks Actually?”
After attending pre-K in Jamaica, I was educated in America from kindergarten to college. As an international student can tell you, America’s approach to academics is very unique. From my research for this book, that seems to hinge entirely on exclude anyone who wasn’t white, cisgender, and heterosexual from benefitting from the so-called American Dream.
The idea of such a thing—that, in America, any individual can work their way to the same success as any other—has lured many people to these shores, my own parents included.
But An Arcane Inheritance, like so many books before it, challenges that notion. Despite her intelligence, Ellory’s finances kept her from attending college for three years. Despite her acceptance to Warren University, Ellory’s lack of connections keeps her out of the rooms that would lead her to true success. And despite her hard work, everything she accomplishes is dismissed because of her skin color, her gender, or her origins.
The dark academia genre—which is one of the many that An Arcane Inheritance falls into—has always fascinated me because of what it highlights: that no two people, even if they attended the same school, had the same academic experience. There are so many layers and intersections that challenge the notion that “anyone can be successful”. There are so many invisible barriers that we, as a nation, still refuse to reckon with. There are so many authors who have tackled this exact notion with far more eloquence than I ever could.
But the fun of writing An Arcane Inheritance was finally getting to put words to the amorphous sense of unease I’ve felt since I first immigrated to this country. That sense that something is off, even though everyone has been perfectly nice. That I was on the outside of some truth that everyone else understood.
Writing An Arcane Inheritance healed something inside me that I hadn’t even known was broken. Writing Ellory reclaiming her power reminded me of how long it’s been since I had to pretend that there was a better life waiting for me on the fringes of my reality.
And sharing this book with you is my promise that you are stronger than any force that seeks to take you down—and you always have been.