Why I Wanted Black Kids at the Center of a Fantasy World

I didn't create Zaylin because I wanted to make a statement.

I created him because I have kids. I created him because I wanted a Black boy to get to have the adventure.

Not as the best friend. Not as the character whose entire story is about being Black. Not as the person standing beside the chosen one.

I wanted him to be the one who found the pendant.

The one who crossed into another world. The one who was scared, curious, impulsive, stubborn, funny, overwhelmed, and occasionally very wrong.

The one whose choices mattered.

The one at the center of the story.

Loving Worlds That Didn't Always Look Like Me

I've always loved stories that could take me somewhere else.

There is something about fantasy that asks you to believe the impossible before you've even made it through the first few chapters. There can be hidden worlds, ancient magic, creatures you've never seen, histories stretching back thousands of years—and somehow, as readers, we accept all of it.

But for a long time, the people at the center of those adventures rarely looked like me.

That never stopped me from loving those stories. I didn't need a character to look like me to care about them or disappear into their world.

But there is a difference between being able to imagine yourself in someone else's story and actually seeing someone like you standing at the center of one.

When I started building Pendant of Echoes, I had the opportunity to create the kind of fantasy world I wanted to see.

So I did.

“Is That Me?”

I understood the importance of what I was creating in a completely different way when my seven-year-old son saw some of the concept art for Zaylin.

He looked at the picture and asked me:

“Is that me?”

It was such a simple question. He wasn't asking about representation. He wasn't thinking about publishing or fantasy tropes or who traditionally gets to be the hero in these kinds of stories.

He just saw a little Black boy at the center of a fantasy world and recognized himself.

And that stayed with me.

Because that's what I want.

I want a child to see Zaylin and feel like entering this world doesn't require some huge leap of imagination about whether someone like him could belong there. I want that possibility to feel so natural that his first thought can simply be, Is that me?

Because maybe it is.

Maybe that's part of the magic.

Zaylin Gets to Be a Kid

One of the things that matters most to me about Zaylin is that he gets to be twelve.

He doesn't enter the story carrying the responsibility of representing every Black boy. He doesn't have to be perfect to deserve his place at the center of the adventure.

He's curious.

He misses things that are right in front of him and notices things other people overlook. He makes decisions before he fully understands what those decisions might mean. He gets frustrated. He gets scared. Sometimes he gets it right. Sometimes he absolutely does not.

He is allowed to be complicated.

His Blackness is part of who he is, just as his family, his experiences, and the way his mind works are part of who he is. But being Black isn't the problem the story asks him to solve.

There are already stories that explore racism, discrimination, and the realities Black children navigate in the real world. Those stories matter.

But Black children deserve other stories, too.

They deserve magic.

They deserve ancient mysteries and impossible choices.

They deserve to discover that the strange object passed down through their family is actually something extraordinary.

They deserve to save worlds.

Building Asemi

That thinking didn't stop with Zaylin.

When Asemi began taking shape, I wanted Blackness to feel natural within the world rather than something I needed to explain.

The people of Asemi aren't one culture painted across an entire fantasy continent. Different regions have their own histories, traditions, relationships, beliefs, and ways of understanding the world around them.

And they don't exist simply to give Zaylin a magical place to visit.

Asemi existed before he arrived.

Its people have loved, fought, built families, made mistakes, protected traditions, forgotten things, and carried memories across generations. Zaylin enters a story that was already happening long before he knew Asemi existed.

That became important to me as the world grew.

I didn't want to create a fantasy world that happened to contain Black characters.

I wanted to create a fantasy world where Black characters belonged.

There is a difference.

Belonging Without Permission

Belonging sits at the heart of Pendant of Echoes.

Who do we belong to?

What connects us?

What do we inherit from the people who came before us?

What happens when those connections are forgotten?

Those questions shape Asemi, but they also shaped the way I thought about who deserved to occupy its center.

Because sometimes representation isn't about stopping the story to explain why someone's presence matters.

Sometimes it's simply about opening a book and finding them already there.

No justification.

No permission required.

A Black boy can inherit the mysterious pendant.

A Black girl can understand things everyone else has missed.

Black families can carry histories that reach across generations and worlds.

Black people can inhabit kingdoms, forests, coastlines, cities, legends, and magic without their existence needing an explanation.

They can simply belong.

The Story I Wanted to Put Into the World

I don't know exactly what every reader will take from Pendant of Echoes.

That's one of the beautiful things about books. Once a story leaves the writer's hands, readers bring their own experiences to it.

But I do know what I hope happens when a Black kid opens this one.

I hope they see Zaylin and never question whether someone who looks like them belongs in a fantasy world.

I hope they get frustrated with him sometimes.

I hope they laugh at him.

I hope they root for him.

I hope they argue about the decisions he makes and pick their favorite characters and imagine which part of Asemi they'd want to visit.

In other words, I hope they get to do what readers have always done with the fantasy stories they love.

I hope they get to simply enjoy the adventure.

Because Black children shouldn't have to leave themselves at the edge of a story to enter a world of magic.

This time, they're already at the center of it.

— Rasheda Sadler