Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting
Fiction / Ghana / Ages 10-14
Rick Riordan
2022
400
"After her home is attacked by shapeshifting vampires, twelve-year-old Serwa Boateng is sent to live with her aunt and cousin in Maryland, but the aspiring vampire hunter discovers that middle school is harder than it appears on television, especially when she has to avoid detention and turn her classmates into warriors before they become vampire food." Publisher
Catching a vampire is not easy work, but Serwa Boateng (sehr-WA bo-ah-TING) has been training to defeat vampires––or adze (ah-DJEH)–all her life. Blessed with divine wisdom by the great Ghanaian gods and goddess, Serwa and her vampire slayer parents are the best in the business. However, on Serwa’s 12th birthday, all their protective wards shatter, and the great obayifo (oh-bay-YEE-foh, black magic witch) Boahinmaa (bo-ah-hin-MAH-AH), ruptures the Boateng’s reality, and slayer life for Serwa gets complicated. Forced to hide in Rocky Gorge, Maryland, Serwa gathers a ragtag group of friends to stop an adze attack before the end of back to school night at Rocky Gorge Middle School!
As abomofuo (ah-boh-moh-FWO), Serwa and her parents are used to moving around; once an adze is taken care of in one town, it’s on to the next. With such an active life, Serwa’s parents homeschool her and tailor her life to be lived in a world of magic. But with the recent attack by Boahinmaa it was decided that Serwa would live with her Auntie Latricia and cousin Roxy in a place where magic hasn’t been detected for more than 100 years––since the last plantation burned down in Rocky Gorge. On the first day of school Serwa got detention for starting a food fight, the only other BIPOC students in the class also received detention, as the teacher assumed they were involved. Coming to be known as The Good Citizens Committee (GCC), they find themselves in a scrappy battle with the Rocky Gorge adze, nicknamed Bullseye, during their after school community service (the food fight was a big one). Confirmed that an adze is controlling the brain of someone in Rocky Gorge (the book leads us on to know that Rocky Gorge is very much laced with dormant magic), Serwa reveals to her soon-to-be new friends all about good and dark magic and that they are the last line of defense in this presumed sleepy Maryland town.
Following the hero’s journey formula, the reader follows Serwa and her friends through trials and tribulations as they are tested by the goddess Assase Yaa (ah-SAH-ah-say yah, mother earth) to prove to her that they are in fact ready to defeat the forces of evil. With Assase Yaa’s gifts, Serwa and her friends confront evil, their own insecurities, and battle to protect the people they love. When the reader thinks the book has found a resolution and Serwa can go back to her normal slayer life, we are wrong! Ending with the mother of all cliffhangers, the book ends with the Serwa’s world leaving behind the magic of divine wisdom as she embarks on a journey to discover the gray area of dark magic.
Rooted in fantasy and speculative fiction, Ghanaian American Roseanne A. Brown borrows from Ghanaian myth and mythology to write an adventure that helps readers better grasp Ghanaian culture, while also highlighting how hard American public school can be for BIPOC people and immigrants. Themes from the African and Black Diaspora are weaved together in a magical way making it relatable to any BIPOC child that has felt out-of-place in a school setting. What was fascinating about this book too was it never shied away from the hard topics about race. In one scene the GCC, which is made up of three Black kids, someone of Korean descent, and a child of Guatemalan immigrants, are discussing how different it is for Black people to live in a dominantly all white world versus Asian or Latino/a peoples, and how the treatment is different. This book for middle school children does a great job of taking these hard topics and distilling them so that middle schoolers can understand the realities of what it is like to live misplaced in a world. Lastly, it was incredible to read this book and learn about the variety of Ghanaian gods and goddesses. As children’s literature has been dominated by Western European mythology, it was refreshing to see the Global South’s world emerge and grow and expand in a book that we can all find ourselves in. Whether you are a vampire fanatic, mythology buff, or wanting more works that address race in a critical manner, this book has it all! This is a must read!
Sean Cameron Golden, Ph.D. Candidate
University of Minnesota–Twin Cities
Published in Africa Access Review (March 24, 2023)
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