Book Clubs

Resources for readers who want to take a deeper dive into THE BIRD TRIBE & THE DREAMBIRD CHRONICLES trilogy

Lucinda responds to questions she's received about the series.

Map Talks

In THE FREEDOM RACE "imaging a planting" can result in lashing, loppings, and even more severe punishment for seeds. But Ji-ji draws it anyway. Why risk so much?

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What was the catalyst for this series?

In my speculative Dreambird Chronicles trilogy, set in a near-future, characters live in a Disunited States poisoned by racial and cultural divides and environmental catastrophes. I've always been drawn to survival narratives, particularly as they relate to slavery, but I wanted to write a book that would also re-envision the myths that enabled African Diasporans to survive against all odds.

More than fifteen years ago, I began to worry that we were heading towards divisions so deep we may not be able to keep the country together. We didn't seem to be able to see each other, and the rural versus urban divide was growing. I wrote about this in an article published in The Hill in 2016 in which I tried to suggest that the divisions were more complex than we acknowledge. In the world of The Freedom Race, Flying the Coop, and The Bird Tribe, a bloody Civil War, known simply as "The Sequel" has led to multiple states seceding from the Union, and the establishment of an autonomous region in the heart of nation known as the Homestead Territories, where segregation and a re-envisioned plantation system hold sway.

I needed to find a genre large enough to accommodate a story as large as this. Speculative fiction seemed like a good choice because it allowed me to move freely inside an imagined space and time.