Voya is sixteen years old. She has ebony skin and very dark brown eyes, almost black. She is five feet tall with wide hips and a generous butt. She has a full head of kinky curly hair. She is descended from enslaved people who fled the American south with the help of their magical gifts on one side, and who left Trinidad for Canada on the other side.
She is intimately aware of the content of her mind, and less so of her body and the space she occupies. She talks about knocking into things with her hips after going through puberty. She connects with her body during moments when she is overwhelmed by a feeling, like when her cheeks or face warm in embarrassment or when her eyes narrow in anger, but less so in her day to day life.
While she generally moves through the world from a place of self-consciousness, the kitchen is the place where she feels the most comfortable and the most grounded. We can see plenty of examples of this throughout the story, particularly as she prepares for the cooking competition she enters using a traditional Trinidadian meal. She moves into a space of play and experimentation when she is focused on cooking, rather than anxiety.
Voya is an anxious young woman whose mind races with every worried thought that pops into her brain. Her anxiety is evidenced by her indecisive nature, and her tendency to read criticism into other peoples’ neutral or well meaning advice, or even offhand comments or looks. She makes this observation of herself in contrast with her best friend.
“Where I try to plan everything, to struggle over what to do and where to go, Lauren lives without any maps, going wherever she feels like whenever.”
She prefers decisions be made for her by others or by fate because it gives her a false sense of security and a way out of living with the blame if there are unforeseen consequences.
“What must it be like to know exactly what you want? Whenever I try to imagine my future, I come up against a block. There’s always something in the way, and no matter what route I take, the end is a mystery. I keep thinking that my gift will solve everything, but what if it doesn’t? What if I don’t have that light bulb moment that helps me decide what it is that I want to do with my life?”
Unlike Voya and her family, I would trace her anxiety about who she is and how to live her life back to her mother and grandmother primarily, and her uncle and aunt to an extent. The lot are brash and loud and demanding. Voya and her family decided that the trauma of her parents’ divorce is the cause of her issues. Her grandmother calls her clingy, needy, and desperate for attention from anyone who will give it to her (gotta love that emotional abuse disguised as truth or wisdom), and blames this on her father’s leaving.
And while it is true that loss of a significant figure in someone’s life can significantly impact one’s confidence, it typically manifests in abandonment issues, which usually look like fear of disappointing others and intolerance of both emotional and physical distance.
In the home where she grew up without her father, Voya and her cousins are raised by adults who tell them what to do, who they should be, and how to see the world. They are often yelled at, and their tones and body language heavily policed for evidence of ‘disrespect.’
““Grandma doesn’t like salad.” Grandma harrumphs. “You could eat a bowl of salad the size of your head, and you’ll be hungry again in ten minutes. Eat some real food.””
It makes more sense that being subject to this narrow and authoritative kind of parenting leads to an internalization of those harsh and critical voices, leading to trouble making decisions, self doubt, obsession with right and wrong, and a fear of really bad things happening if one makes ‘wrong’ decisions.
Voya accepts this reality and does her best to adhere to the rules, even as she praises those around her like Luc or her cousin Keis for operating outside of these confines, and encourages them to embrace their own paths. She tries hard to please her grandmother through actions like making her favorite foods. She is also afraid of her grandmother but believes that fear is actually respect for her as the matriarch of the family.
That seems to be the prevailing message from adults to children. Respect is demanded and it’s a one way street. We see this in the way the younger members of the family are not allowed to question the older ones or have emotional reactions to their circumstances without being punished or berated. They are praised when they follow orders or do something pleasing, like Voya cooking up all those delicious meals.
For someone who gives quite a bit of lip service to hating oppression and unfair treatment of others, Voya manages to look the other way when it comes to the unfair and ridiculous practices around becoming a full fledged witch. Like many people who operate under oppressive systems, she wants acceptance and inclusion, and fears being ostracized, while also being painfully aware of the unfair and dangerous nature of the system.
She talks about how much family means to her and how hard she’s fighting for a way to become a witch and to continue being a part of the family. But she also criticizes the community for its rigidity and poor treatment of those who don’t become witches. She’s fighting for the very same belonging she criticizes them for bestowing.
Her very obvious and completely understandable hypocrisy is addressed and explained away at the end of the story when she becomes the matriarch of her family, and vows to be the change she wants to see.
Mini Analysis of Cousins Keis and Keisha:
Keis: The mind reader with high intelligence who hides away in knowledge and can often be seen correcting and judging those around her. She is obsessively focused on studying, and it seems she doesn’t do much outside of that.
She doesn’t care much about how she looks or about making friends and dating. She wants to use her intelligence to take care of herself rather than relying on magic and her family.
Keisha: The model with the perfect hair and clothes, and the careful diet (disordered eating patterns that are addressed by the family with criticism). She goes on tons of dates but is perpetually single, waiting for the spark, and for her it only seems to happen when the person has moved on.
Finds her dates’ attempts at closeness and intimacy to be smothering and annoying. Probably uses the same perfectionstic lens for herself to look at her dates, and sees all their flaws until they back away, giving her enough space to remember why she liked them to start.
Both of Voya’s twin cousins serve as further evidence of my understanding that their family system is on the unhealthy side, even as she persists in romanticizing it. They both relate to others in a way that prevents them from forming strong intimate bonds.
In Keisha’s case she is hot and cold, though her behavior is explained away as her being demiromantic- a person who develops attraction for someone once a friendship has been established. Which is not that same as someone who is hypercritical of potential partners until they get fed up and leave, followed by a resurfacing of the initial fond feelings. That’s a relational trauma response. As is Keis’s cold and hyper-independent nature, and her avoidance of forming relationships outside of the ones she had no choice but to form (family).
I’m curious to see how Voya and her family evolve in the sequel.
by Shell | scribbles and sketches