By Ellie Simmers | Assistant Editor
“I wanted to write fluff so badly—and I failed,” joked Jordan Ifueko, the New York Times bestselling author of the Raybearer series and the Disney Marvel comic, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, during her recent appearance at the University of Lynchburg’s Thornton Reading.
Ifueko, known for her gripping young adult fantasy novels that explore themes of power, identity, and social justice, emphasized her desire to write a “fun one”—but admitted she consistently ended up tackling more serious themes, especially in her most recent novel, The Maid and the Crocodile.
Dr. Aubrey Plourde, an associate professor of English at the university, introduced the author, emphasizing what makes Ifueko stand out among fantasy writers.
“Her projects stage some of the most urgent problems of our world–structural inequity, white supremacy, imperialism and our lack of vocabulary for understanding difference–and she does so by neither avoiding these urgent issues or resolving them too easily,” said Plourde. She continued, “In her hands, the genre of high fantasy retains some of its attractions: elaborately imagined cultures, very cool magic systems, and heroic figures, and it also asks and answers questions about how to deal with the legacies that we have inherited.”
Her exploration of power and legacies is especially evident in her Raybearer series, which takes place in a world similar to ours, but on a Pangea-like continent. The series follows a diverse group of young adults groomed to rule an empire. As Ifueko explained, when she first started building this world and story, she wanted to paint a picture of powerful youth, particularly highlighting those who defy the typical “single story” of Black characters that are often seen in media.
“If you have so many stories that are about your struggle and your oppression and none about your magic, your majesty, and your power, that affects how children and even adults begin to see you.” said Ifueko, presenting a narrative that centers the power and complexity of Black characters, rather than the stories of oppression that typically dominate the shelves.
However, Ifueko’s perspective evolved as she witnessed the labor movement sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed the disparity between essential workers and their compensation.
“If the people who are essential to our survival—healthcare workers, sanitation workers, grocery clerks—are paid the least, then that shows you the madness of a system in which the people we depend on most are treated as disposable,” Ifueko said. “Eventually, I knew I would need to come back to my world and explore it from the very bottom,” she explained, noting that she revisited her universe in The Maid and The Crocodile to tackle these disparities.
The Maid and The Crocodile, the novel that Ifueko read excerpts from during the reading, shifts the focus in the storytelling of the Aritsar Empire from the powerful elite to the lives of those at the bottom of the societal ladder. By revisiting the bottom rungs of the society she created, Ifueko not only challenges her readers to reconsider who holds power but also forces readers to confront the realities of injustice that pervade our world head on.
Ifueko also shared that The Maid and The Crocodile is loosely inspired by Howl’s Moving Castle, both the book and the beloved Studio Ghibli film. “This is a story about a young, very pragmatic-to-a-fault girl who is so convinced of her own inferiority that she does not step into her power,” said Ifueko. “But she realizes that she cannot step into power without joining hands with a community of other people who are workers. This is a love story to the working class of fantasy, and of course, by extension, the real world.”
The protagonist of The Maid and The Crocodile is joined by an immortal, powerful man who, much like the character of Howl, challenges her ideas and contributes to the story’s rich exploration of power dynamics. “Like in Howl’s Moving Castle, the romantic interest of The Maid and The Crocodile is a beautiful, powerful, and utterly useless immortal man,” Ifueko said with a laugh.
Her creative work doesn’t stop with the Raybearer universe, as Ifueko was invited to write a one-issue run for Disney Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, a comic series turned TV show about a young Black girl genius whose brain is linked to a dinosaur. “Marvel reached out after I wrote Raybearer and asked me to write one issue,” said Ifueko, introducing Lunella Lafayette, aka Moon Girl, a nine-year-old genius who, after accidentally summoning a dinosaur from another version of Earth, is now mind-linked to it, switching brains with the dinosaur every full moon.
While Marvel had established Lunella as a brilliant, tech-savvy character, Ifueko immediately noticed that her early characterization as a “girl genius” lacked depth and authenticity, especially regarding her race and personal vulnerabilities. “When I received Lunella, her parents didn’t have names, she didn’t have any friends,” Ifueko explained. “It’s great to have positive representation, but when a character’s life is one-note, you don’t get to explore her depth.”
Ifueko’s run on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur added nuance and depth to Lunella’s previously flat character by showing her growth as a brilliant inventor and as a young girl learning the value of friendship and community. One key plot point in Ifueko’s storyline introduced an online influencer, secretly an alien, who attempts to control the minds of young people through a hair relaxer called Sparkle Straight. “This hair relaxer has nanobots in it, which control your mind when you wash your hair with it,” Ifueko explained. “This storyline is loosely inspired by the real-world pressure on Black children, especially Black girls, to tame their natural hair with harsh chemicals like relaxers.”
Chemical hair treatments, like the relaxers referenced in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, are still widely used despite the health risks, including links to uterine cancer. “It was really cool to take that harmful thing from the real world and play with it in a fun comic format,” Ifueko said.
Differing from the traditional fantasies that offer an easy escape from the complexities and issues of the real world, Ifueko’s work tackles the issues that shape societies today. While high fantasy often delivers a neat, tidy resolution, one in which justice prevails and society heals, Ifueko’s stories use the genre’s beloved elements, like intricate world-building and magical systems, to encourage her readers to reflect on the world they live in, rather than offering a simple escape.
By intertwining the magic of traditional fantasy with social commentary, Ifueko redefines the genre, showing that fantasy can be both an escape and a platform for discussing the realities of the world. She pushes her readers to ask, “How can we defeat the villain?” but also, “What systems must we dismantle to build a more just world?” Through her work, Jordan Ifueko proves that fantasy can be more than an escape—it can be a call to action.
For more information about Jordan Ifeuko and her work, visit her website
