Slay by Brittney Morris ~ Book Review
ID: The book Slay by Brittney Morris. It has pink/purple cover with a picture of a Black girl.
Hello Friends,
Last night I finished Slay by Brittney Morris and I didn’t want to leave writing my review and thoughts of this book for next month. It’s kind of a long one as I have a few thoughts I felt I wanted to share and talk about. So maybe get yourself a cup of tea {or a beverage of your choice} and pace yourself as you read this.
Slay follows a 17 year old girl called Kiera and a video game that she not only plays, but actually developed. No one in her life knows this though and when a dispute results in the death of one of the players, not only is her identity in danger of being made know but also the future of her game.
Using the platform of the video game, Brittney Morris has done an incredible job of raising such important topics and conversation around race. The voices within this book are very powerful, every chapter gives you something to think about. If you’re White, it definitely helps you check your White privilege and makes you think about things that maybe you haven’t even thought about before or rather had to think about before.
Kiera, along with her sister and her boyfriend are the only Black people at their school. There are a few other people of colour who attend the school but it’s predominately a White school. This leads Kiera’s fellow schoolmates, including her White friend Harper and her brother Wyatt, to view her as the spokes person for the entire Black community. It’s like they expect her to have all the right answers on any topic related to Black people and that all Black people think the exact same thing about any given topic.
Along with discussions around that, there’s a lot of conservations around video games, because that is the main focus of the book. Kiera creates her game, Slay, because she wants to make a safe space for Black people to play a video game. She wants people to be able to create an character that looks like them and to play with others online without dealing with any racist comments from other players. Another thing that’s wonderful about the game, is that Kiera added things into it that honour all things related to Black culture and history. So while I was reading about how the game works, I also felt I was learning about aspects of black history and culture that I didn’t know about before.
When the future of the game comes into question after one of the players is murdered, there’s a lot talk around if the game is racist and exclusionary because it has a Black only policy. The language being used around the game and the players themselves, really highlights how many view Black people and Black communities in general and in many respects, it’s very eye opening.
I finished this book late last night but each night this week as I’ve been reading it, it’s really given me a lot to think about and I think it’s one of those books that will stay with me for a long time because of how much of an impact it’s had on me and a huge aspect of my life.
I’ve been playing video games since I was about 5 years old and never given how the characters look much thought. That is a White privilege because more often than not, the characters are usually White. I think the only darker skin characters I’ve ever played as are Aladdin and Mowgli in The Jungle Book. My thoughts eventually turned to Animal Crossing, which is the game I play the most.
When I started playing Wild World over 10 years ago, there was no option to change your skin colour, only your hair. Your character was White and that was that. The only time your skin would become darker was if you played a lot during the day in Summer. Your character would get a tan and the more you played the darker you became.
New Leaf was the same regarding skin and hair colour. The only new changes you could make were to your eye colour, which I was so excited about as I could finally have Blue eyes. I’d played Wild World with Brown eyes and there was no way to change them. But imagine being Black and having to play a game where you can only be White!
Then in 2017 when the spin off game, Pocket Camp came out for Mobile, the customisation for your character was a huge step forward! You could change your skin colour and be as light or dark are you wanted. Finally, you could make your character look like you. I remember being happy that I could now choose a shade of White that was light enough to match my very pale skin tone. The previous games shade weren’t quite right for me but they were still White and I was still playing as a character that looked like me. But I can’t even begin to imagine how it must have felt to all those people with darker skin tones, who have maybe played Animal Crossing for years and had to have a White character, to finally play with a “mini me” that actually looks like yourself!
Then when New Horizons came out in March this year, the same character customisations were added and this was a huge deal! This was the first ever main line Animal Crossing game to include a huge range of character customisation from the start. But again, imagine having to wait 10 plus years for that to happen and having to play as a White character when you’re a person of colour and the only time your character maybe resembled you was when you got a “tan” in Summer. That is not okay and it shouldn’t have been the norm for all those years.
But while the character customisation is a huge step in the right direction, in some cases, this has made the game less of a safe space for players. This takes us back to why Kiera created Slay and made it a Black people’s only game. She wanted to create a safe place for Black gamers and people, so they didn’t have to deal with racist comments from other players, something she speaks about experiencing in another game mentioned in the book. As she questions herself about whether the game could be seen as racist, she encounters people and players who thank her for creating a space where they can be their self and this helps Kiera know that making her game was absolutely the right thing do to.
There’s so much more I could go into regarding this book as the topics Brittney Morris as included are so important but this already a lot longer than my normal book reviews. All I will say, is that Slay is definitely a book that I would recommend everyone read, especially if you enjoy video games.
Have you read it? I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.
Stay Safe. Read a Book.
L x
