They have to have male guardians accompanying them at all times, and wear African masks once they come of age to show that they have been proven pure by the Ritual of Purity. The Gilded Ones is a feminist fantasy, so, in the world of Otera, women are inferior to men and three steps behind them. In addition, I constructed Otera as a supremely patriarchal place.

I wanted to make sure that my world was diverse, but that in this diversity, everything had a noticeably West African flair.

I conceived of Otera, the world in my book, as a global empire, one that would stretch across three continents and imagine that West Africa – particularly Nigeria and Sierra Leone – conquered the globe instead of vice versa. This was the early 2010’s, way before Black Panther and other works like it were even a thought. The idea of The Gilded Ones came from a dream I had while I was doing my undergraduate studies at Spelman College, but I didn’t get started writing until a couple of years later. Then actual demons invade, and the alaki are given a choice: fight or die. When Deka is proven impure, she’s told that she’s an alaki (pronounced a-la-key), a member of a group of girls who are considered demons because they bleed gold and are faster and stronger than regular people. It’s set in an African-inspired fantasy world called Otera and follows a young girl, Deka, who lives in a world where every sixteen-year-old girl must go through a ritual to determine if they’re pure or not. A post shared by Namina Forna YA novel, The Gilded Ones, debuted in February 2021.

The gilded ones book