56 pages • 1 hour read
Eden RoyceRoot Magic
Eden RoyceFiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Learning Rootwork and Gullah Traditions
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of racially motivated violence.
Root Magic is the story of how Jez learns about rootwork and its connections to her Gullah Geechee and African heritage. In it, she comes to understand that the traditions associated with the practice of rootworking keep her family’s traditions alive. They also become a way of protecting her home in world that is not willing to accept what it cannot understand. This sense of history and tradition gives Jez a new sense of herself, making her proud to be Gullah and proud to be able to provide for her family through rootworking.
Royce quickly sets the tone in the novel by showing that rootworking is a natural part of Jez and Jay’s lives in South Carolina. Their grandmother and uncle’s practice of it is commonplace, and they are excited to learn. However, they don’t fully understand the depth of what they’re learning. By having Doc’s first lesson emphasize that “[i]f no one tells the stories anymore, if no one learns the magic anymore, our ways will disappear from the world,” they come to understand how important rootwork is to their heritage (19). Further, especially for Jez, this statement is most meaningful because she knows that Gran was a rootworker. In the wake of her funeral, Jez wants nothing more than to find ways to feel her grandmother’s presence still in her life.
However, Jez also has to contend with how certain aspects of rootworking will fit into her practice. When Doc introduces the fact that rootworkers will sometimes use the blood of or kill other animals, Jez is repulsed and refuses to accept it. Navigating the element of sacrifice within rootworking is important as Jez determines how she will use her magic. Her unwillingness is especially evident in letting Susie the boo-hag live. This choice ultimately pays off for Jez, but it also illustrates the difference between Jez, Doc, and Jay, who would’ve left the creature to die. Her alliance with Susie, however, also suggests that Jez will one day be an even better rootworker because of her openness.
Ultimately, Jez’s journey into the world of rootworking is a “connection to my ancestors, my traditions, and my heritage. It is a practice I share with people from hundreds of years ago” (293). Rootworking helps strengthen Jez’s sense of self and her pride in being a Turner. It doesn’t bother her as much that she doesn’t have a friend in school because she doesn’t feel lonely in other aspects of her life. Her connection with her family, brother, and even Susie helps her to feel like she can handle anything the world throws at her, and it is grounded in her Gullah Geechee heritage and her practice of root magic.
Racism in the Jim Crow South
Root Magic takes place in 1963, a tumultuous time before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the South especially, racism abounds, and Black families like the Turners have to contend with the reality that authorities like the police may enact violence upon them. In this novel, Eden Royce portrays this reality particularly through the conflict between Deputy Collins and Jez’s family, as he discriminates against them not only because they are they Black Americans but also because they are rootworkers. Rootwork and coming together to survive prove to be the best protection against Deputy Collins, as they are unable to rely on other authorities to stop the wayward police officer from harming Daniel, Doc, and others.
Police presence on the island hovers in the background throughout the novel, recurring through the persistent fear of Deputy Collins and the seemingly harmless visits made by Sheriff Edwards. The two officers represent two types of racism. Deputy Collins is overt, terrorizing the Turners and making them feel that they “couldn’t do anything to stop what was happening to us. Not without taking the chance one of us might get hurt” (16). He makes explicit references to hurting and even killing Black Americans, as when the deputy reveals that he killed Daniel Turner. However, Sheriff Edwards’ presence also symbolizes a type of racism experience in the Jim Crow South, the kind that is unwillingly to stand against more explicitly violent individuals like Deputy Collins. When Sheriff Edwards first comes to visit the Turners, apologizing for Deputy Collins’ search, Janey challenges him to arrest the other officer, but he says nothing. Edwards is unwilling to challenge the status quo, and Janey articulates what this inaction means for her family. She says, “Lynchings, beatings, and more than half the time, the police are right there when it happens. Or they’re the ones doing it. How are we supposed to live in this world and be safe?” (22). Jez comes to see root as the answer to both officers, knowing that she can use the practice to keep her family safe. It is what saves her, Doc, Janey, and Jay from Deputy Collins. Root is ultimately the answer to Edwards’s silence and complacency.
Jez also feels the effects of racism through the way that history is told. When Doc relays that part of root is keeping the Gullah Geechee cultures and traditions, he points to how Black American “history is told by people who don’t think we’re important. People who don’t think we make a different in the world. […] But we do matter. What we think matters. Our voices matter. And our stories matter too much to let someone else tell them. People need to know that” (40). Jay and Jez feel the lived consequences of this, knowing that white people “don’t want us to know we have heroes too,” erasing the stories of Black Americans from American history (95).
This erasure is also nuanced in that other members of the Black community tease Jez for coming from a family of rootworkers. Some Black Americans believe that anything that deviates from the norms established by white society will only serve to isolate them further, and so, because rootwork is different from what it is “normal,” those who practice it are strange. Doc tries to explain this to Jez by saying that “All skin folk ain’t kinfolk,” meaning that not every Black American will support rootworkers (140). They too want to ignore a past in which Black Americans were enslaved, seeing it as counterintuitive to moving forward as equal members of society.
Grappling With Grief
When the novel opens, Jez and her family are still reeling from Gran’s death, unsure exactly what their lives will look like now that the matriarch has passed away. Gran supported each character in different ways. For Jez, Gran was her best friend. For Doc, Gran was the expert rootworker. For Janey, Gran was her mother who also helped raise Jez and Jay. For Jay, Gran was another parental figure. Slowly, the Turners adjust to life without Gran, learning how to fill the gaps she left in their own ways while still also honoring her memory.
First, Jez has to contend with her loneliness and who she confides in now that Gran is gone. She knows that she will be teased in school, especially now that Jay is in a different class. At the start of the novel, she wants someone to be her friend at school, and while Susie temporarily fills that gap, it turns out that Jez needs to learn that she is not alone in general. She has to grow her rootworking abilities in order to see that she’d “found my connection to my family, my people, and my magic” (336). The magic itself is “something Gran had wanted” Jez and Jay to experience and that provides the impetus for Jez’s willingness to learn, but as Jez grows her ability, she encounters her ancestors through the spirit world, starting to practice for herself too. The confidence she builds up helps her to feel close to Gran and deal with that grief while also allowing her to move forward with her life.
Janey has already lost her husband, and now her mother is gone. Additionally, Gran’s death has a lot of practical implications for Janey, as she and Doc now have to pick up additional chores like cooking in the morning or being the sole rootworker available to help. Jez comes to appreciate this, knowing that her mother is doing her best in the wake of losing her own parent. Furthermore, the Turners as a whole pick up Gran’s responsibility to the community, delivering meals to those in need. For them, it is not only the right thing to do, but it is also a way to keep in contact with the late Annie Freedman.
Ultimately, Gran’s death shapes the way that each character believes in rootwork and themselves as they respond to the threat of violence from Deputy Collins. For Jay and Jez, this also means picking up rootworking, forcing them to become adults for fear that the police officer will do something harmful to them. At times they feel lost learning the new art, but they also come to see the ways that they can feel empowered by taking care of their family in a world that doesn’t seem to care about them. When the novel closes with the funeral for the twins’ father, all the Turners feel at peace, uniting together to hold hands.
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