A review by laura_sackton
Brooms by Jasmine Walls

I loved this! It’s a graphic novel set in 1920s Mississippi, where there is magic, and everyone loves broom racing with magic, but Black people and Indigenous people are not only forbidden from doing magic but also from racing, so there are all these illegal races that take place. The story is about two Indigenous sisters who are at the age when their magic is discovered, and are about to be taken to a residential school. In order to raise money to pay off the gov agents, their cousin gets them a spot on a broom racing team. And the racing team is this beautiful found family of queer and trans BIPOC folks. 

I love how the authors use magic in this—how the racism and segregation that exist in the world are just extended to magic because there happens to be magic. Everything about this novel feels so realistic, like there's nothing magic about it, because the struggles the characters are facing all have to do with keeping each other safe, avoiding being the target of racist laws, trying to get money to survive in a corrupt system, etc. All of their emotional messes come from everything in the real world: the stress of keeping each other safe, the joy of finding each other and building family together.

I love books like this that tell these hard and beautiful stories about the world we live in but do it with a twist. The magic bit was really fun, the broom racing so cool, esp. the illustrations and art for the races, it was just a good time, but that didn’t take away from how serious it all is. 

Just beautifully done. There’s an epilogue and back matter with

newspaper clippings about what happens to all the characters through the 1980s or so, with laws changing, one of them becoming an Olympic broom racer and also using her fame to protest, another one becoming a famous broom maker, etc. And it was so moving to see real history reflected in this alt-history of a US with magic, and it also connected the ongoing struggle, like it was hopeful in that a lot has changed, but also a reminder that so many of these things that the characters in this book faced we are still fighting against today.