The Making of Saturday Magic:

A Behind-the-Scenes with Co-Author Nyasha Williams

As we close off Black History Month for 2024 and welcome Black Children's Book Week, I wanted to share more about one of my books coming out this year. I have two pub dates this year. One is the book I co-authored with my mother-in-love, my husband's mom, Kenda Bell, and we wrote Saturday Magic. The other book I have coming out this year is a seek-and-find book, so think, Where's Waldo?, but diverse because I had yet to see Black representation in seek-and-find books. Where is Koketso? comes out at the end of this year. I wanted a playful book that visually challenged what has been done and seen. 

I speak that my work ripples out as a catalyst for present and future dreamers to be inspired, critique, and create beyond. 

You can pre-order Saturday Magic and Where is Koketso?. Pre-orders are super important for authors because it informs publishers of interest in an author, lets them know they made a good choice in investing in us as an author, and shows that there's demand for the book, which helps get the book into more spaces. Target, Barnes and Noble, and tons of different bookstores are more likely to pick the book up if they see that the pre-orders are doing well. 

My mother-in-law was a huge part of my spiritual awakening, and while I believe we have many spiritual awakenings in our lives, she was part of the one that encouraged me to step into Ancestral Veneration, so it seemed very suitable to collaborate on this project. It is the second co-authored project I have traditionally published. The first was my Oracle Deck with my sister, Grace Banda. Together, we wrote our Oracle deck, Elemental Alchemist, which came out in the fall of 2023.

Saturday Magic is about highlighting our practices in working with our Ancestors. It centers on being in connection with one's Ancestors through a child's point of view and moving in relationship with their neighborhood and family. That's the roots of where the story started stemming from for the both of us.

Ways to support me as an author:

• Subscribe to my Substack 

• Pre-order my upcoming books: Saturday Magic / Where is Koketso?

• Support around starting my publishing company 

I am working on building a publishing company, Fire + Honey Press. There are so many needs in the publishing world regarding the evolution of the systems that are the current state of publishing.

The publishing is still super white. What's being published is still stuck in old paradigms. I want to be a spark toward transformation in literature and publish to people that traditional publishing wouldn't take on due to the risk of their bottom line. It's always about money, profit, and editing stories for their audiences. Editing stories to what is palatable to the white world because we are still measuring things based on these systems. Looking at success in terms of whiteness. I am intentionally shedding and breaking free of that, which is the work I'm doing right now. 

Belief in psychic events such as precognitive dreams or predictive dreams is high in the general population of the United States and Still higher within the Black community. It is not that the dreams of Black people are different per se, but their belief in their dreams and weight in the importance of dreams is deeply abundant. The first time I experienced a person who regularly had dreams that would come to realization, dreams signing to them in terms of what's coming next or what's about to happen, was when I started teaching kindergarten while living in Baltimore. 

I had a Jamaican colleague who was also teaching kindergarten. I often reflect on our conversations as we'd go to cosmic spaces, which was immensely welcome as I stepped into my Blackness. She was Christian and wary of tarot and divination tools but had a gift of dreaming and understanding her dreams, which ran in her family's maternal line. 

When I first started dating my husband, I remember wanting a sign of clarity that he was correct for me. As much as I felt it right, I wanted affirmation outside of myself. I remember speaking to my friend and describing how she told me she is messaged to in her dreams and works with her dreams. And so I asked her, can you ask for a sign for us? Are we correct? Are we meant to be? 

I remember her response about a week later. She told me she dreamt of a bathtub and two water bugs coming out. 

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She said at first, she was very uncomfortable with it because cockroaches, and water bugs, stressed her out, and she was freaking out about them. But when she sat with the dream and what it meant, she said the reality is those creatures outlive everything; they do not die. When we think about crazy situations where all life was wiped out, this life still exists. So that's how she received for us around the solidity of our relationship. I also understood that it was not always going to be easy and that we would not be for everyone, but understanding that it would be long-lasting. I think of her dream-share often in having another kind of love with my husband. When they walk into relationships, most people walk in based on shared interests and, you know, meeting somewhere where they were doing something similar or having a connection via hobbies, etc. 

My husband and I are entirely opposites on that spectrum. We have almost none of the same interests. But at our core, in what we believe about the world, what we think about wanting for our family, what we believe as justice when it comes to what we want for our family, and in building a strong black family and wishing to rectify harm that has been done in that way in this country, it is here we are deeply in alignment.  

I've always been intrigued by dreams, but I wouldn't call myself a great dream reader. I have a couple of friends and my mother-in-love that I turn to when I have a dream and "I'm like, what in the world just came through?" When I need some understanding. I will turn to them; my mother-in-love has always been great at helping me gain clarity. But some people are very good at processing and understanding what comes through, and this has always been for BIPOC communities and indigenous communities as a highly regarded gift, and messages recieved are taken very seriously. 

My mother-in-love and I thought it could be nice to honor and pay homage to Hoodoo, Black culture, and African Traditional Religions to showcase the power of dreams and their importance in the community. In our story, Saturday Magic, the main character, a little girl named Dayo, has a dream. Something they say to do when you wake up from a dream is that you're supposed to drink a glass of water by your bedside real quick so you don't forget your dream. Doing that is a cultural tradition, so we added that to the story. Dayo has this dream and wonders what it means. When she asks her mother what it means when she comes to wake her, her mother says, " I'm going to let you figure that out." So, she's putting the onus on her child to figure out what this means. There's a lot that happens throughout the day. We showcase many beautiful things that, for us, are ways that we take care Ancestrally for our home spiritually and physically, you know, and so we put many of those elements into the book. 

We showcase altars and the family interacting with the altars, cleaning with spiritual products, and engaging in ways that we Ancestrally feel called to and are moving in right now. We know that more and more families are working with their ancestors in similar ways that you will see reflected in the story. We added other aspects of Hoodoo, such as coins; specific coins have particular meanings if you come across them. So, we put them in the story as hits to Dayo and the reader to help them understand what the dream means. Dayo gets invited to her best friend's house. Anaya is her best friend. She heads off to her best friend's house and has this beautiful day, receiving gifts and having lovely, delicious, rich food, connecting with her community and Ancestors.  

At the end of the day, She reflects with her parents, telling them that she has figured out what her dream means. 

Part of the magic of our story is we tell some, but we also hint at and showcase things; that if you do care and want to know more, you're going to do a little bit of that work yourself, or you may get it if you're in the culture, you're in the tradition, you're doing Ancestral veneration yourself, you practice Hoodoo. 

Some beautiful historical notes recorded, especially on Black History Month, are about both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman dreaming of escaping slavery and dreams aiding them in escaping slavery. So Frederick Douglass had dreams of foretelling his first attempt to escape from slavery, the failure of his first attempt. He knew he would get caught for the first time through this dream. Harriet Tubman had dreams showing her the routes for the Underground Railroad. She had these dreams showcasing how she was going to deliver people and deliver herself out of bondage into freedom. 

For those who don't know, I'm a transracial adoptee, so my parents are white, and all my siblings and I are black. But I am in maternal reunion with my birth mother and that side of my family, and I've been connecting with them. When I first started connecting with them before I had met my family, my maternal birth mom, and my biogram on everyone on that side. My biological brother passed away half a year just before I officially met them. 

We were in communication, but I had yet to meet them. In communication with family members, the ask of if they have had visitations has arisen because that is another thing that comes forth is that you hear about even people who don't formally practice who do or know that they're practicing or family members who are very in the church where they don't agree with Ancestral veneration in a formal sense or have been trained to believe anything outside of Christianity may be a sin or evil. There are still these connections that come through and things that will come forth. An example is people seeing people who passed away. Especially in dreams and then those people talking to them or receiving messages through them; I've had many conversations with birth family members, in-laws, and different family members who have had dream visitations from family who have passed away.

That's always an intriguing and exciting conversation to listen to what was relayed, who came forth, etc. Black culture has lively traditions around dreams; this is another area, especially for the Black community, where this is not formally recorded. You won't find many articles or books on this phenomenon within the Black community. It is spoken within oral traditions, passed down orally, and worked on orally within the family and communally. 

Ultimately, dreams are at the core of Black culture. While we can say that correlates to hope, at the same time, we're also talking about dreams. Something pretty standard in Black homes is when you get up, you talk about the weather and how you slept, and you're asked if you dreamed. That's part of the culture. So a person would say, I had a dream, and then they'd talk deeply into what this dream was, and then any people around they'd share their dream with them. There are certain people who, if they dreamed, others would pay more attention to their dreams because they have reputations for accurate dreaming and predictive dreaming. 

One of the big ones I heard about for a long time was dreaming of fish, when I stepped into my Blackness, and was around the Black community more. When I lived in Baltimore, it was more when I was in the African American community, African American community, and just more into the culture of dreaming. 

Dreaming of fish is a big one. So if you dream of fish, someone dreams of fish in the family, someone's pregnant, that's just what's said. And they can be fish in different forms. So I've heard people dream of a whale. Sometimes, if it's two fish, people say there are twins, or two people are pregnant. 

Dream-sharing and dream-sharing networks are a big part of my life. I share my dreams with my husband regularly, and as I mentioned before, I have certain friends who can help me with the interpretations. 

If any of my friends dream of me, they call me up to share. If I dream of people, I let them know. Although sometimes dreams recieved are warnings. Sometimes, you receive dreams in the warning form of, "Oh, this is not someone that you're supposed to be around, or isn't a safe person, or not someone who you're supposed to be trusting." 

So, dreams can relay a lot of messages. And so, if your dream sends you a warning about someone to be careful around them, you're probably not going to rely that dream to them. But a lot of times, people need support to understand their dreams. There are a lot of people who will just tell you, "I had this crazy dream." But if you are better at reading and understanding your dreams, that's where action comes in because you're going to move differently because you understood what was relayed to you. Part of it is your subconscious speaking to you and your intuition. Sometimes, we aren't always aware of what needs to happen or how we need to move, and dreams can be potent in those ways. This is layered with knowing that Ancestors can work very deeply with us through dreams. Dreams are a way that they can provide their knowledge or guidance or support in terms of knowing what's next, suggestions on how we should move or make decisions- ultimately, guidance. If you take dreams more seriously, some steps can be taken to better strengthen your understanding of your dreams. 

Sometimes, people have trouble remembering their dreams; there are specific herbs to help you remember what you dreamed. There are particular herbs to promote dreaming. If you are trying to amplify your strengthening of understanding your dreams and building this relationship with your dreams, many different spiritual tools can aid in that way. 

So this is a profound thing. It is spoken of how grandmothers were the maternal figureheads who would have dreams and say what's going on and what's next and what's coming. But as we step into our ancestral gifts, embrace them, and practice Ancestral veneration openly, the gift and talent of dreaming will expand. Younger and younger generations are going to be more conscious of their gifts. Dreaming is and will continue to be one of those gifts.