A Nashville writer’s debut novel explores how Black women with albinism navigate life in the South

The terms “Black Girl Magic” and “Melanin Magic” have been a way of uplifting Black women and girls in a society that undervalues them. But what about Black women without melanin? That’s the subject of Destiny Birdsong’s debut novel, “Nobody’s Magic,” which follows three Black women with albinism navigating love and grief in the South.

Birdsong drew inspiration from her own life. As a Black woman with albinism, and as a poet, she’s spent a long time writing about what it means to exist outside of racial norms.

“Sometimes the very sort of simple ways that we categorize race and also the simple ways that we categorize beauty — it’s complicated. It’s messy, and it’s harmful for everyone involved,” Birdsong says. “It’s nasty stuff, right? When we start to use color as a measure of worth or as a measure of racial authenticity.”

While each of her narrators face different obstacles, Birdsong says it was important to put family and romance at the center of each woman’s story.

“Representations of people with albinism do not always include desire. They might include beauty. Sometimes, it’s a kind of fetishistic representation of beauty that can also be really messy and complicated and harmful. But in this case, I wanted there to be, like, real, unabashed desire. And I’ll also be honest, I love writing about sex. I love writing about bodies in concert with one another, particularly Black bodies. For me, that is powerful to see.”

Birdsong says her time as a student at Fisk University informed a lot of her writing.

“The great myth about HBCUs is like, I don’t know, places where people are just sort of like learning about all of the things that everybody else kind of skims during Black History Month and nothing else.”

But Birdsong says she covered a wide array of literature in her coursework. It was on the campus of Fisk that she first read about a character with albinism.

“He was kind of a pitiful character, to be honest with you,” Birdsong says. “What I hoped to do with this book is to sort of counteract some of those narratives of just sort of the misfortunate person with albinism.”

Birdsong’s novel hits shelves on Tuesday, Feb. 8.