By Anna Grace Moore 

Photos Contributed

In order to change the narrative, one must first pick up a pen and write it himself. Playwright and author LaDarrion Williams believes the biggest enemy to a dreamer is not the stereotypes often afflicted onto him; rather, it is his inability to see past the lies and recognize the power rooted within himself.

Hailing from Helena, Alabama, LaDarrion’s testimony began as a theater student at Thompson High School–where he honed his love for playwriting. During his senior year, he won first place in the state of Alabama for playwriting at the Alabama Thespians Festival.

After graduating in 2011, LaDarrion attended Lee University as a theater major but later left school due to a lack of creative opportunities. When he returned home, he started working at a Taco Bell and used his down time at work to write his playscripts while working the drive thru.

“My purpose is to be a storyteller–to be a writer,” LaDarrion says. “On May 9, 2015, I packed up three suitcases and a dream and moved to LA. I moved across the country to become a writer, actor and a playwright out here in Hollywood, California. I’ve been out here ever since.”

Moving from a small, “one-stop-light” town to one of the biggest commercial cities in the world proved difficult but not impossible for LaDarrion. He started writing and producing short films–three of which are now on YouTube. When he was in high school, LaDarrion says he remembers the young adult fantasy genre booming–“Harry Potter” and “The Twilight Saga” took the world by storm and were soon followed by the “Percy Jackson” series and “The Hunger Games.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, LaDarrion focused on renewing his love for reading. While he loved watching the action-packed stories he enjoyed reading play-out on the big screen, he saw so little representation of heroes who looked like him.

“I just didn’t really see myself in those types of stories,” LaDarrion says. “That’s when I made the decision to start writing this story, ‘Blood at the Root.’”

Bored one day during lockdown, LaDarrion tweeted about how cool it would be for a 17-year-old boy from Alabama to get accepted into a magical HBCU. The tweet ended up going viral, prompting LaDarrion to write a TV script about this young boy’s journey.

In October 2020, LaDarrion and several of his friends began working on a short film of his idea, releasing the product on YouTube on Dec. 3, 2020. Unfortunately, none of the producers LaDarrion pitched his idea to took him up on the project, dwindling but not diminishing his faith.

After some encouragement from his loved ones, LaDarrion decided to turn his short film into a novel. He locked himself in his apartment, spending a mere 12 days writing the entire story from start to finish as the story just poured out of his pen.

While he originally intended on self-publishing “Blood at the Root,” LaDarrion says his editor encouraged him to take the traditional publishing route because “more kids needed to see this story.” LaDarrion says he connected with his now literary agent, Peter Knapp, in August 2021, and together, they spent months in the query trenches, receiving one rejection letter after another from some of the biggest publishers in the industry.

“On Jan. 19, 2023, I was working as a Lyft driver in LA, and my agent called,” LaDarrion says. “I had to pull over on the side of the street. He told me we sold ‘Blood at the Root’ in a three-book deal to Penguin Random House [under the publishing imprint, Labyrinth Road].”

Set to release on May 7, 2024, “Blood at the Root”–the first in its young adult fantasy trilogy–tells the story of Helena native Malik Baron, who was born into a family blessed with ancestral magic. On the night Malik discovers his magical abilities, his mother goes missing, forcing the devastated and orphaned Malik into the foster care system.

As he comes of age, Malik emancipates himself from his foster family, graduates high school early and sets out into the world to investigate his mother’s disappearance. Along the way, he discovers he has an estranged grandmother, who might have the key in understanding what happened to his mother and how his family’s magic will help him find her.

“His story is about connecting to his ancestors,” LaDarrion says. “We are all rooted in something. We have to be careful not to plant seeds that are going to grow bitterness inside of us. There’s something rooted inside of Malik that’s good, and he’s going to have to take time to make it grow.”

One of LaDarrion’s non-negotiables with Penguin Random House was that while the main character, Malik, would be African American, his story would not be one rooted in police brutality, racism or slavery. LaDarrion believes while these stories do deserve to be told, young, African American men also deserve to see heroes who look like them be praised in the media.

Drawing inspiration from African American singer Billie Holiday’s famous song, “Strange Fruit,” LaDarrion adapted one of the song’s lines, “blood on the leaves and blood at the root,” to become his novel’s title. According to the PBS article, “The Story behind Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit,’” the song–originally a poem called “Bitter Fruit”–was written by a Jewish American poet, Abel Meeropol, who wrote under the pen name, Lewis Allan.

The song sorrowfully depicts the lynching of two African American teenagers in the 1930s. Billie first heard the song while she was working at Cafe Society–New York’s first integrated night club located in Greenwich Village.

Although Billie was apprehensive about performing such a politically poignant piece, she took a chance and eventually closed out every show with “Strange Fruit,” silencing every audience and commanding all attention to the power-packed lyrics.

“Blood at the Root definitely has a negative connotation when it comes to the history of the country,” LaDarrion says. “I wanted to take that line and remake it. Malik is going to learn there’s a resilience inside of him that he doesn’t know he has. That resilience of magic is in his blood–he’ll learn not to let anyone take that from him.”

LaDarrion hopes “Blood at the Root” not only serves as a reminder of the sacrifices African American heroes have made for future generations, but also as a beacon of hope for future generations that the courage to pursue their dreams is rooted inside each of them.

True trailblazers are those who wield truth as their weapon. If all it takes for a child to believe in himself is reading the truth, LaDarrion says he will never stop writing the testimonies of African American heroes.

“Blood at the Root” is now available for purchase at Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million and more. To learn more, follow @bloodattherootseries and @itsladarrion on Instagram.