[5][6] However, she notes, "Growing up in North Carolina, there would be coursework as elementary and middle school, like, tell where your family came from, and this assumption that there was a European origin.
And for the Black American students, this was just this horrifying, sort of traumatic, school assignment that white instructors never really thought about how painful that was.
[6] She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), graduating with a bachelor and master's degree in communication and performance studies.
[4] She was a co-writer and consulting producer of the 2019 Star Wars fandom Syfy channel docu-series Looking for Leia and was featured in the series as an expert.
[16][17] Deonn drew inspiration from African-American folk magic and tied them together with her own experiences and family history.
[10] In a review for Tor.com, Alex Brown writes, "Legendborn is an intoxicating mix of Southern Black traditions, the King Arthur mythos, and teenage melodrama.
"[18] Kirkus Reviews writes, "Representation of actualized, strong queer characters is organic, not forced, and so are textual conversations around emotional wellness and intergenerational trauma.
[21] In a review for USA Today, Felecia Wellington Radel described the book as "full of Black Girl Magic" and writes, "Bloodmarked excels in pushing against young-adult fantasy and hero's journey storytelling structures while also pushing the action-adventure forward, introducing even more lore and legend (and some modern Welsh language lessons, too), but not dawdling too much on the path to the next installment.