Showing posts with label resistance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resistance. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2020

Black Lives Matter and Black Fairy Tales Matter

"Dig A LIttle Deeper" (Tiana) by Heather Edwards

Black Lives Matter. Always.

And that means Black Fairy Tales Matter too.

There are Black opinions (more inclusively, BIPOC opinions) that should be heard on every topic and that - hopefully, obviously - includes fairy tales. There are also black, indigenous and people of color tales that should be being told and retold, which even they have trouble finding because stories and fairy tales been dominated by white voices for so long, and that needs to change.

Let's cut to the chase. The last thing you need is another white opinion right now. So, re this blog, the best advocacy we can think of, with regard to fairy tale discussion, is to point you to black, indigenous, and POC voices that maybe you're not aware of, or don't know how to find, first before you continue reading what we have to offer. We're going to pin this post right at the top so it's easy to find, and link to a longer entry with some important resources and names you should know and be accessing regularly when it comes to fairy tales.

 It's not a definitive list. There are so many still-unheard voices missing here, and we will do our best to update the main post as we become aware of them, but this, at least is a start.

Please see our list HERE for writers, scholars, and artists

whose voices should be listened to when studying and working with fairy tales.

Be the change we need.

Image credits: "Dig a Little Deeper" (Tiana oil portrait) by Heather Edwards; Maya Angelou quote graphic by Glashanda Lewis B

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

The Transformation of FLOTUS: A Dark Fairy Tale for the Season

In April of 2017, writer Kate Imbach wrote a reflection on Melania Trump, the then-new FLOTUS, as considered through the lens of Melania's personal photos, titled Fairytale Prisoner by Choice: The Photographic Eye of Melania Trump. The article was prompted by the odd issue that the new first lady was so very absent, compared to most other FLOTUS'  of the past.
Imbach wrote:
Why won’t the first lady show up for her job? Why? I became obsessed with this question and eventually looked to Melania’s Twitter history for answers. I noticed that in the three-year period between June 3, 2012 and June 11, 2015 she tweeted 470 photos which she appeared to have taken herself. I examined these photographs as though they were a body of work. 
Everyone has an eye, whether or not we see ourselves as photographers. What we choose to photograph and how we frame subjects always reveals a little about how we perceive the world. For someone like Melania, media-trained, controlled and cloistered, her collection of Twitter photography provides an otherwise unavailable view into the reality of her existence. Nowhere else — certainly not in interviews or public appearances — is her guard so far down. 
What is that reality? She is Rapunzel with no prince and no hair, locked in a tower of her own volition, and delighted with the predictability and repetition of her own captivity.
Written during the time when Melania declined moving to the White House and opted to stay in Trump Tower, it's an interesting assessment, and although sympathy from readers varies, the consensus seems to be that loneliness is, indeed an ongoing factor in this woman's life. The photos from high up - an actual tower - with the same landscape and differing only in weather and time of day, do give the viewer pause.

Just as interesting is the interpretation of Melania's photos of the interior of Trump Tower:

 We can all picture the gilded monstrosity of the Trump home from publicity photos (chandeliers, sad boy astride a stuffed lion, golden pillars), but it is a different place through Melania’s eyes. She takes photographs inside her house at weird, skewed angles. It is a strange effect when the half-obscured objects, chairs and ceilings, are all so golden. It looks like what a terrified little girl held captive in a ogre’s fairytale castle might see when she dares to sneak a peek through her fingers. (source: Kate Imbach)


If you haven't seen this essay finding the parallels between Rapunzel and Melania, pre and post FLOTUS status, it's worth a read. While the writer is clearly critical of Melania's 'fitness' to be a first lady, its' nevertheless a very different look at Melania Trump as a person. You can find the whole article, with Melania's photos throughout, HERE.

FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 2017:

Melania is now at the White House and chose to take an active - and apparently personal - role in decorating her new(ish) home, for the season. It's safe to say the public reaction to photos has been, less than warm...

A tweet from Donald Haase:


My retweet & comment:

And back to the growing list of folklore and fairy tale references mentioned (note: I have screen-captured the tweets referred to and inserted them after my tweets so readers can easily see what's being referred to, but the links in the embedded tweets also send you to the original tweet for the sources):



   

   


Note how the feet appear in the photo - enlarged below (it's obviously a lighting issue but it's still an interesting connection):





This comment (screen-capped below) expanded the supernatural narrative. Meant to entertain, it's also an interesting place to go:

A reply to one of the earlier tweets, pointing out the use of folklore:

And the tweet that prompted me to put it all in one place:

As an interesting callback to the original article about Melania in her tower, I thought I'd finish with the final sentence by Imbach, which has more resonance than ever:
 She’s living inside a dark fairytale, and in fairytales the women trapped in towers never save anyone but themselves.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Article: 'Fairy Tales for Resistance #RRR' by Gypsy Thornton

"We are all Red" (unofficial title) by Cuban artist ARES

Our Fairy Tale News Hound has a special article up on Enchanted Conversation today. It's all about the importance of fairy tales when it comes to resistance.

Here's the opening paragraph:

In fairy tales, wolves show their insides are the same as their outsides (despite their silver tongues), beanstalks prove to their climbers that greed is the true giant (though other big troubles may appear on the way) and flowers speak up to protest their plucking (even as they sink in their thorns). When impossible things happen, you begin to question reality. It's one of the reasons fairy tales are so very needed. Sometimes that Wonder, that impossibility, is the very thing that wakes us up and invites us to challenge the norm.
You can keep reading at Enchanted Conversation HERE.

We hope you will be inspired to keep use, telling and retelling fairy tales, and find solidarity with many others as you do. The hashtag/label, #RRR, that we're using on our Once Upon A Blog website, is searchable and by clicking it, you can find lots of inspiring reading, viewing and more. New posts are being tagged regularly and the recommendations are growing all the time.

While you're over at Enchanted Conversation, don't forget that:
  • You can sign up for the Fairy Tale Round Up Newsletter (which OUABlog and Timeless Tales contribute to). The first newsletter went out some time ago and the next will very shortly (within the week). You can find the sign-up in the side bar HERE or learn more about it before signing up HERE.

  • Enchanted Conversation is about to release their Donkeyskin issue, and Kate Wolford has just announced the writers for it HERE. The recent Diamonds and Toads issue was superb and we're really looking forward to this one too.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

#RecommendedResistanceReads: Kate Forsyth's 'The Beast's Garden'


'Ava fell in love the night the Nazis first showed their true nature to the world .' 

A retelling of the Grimms' Beauty and The Beast, set in Nazi Germany.


Readers of this blog will be aware of our admiration for Kate Forsyth's writing and unique use of fairy tales in her historical fiction, but this novel is especially appropriate for our #recommendedresistancereads (#RRR) theme at this time.

The Beast's Garden is more than a retelling of the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. It's a great book of inspiration and bravery. Ava's story, though fiction, rings with the truth of so many real lives. Perhaps those fictitious characters resisting (from the Gestapo to despair) did only one of these brave acts, perhaps they did many, but don't be fooled by the label of 'fiction' here. Throughout the pages are many TRUE stories, and the names and actions of real people, as historical records can testify to. Their stories join them to each other, and, now in 2017, as so many reach for inspiration, it joins us to them.

Here is Kate's summary for the novel, from her blog:
THE BEAST’S GARDEN is a retelling of the Grimm’s Beauty and The Beast set in Nazi Germany. Ava is a young woman who marries a Nazi officer in order to save her father, but she hates and fears her new husband and the regime for which he works. 
She becomes involved with an underground resistance movement in Berlin called the Red Orchestra, made up of artists, writers, diplomats and journalists, who pass on intelligence to the American embassy, distribute leaflets encouraging opposition to Hitler, and help people in danger from the Nazis to escape the country.  
Gradually Ava comes to realise that her husband Leo is part of a dangerous military conspiracy that plans to assassinate Hitler. As Berlin is bombed into ruins, and the Gestapo ruthlessly hunt down all resistance to Nazism, Ava unwittingly betrays Leo.  
When the Valkyrie plot fails, Leo is arrested and Ava must flee.  
Living hand-to-mouth in the rubble of Berlin, she must find some way to rescue her husband before he and his fellow conspirators are executed. 

The Beast’s Garden is a compelling and beautiful love story, filled with drama, intrigue and heartbreak, taking place between Kristallnacht in late 1938 and the fall of Berlin in 1945.  
As a bonus, on her blog, Kate has linked folks to some wonderful resources. One of our favorites is a Pinterest board of photos of people, many of them women, in the German Resistance Movement during WWII.
You can find that fascinating resource HERE.

Update: As this post was about to go live, Kate posted a special article on her blog, paying tribute to the women of the underground German Resistance in honor of International Women's Day. I'm inserting the link here, because her research on these women, and whose very real stories she expertly wove into the tapestry of The Beast's Garden, is one of the reasons it's in our recommended reads as we navigate the beginning of 2017 and all its personal and political challenges. The book is both mythic with the fairy tale resonance of timeless truths, and grounded in the inspiring true stories of amazing people who did their part to stand against tyranny, despite their fear and risk to their lives. You can read her fascinating spotlight HERE.

A bonus for fairy tale folk is that Kate makes wonderful use of The Singing, Springing Lark, a variation on the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale that has elements of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, especially with regard to the motif of 'the search for the lost/ disappeared bridegroom'. It turns out, this variant, fits beautifully in the torn and confused surroundings of Berlin during the rise to power of the Third Reich. The parallel suggests us the connection to stories both past and present, and sections of the novel are indicated with text extracts from the fairy tale, bringing a different light to both tale and history.
The Grimm Brothers published a beautiful version of the Beauty & the Beast tale called ‘The Singing, Springing Lark' in 1819. It combines the well-known story of a daughter who marries a beast in order to save her father with another key fairy tale motif, the search for the lost bridegroom. In ‘The Singing, Springing Lark,' the daughter grows to love her beast but unwittingly betrays him and he is turned into a dove. She follows the trail of blood and white feathers he leaves behind him for seven years, and, when she loses the trail, seeks help from the sun, the moon, and the four winds. Eventually she battles an evil enchantress and saves her husband, breaking the enchantment and turning him back into a man.  
(In 'The Beast's Garden') a young woman marries a Nazi officer in order to save her father, but fears her new husband and the regime for which he works... (from Random House)
It's a daunting task to please readers after garnering a huge award, as Bitter Greens did (her historical fiction retelling of Rapunzel, which won the ALA for 2014), but once again, the deftly woven historical details anchoring the romance, edged with the ring of true stories from inspiring and real people living at that time, has received much praise. Here are just a few:
"Set in World War II, this retelling of Beauty of The Beast will set your emotions on edge. Set against a tumultuous backdrop of the Nazi regime, the choices made by these characters will set them on a path that cannot be undone. Stunningly written, The Beast's Garden explores the transformation of people as their morals are tested while evil rules supreme on every front. A beautiful novel that easily stands up against so many others set in the same era." Dymocks Chermside 
‘Skillfully crafted, The Beast’s Garden is another magnificent historical novel seamlessly melding truth and fiction, from Kate Forsyth. A wonderful tale of daring and courage, of struggle and survival, of love and loyalty, this is a ‘must read’. Book’d Out 
‘Intensely emotional and stunningly written, The Beast's Garden is a must-read. It has definitely made an impact on me, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards, If you're a historical fiction fan and love an enthralling story, then this is for you. You won't regret it.’ Genie In a Book
Needless to say (but we will anyway) this book is highly recommended - both as a fairy tale retelling and as a wonderfully researched and written story that explores history, bravery and aspects of these fairy tales in a different context. It's also a novel that is currently very relevant and can speak to the fears and hopes we carry today.

For all the wonderful things this novel offers, this is the one we treasure most: that we must keep sharing stories. To do so is to link to the strength of the many who've gone before, the many who have stood against the storm, the many who right now do the same; the many who find, as they join hands, that they still can love, still create and still live - truly live. And so can we.

Thank you, Kate. It's a book to treasure.

Monday, March 6, 2017

'Make Fairyland Great Again' by N.T.O. Zamboni

We've had eras of fractured fairy tales rising in popularity, and it would appear that this is one of them.

This volume of fractured retellings was written in response to the results of the election last November and have proved even more popular than the author, N.T.O. Zamboni, expected.

Here's the blurb:
Normally, fairytales and fables teach important lessons:
    Build a house to fend off deplorable wolves.
    Don’t be tempted by candied false promises.
    Beware of golden-haired thieves stealing your porridge.
But this is not normal. Trump is not normal. We need updated, 21st-century fairytales to warn against new threats. Tremendous threats. Crude, demented, racist, misogynistic threats. 
Make Fairyland Great Again is a collection of twenty-one revised folk stories and parables: Sleeping Beauty, the Frog Prince, Ali Baba, Rapunzel, the Pied Piper, the Three Little Pigs, and many more! 
(However, just like Trump himself, this book is not appropriate for children.)
There are quite a number available online to read for free HERE and HERE.
Your (free) choices are:
  • The Ant and the Grasshopper
  • The Emperor's New Clothes (an incredibly popular fairy tale right now!)
  • Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
  • The Frog Prince
  • Sleeping Beauty
Should you feel like reading even more or adding this book to your library (or supporting the author), you can find it HERE.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Amanda Allen Niday's 'Protesting Princesses'

Inspired by the recent Women's March around the nation and the globe, artist Amanda Allen Niday, created a 'Protesting Princesses's series, reimagining Disney heroines in the Women's March series. It quickly went viral and caught the eye of Teen Vogue.

Teen Vogue, once considered a fluffy distraction for teens into fashion, is a magazine that's quickly gained respect for recognizing that young people can - and should be - as politically aware as their parents, and that having a penchant for gorgeous shoes and lipstick isn't at odds with that. Teen Vogue, with their finger firmly on the social pulse these days, didn't waste any time getting an interview with Ms. Niday.
Here's an excerpt:
Would Disney Princesses want to be a part of the revolution? Illustrator Amanda Allen Niday thinks so, and thanks to her, we have an idea of what they’d say.
“I felt inspired by the way women expressed themselves on their signs, from the witty and charming to the downright scathing. Women coming together from all backgrounds to say "we are HERE and we MATTER’.” she said. “I wanted to hold onto that message as my newsfeeds dissolved back into squabbling and finding faults in our difference, rather than understanding.” 
...Niday designed a sketch of each major Disney princess holding a protest sign that incorporated a quote the princess actually said in their movie. 
“I didn't want to put words into their mouths. I believed their narratives of overcoming struggles was powerful enough without me trying to force something else on them,” she said.

... She told Teen Vogue she used Disney Princesses for the project because she feels Disney has been making an effort to use the cartoons to remind girls that they’re brave, strong and valuable and wants to pay homage to that. To her, the princesses’ stories of resilience symbolize what girls or women can or should do.

But she also recognizes that women can protest in their own way.
 
“Being strong when you are being told you are weak is a form of protest. Being yourself when you are being told that isn't acceptable is a form of protest. Never giving up hope is a form of protest. I wanted to show that we can control the narrative,” Niday said.
You can read the whole interview HERE.

Want a copy of those posters for yourself? You can get that HERE at Society 6. They also have the options of t-shirts, totes, bedding... and much more.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Fairy Tale Review's Charcoal Issue To Focus on Fairy Tales as Forms of Resistance & Protest (Submissions Open)

Artwork by Erika Rier

We feel this is possibly the only way to return to reporting regular fairy tale news at this time: standing with those who refuse to sit down. 

Thank you Fairy Tale Review. 

"Wands up!"
In a time when the shifting political and cultural landscapes of our world are becoming increasingly authoritarian, restrictive, intolerant, and frightening, we have decided to dedicate The Charcoal Issue to fairy tales as forms of resistance and protest. 
A remnant material left behind after a fire, charcoal is also a source with which new fires are created. So, too, is the way of resistance—born from the heat of difficulty and tragedy, but also the fuel we use to light the way forward. 
For the coming issue, we are most interested in fairy tales that challenge the current political climate, fairy tales that resist outdated norms or binaries, fairy tales that reconfigure the faults of older stories, and fairy tales that expose abuses of power. Fairy tales with, as Kate Bernheimer has suggested, “radical strategies of survival. Ways to get out alive.”  (Emphasis by FTNH)
Fairy tales that resist domination. Fairy tales that protest annihilation. 
Submissions will be open from January 1, 2017 to March 31, 2017. The Charcoal Issue will be published in early 2018.
Also, a comment from Fairy Tale Review's Instagram feed, posted with the image at the head of the post:
Sometimes, we feel as though we lack the words to explain what "fairy tales as forms of resistance and protest" mean to us. Sometimes, we need others to help us find the words. 
To that end, we feel very honored to have published "Suddenly," a short piece of nonfiction from Carmen Giménez Smith, earlier this week. 
If you are wondering how fairy tales or folklore could possible be resistance, we recommend reading Suddenly. It will also be very helpful to anyone wishing to submit to the Charcoal Issue.

We wish all those writers and artists looking to contribute, much inspiration, hope, bravery and the knowledge that you are not alone.

Very much looking forward to this issue, Fairy Tale Review!