Beth Anna Cook

Spring ILC, Week 6: Is it vacation yet?

Let’s see, how many of my goals did I accomplish this week?

–Finish revising the opening scenes and send the revised draft to my contract sponsor: Check!
–Write new meeting-Ampersand and meeting-Sinistra scenes: Half-check
–Expand outline to include all possible quotes I might want to use: Nnnope
–Homework for class: Check!
–Make eye doctor appointment: Check!
–Use my lunch breaks at work as actual breaks (instead of using them to get more work done), getting out in the sunshine and taking off my shoes and socks to feel the grass on my bare feet: I did that once! Well, one day out of three isn’t terrible.

I tried setting my alarm for 7:30 Monday through Thursday with the goal of writing two pages first thing each day. It worked … once. Today I just turned the alarm off and said “I’ll do it later.” And here it is later and I’ve gotten plenty done (laundry, trip to the grocery store, preliminary packing for next week’s vacation) but no writing. But I did get a lot of reading done this week and sometimes I forget to give myself credit for that. I finished Writing Irresistible Kidlit and started Self-Editing for Fiction Writers for a total of 125 pages. And when I met with Cecilanne this week we actually got a lot of good work done. Yay productivity!

Favorite article of the week: Set Truth on Stun: Reimagining an Anti-Oppressive SF/F by Daniel José Older, an interview with Léonicka Valcius, Carrie Cuinn, Justine Larbalestier, Kay T. Holt, and Andrea Hairston.

I’m leaving for Kauai this Friday with my boyfriend and his family and will return on the 23rd. A 6-hour flight sounds like a great opportunity to get a lot of homework done, until you take into account the fact that we’ll be dragging our butts out of bed at 4:30 AM. I may get some homework done on the flight but sleeping will be priority #1. At least the flight back is at a much more reasonable hour, so that’s a good chance to get some work done. And we’ve only got activities scheduled for every other day while we’re there, so we can spend the other days doing whatever we want. But who wants to do homework while on vacation in paradise? I anticipate being a party-pooper.

Or, I can spend these next four days cramming in as much extra work as possible to make up for it. Which, today, would involve skipping a talk being given at school by one of my favorite teachers ever. Urrrrgh.

OK. Goals for the week, no matter how overachieving they may sound:
-Finish goals from last week, including compiling quotes for my paper
-Write rough draft of said paper (Why did I make that due this week in my self-made schedule?? Oh, right, ’cause it’s Week 7.)
-Write at least two new pages every day, including today
-Homework for class
-Finish packing
-Keep breathing

UPDATE
I forgot to mention, I got the job! I get to stay at the Writing Center for another year or two as Assistant to the Director and learn how a writing center is run. I am so freakin’ happy, y’all.

Spring ILC, Week 5: Panic

How is the quarter half over already? And why does that happen every single quarter?

This week was another tough one. On Wednesday morning on my way to work, I had a panic attack on the bus and had to go home sick, losing all potential productivity for the day. I sometimes feel like I’m juggling too many things (Homework is due for class. Don’t forget Mother’s Day. Yep, still gotta wait to hear back about the job. Oh goody, an ulcer. It’s a beautiful day, I should get outside and exercise. Should I get an iPad?), and this ILC all too easily slips to the bottom of priorities because I’m not accountable to anyone but myself.

Progress has been slow, both grueling and joyful at the same time.

I registered for the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association (PNWA) conference happening in July, and had to do a bit of research on the agents and editors who’ll be present. It’s an exciting and terrifying prospect. I’m sure I’ll talk about it in much more detail next quarter, as attending said conference will be part of my next ILC.

I also received my dad’s next book in the mail, which always makes me happy. Did you know my dad was a novelist? It’s a pretty cool thing to have in common. Check it out over at The Book of Drachma. The latest installment, The Healer’s Defense, is now sitting on my bookshelf next to the first trilogy, taunting me, waiting for me to have enough time to read for pleasure.

I finally made myself do an outline for the essay I’ll be writing. Research is still the most fun part. Favorite article of the week is Demanding the Impossible: Walidah Imarisha Talks About Science Fiction and Social Change. It’s about her new anthology, Octavia’s Brood, which “collects fiction from 23 political activists and organizers. The writers use science fiction, fantasy, and horror to reflect on the experiences of oppression, the challenges of resistance, and the possibility of new just worlds.” I want to get this book into my hands now and devour it and hang out with everyone who created it.

This week’s goals:

-Finish revising the opening scenes and send the revised draft to my contract sponsor

-Write new meeting-Ampersand and meeting-Sinistra scenes

-Expand outline to include all possible quotes I might want to use

-Homework for class

-Make eye doctor appointment

-Use my lunch breaks at work as actual breaks (instead of using them to get more work done), getting out in the sunshine and taking off my shoes and socks to feel the grass on my bare feet

Spring ILC, Week 4: I have a really good excuse this week, I swear.

Most of my “free” time this week was used to update my resume and write a cover letter for a promotion at work. I had my interview on Friday and should hear back before the end of this week. Wish me luck!

I did churn through 80-something pages in Writing Irresistible Kidlit and several more articles for my paper. Favorite article of the week: For Discussion: Racism in Fantasy & Its Effects on People of Color by Aarti.

It’s easy to berate myself for not writing more new pages than I feel like I should, but then I remind myself that going through the story and tweaking little parts here and there still counts as work. I’m on page 73 of this first round of revision. There’s a lot more to go, and the second half of the story needs way more work than the first, but I’m letting myself take pride in what I’ve done so far.

Onward. Excelsior!

Spring ILC, Week 3: Do the actual work

I did it again—I came to the end of another week without doing any actual revision. So I sat down on Sunday night and pushed out 3 1/2 new pages. (Afterwords my brain was done, so that’s why this reflection is a day late.)

The thing is, I could do planning work all day long—worldbuilding, character-building, landscape maps, character-relationship webs, plot outlines, how they all connect to theme, word-collecting, and on and on. But at the end of the day, if I haven’t incorporated any of that into the actual story, I’m not doing the real, hard work. Planning is fun because it feels creative and free and, more importantly, consequence-free. If no one but me ever needs to see what goes on behind the scenes, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Putting new words on paper that I know I will one day show to someone is always scary. It’s always hard. And, according to more famous authors than I can name, it always will be scary and hard.

But it’s always worth it.

On Monday I finally met up with a couple of people in my local community to write and share and give feedback, and we’re making it a regular thing (I’m there right now, actually). That evening I met one-on-one with my teacher/contract sponsor for the first time, and we dove into the story, starting reading aloud from the beginning and making notes as we went along. Reading aloud changes everything, and you catch so much more by hearing the sounds of your words and feeling them in your mouth. It doesn’t usually let you know exactly what’s wrong or how to fix it, but it’s a great way to find awkward spots.

This week when I met with Cecilanne, I’d read the first thirty pages of a project she’s been working on for years, so we were able to give each other feedback. Our stories are so different from each other, but the same basic principles of storybuilding always apply—What do the choices you make as a writer convey to your reader?

I also finished Second Sight by Cheryl B. Klein (great book, highly recommend) and started Writing Irresistible Kidlit by Mary Kole. So far, it’s overall feel is more…cynical? It spells out the reality of how lucrative the market has become, and because of that, agents and editors and publishers are looking for what sells, and (we are left to infer) not necessarily what’s good and true and beautiful and important. I find it telling that the adjective they chose for the title is ‘irresistible.’ But I think it’s still an important read.

Last week I wrote about the dearth of academic articles on the subject I’m interested in for my paper. But, the Internet provides! (Also my friend Z, who pointed me in the direction of some awesome articles.) Favorite article of the week:
“We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley

This week’s priorities:

-updating my resume and writing an awesome cover letter for getting a promotion at work

-reading the next chunk of Cecilanne’s story

-MOAR WRITING

-rough outline for my paper

-class homework

-getting out in the sunshine

Spring ILC, Week 2: Planning for the unplanable

I’m such a planner when it comes to short-term stuff like this ILC, or stuff that doesn’t go anywhere without me like my novel. (This is the exact opposite of how I am with long-term life stuff.) It’s only Week 2 and already I’m thinking “I don’t have enough sources for my paper (that I haven’t even begun drafting yet because it isn’t due for another eight weeks)! And in class we haven’t been given the parameters for the final project, so how can I plan for the unknown??”

Some things I have no control over, and that’s OK. Good, in fact. But those that I do, I meticulously plan with great relish.

Checks on to-do lists and timelines and schedules,

Alphabetizing and well-sharpened pencils,

Spreadsheets in binders with three silver rings,

These are a few of my favorite things!

I’d call this another good week overall. I’ve been trying to set up a small local group of writers outside of school to meet up once a week and give each other feedback on our writing. This, apparently, is easier said than done, but I do have one Yes for tomorrow. Cecilanne is also happy to receive feedback on her work, so that could work out for me as well.

On Wednesday I met with my friend and colleague at the Writing Center. We talked about big-picture stuff in terms of theme (growing up), the different kinds of relationships that my protagonist has with all the secondary characters, and how to make those relationships illustrate the theme.

On Thursday I had another great meeting with Cecilanne and we talked more specifics about how to smooth out the beginning and flesh out the ending. I need to work a lot on worldbuilding—geography, religions, history, other weird magical stuff besides the story fire, etc. Magical creatures? Maybe. Cecilanne recommended just brainstorming every cool/weird thing I can think of for these characters to run into. Even if those ideas don’t get used in this story or any future story, it’s still fun. I also need to do a lot more background work on my secondary characters to make them more rounded and to understand not only how they interact with my heroine but with each other.

My paper will explore the questions “How can children’s/YA fiction be a medium for social justice/anti-oppression work?” and “How does a writer with a ton of privilege go about doing so?”, and in trying to find sources I’ve discovered there is sadly little available in “scholarly” journals and so forth. But, because this is my paper and I get to decide how to do it, I declare that blog posts, online articles, and my friend’s in-progress undergrad paper on Harry Potter are all valid sources. Still, I’m shocked that there isn’t a book on this yet. Check back with me in ten or twenty years, maybe I’ll have written it.

Alas, this week I did not meet my goal of writing a page a day. But even on busy days when I had work and/or class, I still got something done on my ILC, so I’m calling that a success. Still. I can’t say “Less planning, less reading, more writing” because I need to do all three. “More planning, more reading, more writing” sounds daunting as heck. “Keep planning, keep reading, keep writing” feels much less scary.

Week 2 exercise: TRUCKS

Techniques of Revision Used by Cheryl Klein (TRUCKs) from Second Sight

TRUCK #1: Write out the story of your book in one sentence.

Thirteen-year-old Gaudiloquence must use her gift of storytelling to recover the magical fire stolen from her village and revive her loved ones who have been frozen.

Wow, that sounds long and awkward.

TRUCK #2: List the first ten meaningful things your protagonist says or does.

1. She was narrating again.

-The first scene opens with the heroine narrating a story to herself as she acts it out. It shows not just that she has an active imagination but that she’s been exercising it her whole life.

2. Her breath caught in her chest and she stood as still as she was able…”Please do not run away, please please please do not run away,” she whispered [to the fox]. “I promise I will not hurt you.”

-Shows a reverence for that which she considers special, important, sacred, etc.

3. It was [her] favorite place, and she came here almost every day, speaking to it as if it were a sentient being. To the story fire, she gave all her own stories, the account of her days, her hopes and fears, pretty songs and made-up words.

-Not everyone would do this sort of thing, and the relationship she has to this magical fire is stronger than those of other people in her village.

4. “You can’t do this to me anymore, you know. As of tomorrow, I am officially a woman, not your baby sister.” […] I hate you so much I can’t see straight,” she muttered, trying to tie his bootlaces to each other so he would trip.

-Shows that she sees herself as an adult, even though other people might not. Plus, a teasingly antagonistic relationship with her big brother humanizes her and makes her more relatable.

5. [Talks with her grandparents about adulthood, yet she will always be their little girl.]

-More theme!

6. [Reassures her best friend who fears losing part of herself when they lose their old names in being given their new adult names] “Your name describes what you are—the third of three sisters—but it is not who you are. Who you are is the girl who loves bluebells and horses and songs about silver and gold. The girl who once rescued a turtle who was trapped on its back and stuck in the mud underneath the bridge. The girl who, when she gets picked on by her sisters, dreams of running away and building a little cottage on the beach. The girl who wants to be a teacher someday. The girl who sings like a flute.”

-Shows compassion, attention to detail, and appreciation for the unique gifts of others.

7. The twenty Innominate thirteen-year-olds chased, teased, screeched, and played with all their might, squeezing every last drop of fun out of their last night of childhood until either their breath or their legs gave out.

-More theme! Childhood and adulthood don’t have to be mutually exclusive. She can be mature and playful at different times.

8. Her eyes sank closed of their own exhausted will, and even though her cheeks were almost numb with the pain of smiling so much, the grin of deep contentment stayed plastered on her face. She told herself she was just resting her eyes—she was not going to fall asleep. She was too excited about what would happen at midnight.

-Setting up the safe, comfortable world in which she has grown up. She knows her place in this world, and when it is taken away, she struggles with trying to be an adult for real.

9. [She] felt guilty for being so excited for the part of the ceremony that came next—the part she’d been waiting for her whole life. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said a silent prayer of thanks that her family was spared a loss once again this year. […] Then she thought heavily of the people she knew who had lost their loved ones this year.

-Shows a balance of compassion for others and a healthy level of self-interest.

10. She climbed up onto the nearest table, lifted her face and arms in triumph, and shouted, “Gaudiloquence!” It felt like coming home and going on an adventure, all at the same time.

-Shows how she enacts the meaning and importance of her name—speaking with joy.

TRUCK #3: Write the flap copy—a summary in 250 words.

In the village of Whigmaleerie, there is a magical story fire that holds the stories, memories, and names of its people—and the hopes and dreams of Monoria Erhvingaarde. In the midnight hour of New Year’s Day, thirteen-year-old Monoria and her peers fulfill their rite of passage into adulthood and receive their new, unique names from the story fire. Monoria—skinny and freckled, middle child, and natural storyteller—has become Gaudiloquence.

But her joy turns to fear the next morning when she awakens to find everyone in her village frozen and the story fire gone. The handsome brothers who visited Whigmaleerie and seemed enchanted by the story fire have disappeared.

On her own for the first time, Gaudiloquence must learn who to trust and who to go to for help. The Ministry, the highest power in the land, offers little assistance. If she is going to save her people, Gaudiloquence must do it herself. Along the way, she gains the help and friendship of a stray dog, a lovesick minstrel-turned-soldier, a one-handed sorceress, an eight-year-old spy, and a former soldier haunted by his past. Together they must recover the magical fire (now in the form of a sea-green orb) before it is destroyed—and the people of Whigmaleerie along with it.

Is Gaudiloquence’s storytelling more than just a quirk, more than a talent? Can she use the magic of stories to bring the frozen story fire back to life and save everyone she loves?

Holy cow, this was hard. Why was this so hard? And yeah, it’s not quite 250 words and it’s cheesy as heck, but whatever. It’ll work for now.

TRUCK #4: Make a bookmap of your novel.

-Monoria in Whigmaleerie. Happy, ordinary life.

-New Year’s Eve: Thirteen-year-olds receive their new names and Monoria becomes Gaudiloquence (Gaudé).

-Receives Name Day gifts. Meets Selva and Tagia (crush alert!) and shows them the story fire.

-Wakes up the next morning: story fire gone, everyone frozen, Selva and Taiga gone.

-Journeys toward Oneiric to get help, gets a ride from Psithurism.

-Checks into an inn and meets Anacreontic and her daughters. Tries to get in to see the magistrate and fails. Gets help from Anacreontic. Gets a letter from the magistrate allowing her an audience with the Ministry in the capital of Virid.

-Journeys to Virid with Psithurism. Checks into another inn. Goes to the Ministry and meets Manuduction and the ministers. Meets Rufescent. Ministry assigns her as the leader of the mission; gives her the assistance of Ampersand and Sinistra. Sneaks Rufescent into the inn.

–Gaudé leaves Virid with Rufescent, Ampersand, and Sinistra and they go back to Whigmaleerie to investigate. Find Celerity. Discover that the fire has changed form and Selva & Taiga stole it.

-Lessons in magic, self-defense, and history. Sinistra investigates Gaudé’s magical potential. Journey to Sparsile. Celerity discovers who Selva & Taiga are working for and where they went. Meet Fossick and convince him to join them.

-Write to Ministry. Discover Fossick’s haunted past and PTSD. Journey to Cynosure. Investigate Primifulous’ shop. Break in, steal orb, escape.

-Gaudé examines orb and discovers she’s descended from the Glossophiles. Selva & Taiga attack. Wakes up on a horse with Selva. Confronts him, steals the orb back, and rides off. Falls into the river and almost drowns. Sees the orb is damaged and starts telling a story to try to save it.

-Rides back to Whigmaleerie alone, still telling her story. Starts a fire in the forge to heat up the orb. Places it back where it belongs and reawakens the story fire.

-Wakes up at home and her parents tell her what happened: friends safe, Taiga in custody, story fire told them all what happened.

OK, this brings out obvious flaws in pacing and lack of obstacles, especially in the second half. Which is most of what Cecilanne and I talked about last week, so that’s good. Gives me perspective and a physical timeline of events to tweak.

TRUCK #5: The plot checklist.

The overall change my character experiences is: more independence and confidence in herself as an adult

My central action plot is: mystery.

-And that is: Where is the story fire and why is everyone except Gaudé frozen?

-The stakes are: the lives of the people in Whigmaleerie

-My subplots are: learning who to trust, friendships, discovering and developing her magic skills.

My central emotional plot is: Gaudé’s confidence in herself as an adult

-The stakes are: the success of her mission

-This change happens because: she meets lots of unhelpful people and has to learn how to get things done, and meets a few helpful people and gets some good advice

Exposition:

-The situation at the beginning: ordinary life in Whigmaleerie, Name Day ceremony

Rising action:

-The action starts when: she wakes up to find the fire gone and everyone frozen

-Then this happens: she leaves to get help

-Because of whose action: Gaudé’s

Climax:

-Everything comes together when: she returns to Whigmaleerie and reawakens the story fire

Falling Action:

-And then: parents tell her what happened while she was asleep

Resolution:

-The reader can tell things have changed because: here’s where I need to show her changed relationships with people

The point is: being an adult is harder than it looks, but it’s something you have to make happen for yourself

TRUCK #6: Answer the question “What is it about?” with a one-sentence thesis statement for your book.

I like that. “Being an adult is harder than it looks, but it’s something you have to make happen for yourself.”

TRUCK #7: Read it aloud—or better still, have someone read it aloud to you.

Workin’ on it!

TRUCK #8: [seems not to exist. What happened to it?]

TRUCK #9: Keep a copy of everything.

Thank you, Google Drive.

TRUCK #10: Give it time.

Good advice. Breathe. Enjoy the sunshine. Keep reading, keep writing. And have fun!

Spring ILC, Week 1: What the heck is an ILC?

This quarter I’m doing an Independent Learning Project (ILC), Evergreen-speak for doing whatever you want (with faculty support) and getting credit for it. I’d been planning for a while to do an ILC this summer (my last quarter here) to learn about the world of publishing, make professional networking connections, and try to get one of my novels published. In order to that, I first need something publishable and all my novels are in NaNoWriMo-first-draft form. So this quarter I’m working on revising Gaudiloquence and the Frozen Story.

On my own time, I’m going to meet once a week with a friend and fellow tutor at the Writing Center. I’ll also meet once a week with other writers in a small group to share our stuff with each other and give each other feedback. The most enthusiastic of these is a friend and former classmate (who we’ll call Celianne) who wants to become an editor. I’ll also be meeting occasionally with my contract sponsor and teacher of the 4-credit writing class I’m also taking. Then there’s the actual work of reading books, revising my novel, and writing a research paper.

Because I work best when I have everything meticulously planned ahead of time, I’m making myself a detailed schedule for the quarter of what assignments and readings I’ll have done by what time. I’m that much of a dork. And I know that if I don’t put these kinds of things in place to help me keep myself accountable, I’ll procrastinate and flounder and get nothing done. Deadlines are good for me.

I’m already halfway through the first book I’ve assigned myself, Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising & Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein. It’s a great read—accessible, funny, and full of great advice. I need to try the exercises in the chapter called “The Art of Detection” to figure out how to best summarize my story and get at what it’s really “about.” And if those themes don’t crop up in the actual text as much as they should, that’s something to work on.

I reread my first draft for the first time in about a year (I wrote it even longer ago than that) and felt relieved. It’s not as bad as I worried. Yeah, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Of course—that’s what rough drafts are for. But I still love the story, I genuinely care about the characters, and I wrote some decently funny moments. I feel really excited about moving forward with this.

On Thursday I had my first meeting with Cecilanne, who had read to page 58 by that point. We tried to stay away from the fun detail stuff and look at the bigger picture, or Higher-Order Concerns. I need to work on filling out the plot and description to slow the pacing WAY down. I also need to make the theme more consistently visible, which is understandable, since the theme I started out with when I set out to write it—“Stories matter”—was not what came out when it was finished, and what I’m continuing with—“Being an adult is hard, yo” (or something to that effect).

Cecilanne and I geeked out about my story together for a couple of hours, and I look forward to more of this every week because she’s a rock star and I love her.

On Friday I found and printed out some articles from JSTOR that might be useful for the paper I’m writing, exploring how children’s literature can be a medium for anti-oppression work and ways I might be able to make that happen in my own writing. There is disappointingly little that has been written on this subject in academic journals. So, to the Internet! There must be blogs galore that talk about this sort of thing (*fingers crossed*).

So there I was this afternoon, Sunday at the end of Week 1. I had gotten a lot of important work done, but there was one glaring omission. Revision. I hadn’t actually gone back into my manuscript and changed anything or written anything new, even though my self-imposed schedule said I would rewrite at least one scene. It doesn’t matter how much I read and talk about revision if I don’t actually DO it. So I did. I cranked out one scene, and I’m not sure how good it is, but it helps slow down the pace and build character. So yay.

One of my new goals for next week is to make that work a priority by writing at least one page a day. If I can keep that up for a week, maybe I can do it for the whole quarter. All while reading my books and researching my paper and meeting with other writers and doing the homework for class and going to work and revising my latest Inkwell article and taking driving lessons. Whew. Wish me luck.

The time I met Kate DiCamillo and everything was wonderful forever

It was 2003 and I was a senior in high school when I first saw the newly published The Tale of Despereaux on a bookstore shelf. I remembered a quote from my high school English/Theatre/Creative Writing teacher: “‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ Bull$#!&! Judge it!” And I did. I looked at the illustration of Despereaux on the cover, running, a needle tied around his waist with red thread. I wondered why he didn’t seem to have a tail. I felt his urgency. I knew there was this something this mouse needed to communicate to me. I knew he needed to tell me his story. I didn’t do my usual trick of reading the first sentence of the book, or even the subtitle, which was: “Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread.” (Had I done so, my intuition would have been confirmed.) Instead, I picked up the book knowing nothing more about it than a feeling, bought it, and devoured it.

I was in love. I had expected a good story; I had not expected to read my soul in book form.

I told everyone about it. I raved about it to my classmates. I described it as a work of art disguised as a children’s book. Then a friend told me that she had gone to the bookstore and asked for it, and the sales clerk told her they were packing the books up to ship them back because they weren’t selling. I had to do something! But before I could organize a grassroots protest to buy and distribute every copy and promote it far and wide, I went to my local bookstore and there was Despereaux, bearing his shiny, new, golden Newberry Medal. And I knew he was safe.

I read Kate’s other novels for children. No one, I concluded, so perfectly articulates sadness and beauty of the world—sadness and beauty, both at the same time, in conversation with each other. And she does this in children’s books, a vastly underestimated medium. Because of Winn Dixie, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician’s Elephant—all gems, but none as dear to my heart as Despereaux.

In 2007 I wrote her a long fan letter (similar to what you see here), and eventually received a thank-you postcard with the P.S. “When you get published someday (which WILL happen) I hope someone writes you a letter as wonderful as the one you wrote me.”

Fast-forward to a couple of years ago when I started following her on Facebook and discovered that her magnificent brain works very much like my own when it comes to seeing the miraculous in the mundane, writing it down, trusting intuition, and letting stories develop the way they need to.

Then there was that time she was answering questions on Goodreads and answered mine:

Me: They say that all aspiring writers sometimes think, “I’m terrible at this, I’m a fraud, there are so many better writers than me, no one is ever going to publish or read this stuff, I should get a sensible career,” (etc). I know I sometimes think this way. Did you experience this when you were starting out, and if so, how did you work through it?

Kate DiCamillo: Oh, Beth. I experienced that when I was starting out. Yes. And I experience it every day still. I doubt myself. I do the work anyway.

When I learned last month that she would be visiting the Seattle Central Library on February 25th, I knew I had to be there. I tried to keep breathing on the ride up to Seattle, but I could feel my anxiety—my old nemesis—roiling beneath the surface. My pulse pounded and my throat tightened. When we sat down in the auditorium, I held my boyfriend’s hand and didn’t want to let go. Then I looked around and smiled. We must have been the only two childless adults in the audience.

When she walked in, I felt (to my great surprise and relief) more relaxed instead of more anxious. She was wearing well-worn jeans and a purple shirt, which is my standard outfit on most days. (*checks* Yup, it’s what I’m wearing today.) She was short. Her voice was deeper than I expected. She told wonderful, funny anecdotes about her life and how she gets her story ideas. She talked about being painfully shy as a kid. She was so beautifully human that I wasn’t scared anymore.

Until I stood in line to get her autograph. I clutched my boyfriend’s hand again, trying to remember the nice, thoughtful, not-crazy things that my sister had told me to say (I’ve previously babbled ridiculous things when meeting my favorite artist and my favorite comedian). And when I finally got there, I didn’t panic and I actually said those things (more or less). I told her I was an aspiring children’s novelist, too. She asked if I’d read any Anne Lamott, and when I joyfully said yes, she recommended Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

I got my picture taken with her, and I left walking on air, with a signed and personalized first edition of my favorite book ever and the inspiration that someday I will write a book that will be someone’s favorite book ever.

The Virgin’s Coffin: Snow White, the Brothers Grimm, and Appropriation

Guess what, y’all. That paper I was working on so hard for class turned out awesome.

The Virgin’s Coffin:

Snow White, the Brothers Grimm, and Appropriation

In the tradition of early Christian martyrdom, “virginity could be the equal of any martyr’s death, signalling one of the most persistent themes in female spirituality” (Rubin, 156). All a woman had to do to be considered a martyr was 1- be Christian, 2- be a virgin, and 3- die. Snow white became a martyr when the Brothers Grimm turned her into one. They took fragments of secular and pagan stories passed down through the oral tradition, fused them together with additions of their own invention, and created a seamless narrative of a virgin’s persecution, temptation, death, and resurrection. The story remains so embedded in our cultural consciousness that even two hundred years later we continue to reinvent and reclaim Snow White, taking a passive Christian martyr and re-appropriating her into a secular hero martyr. From the Grimms to Disney to contemporary filmmakers, the way we choose to tell the story of “Snow White” becomes a reflection of our own cultural narrative.

1. The Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm did not, of course, invent the story of Snow White nor any of the others in their collection of fairy tales, the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) or Children’s and Household Tales. Born in 1785 and 1786 respectively, Jacob and Wilhelm were born in the Hesse region of Germany and grew up to study philology, linguistics, law, and folklore. This was a critical time in Germany, which underwent political upheaval in the early nineteenth century with the overthrow of Napoleon’s forces and the struggle for democracy and identity as a new nation-state. This was also the era of the great German thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and Hegel, “that great and formative age for the development of modern German thought, culture, and education: the last four decades of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth” (Smith, 126-7). Romanticism was “a middle-class, pan-European reaction against the ideas of the Enlightenment” (Paradiž, 19) which emphasized a revitalization of the spirit of the past, native language and history, and an idealization of the simple Volk (folk). “Native folklore was to be the ‘healing power’ for the nation, a remedy for spiritual recovery and creative strength” (Kamenetsky, 25). This idealism of the past and the purity of the Volk were a crucial aspect of the Grimms’ personal motivation for the decades of work that went into the KHM. “Broadly speaking, the Grimms sought to preserve all kinds of ancient relics as if they were sacred and precious gems that originated naturally from the soil. In their minds, the tales, myths, songs, fables, legends, epics, riddles, and other narratives that emanated from the voices of the common people contained deeper meanings than so-called educated people realized” (Zipes, xix). The Grimms saw their work as not just a cultural but a spiritual duty.

The majority of Germans belonged to either the Protestant or Reformed Church, and the culture was steeped in the ideals of Martin Luther. In his book The Owl, the Raven & the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimms’ Magic Fairy Tales, Ronald G. Murphy examines the personal spirituality of the Grimms in great detail.

The brothers Grimm thought of fairy tales as remnant of ancient faith expressed in poetry. Through all the revisions of their collections of tales, their preface always begins with a description of gleaning, a biblical image recalling the command that the poor are not to be prevented from gathering the remnants that survive the harvest or the storm, nor the grain that has grown unnoticed by the hedgerow or the roadside… The brothers stated that their book consists of stories which are precious crumbs of ancient faith, gleaned wheat, made into bread, and that they wished to place it only into benevolent hands which have the power to bless, hoping that these “breadcrumbs of poetry” will never come to the attention of those who would withhold them from the poor. (Murphy, 3)

The irony here is that the Grimms never actually worked with the Volk in the process of collecting these tales, so any representative voice of the poor is absent in their work. The poor are supposed to be the ones gleaning the forgotten wheat, but the brothers took that responsibility upon themselves, middle-class and educated young men, trying represent the interests of a population to which they did not belong and which they did not include.

Even more popular than the myth of the Grimms as the original authors of the tales “is the long-standing myth of the brothers’ travels through the countryside, village to village, transcribing stories told to them by farmers and peasants,” writes Valerie Paradiž.

Jacob and Wilhelm are themselves responsible, at least in part, for perpetuating that image. Though they never directly claimed to have worked in this fashion, they unwittingly created a romantic conceit about their process by hiding the identities of their most crucial collaborators … These contributors were neither commoners nor peasants … they were educated ladies. (xi)

The Grimms started by writing down the stories they remembered from their own childhoods, then proceeded to collect stories from their family and friends, mainly the ladies of the Wild and Hassenpflug families.

Storytelling was not only a common pastime for these women, but a crucial tool for exploring their place in the world. Folktales told of rites of passage, showed the types of villains one might encounter, and warned what would happen to those who transgress against the rules. “Indeed, many of the Grimms’ fairy tales dole out pedantic lessons in feminine virtue and appropriateness. The means of enforcement are often astonishingly violent” (Paradiž, 53). The story of “Snow White” in particular “silently points to the conditions of women’s socialization, to the cultural context which frames that very process of development, defining and legitimizing it, while simultaneously setting stifling boundaries for it … The Grimm version … is grounded in the nineteenth-century European dominant discourse about women and the bourgeois cult of domesticity” (Bacchilega, 3). Understandably, many modern scholars have interpreted the Grimms’ fairy tales as anti-feminist, but this is a simplistic view that does not take into account the women who were the major proliferators of oral folktales. They used storytelling as a covert instruction manual for behavior in order to survive in patriarchal nineteenth-century Europe.

The contributions of these women, unfortunately, went unsung. “When volume one of the Children’s and Household Fairy Taleswas published in 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm didn’t credit their female sources by name. Instead, they celebrated, in the foreword to the anthology, the nameless, poetic soul of German culture and its legions of ‘simple folk’ who had passed the tales down through the ages” (Paradiž, xiv). In sum, women contributed to the process but received no credit, while the poor Volk received credit but made no contribution.

After collection, the Grimms proceeded to stamp the tales with their own voices, especially Wilhelm, who was chiefly responsible for the editing process. The stories in the KHM underwent vast changes, both from source to manuscript and from the first edition (1812) to the seventh (1857, now considered the standard). The project was inspired by a collaboration with Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, to which the Grimms contributed only a few folk songs.

Although the brothers disapproved of the poetic license Brentano appeared to be taking in his adaptations, they, too, would alter, especially in later editions of the fairy tales, the transcriptions they had collected from their women friends. But though they edited and cultivated the stories, to use Jacob’s words, to suit the tastes of modern, educated readers in the nineteenth century, they nonetheless continued to perpetuate the myth of accurately preserving the past by keeping the narrative style simple and the language folksy. (Paradiž, 61-2)

Some of the stories remained fairly constant from edition to edition with only minor changes. Others, including the tale of Schneewittchen (Snow White), had more drastic alterations. This earned the Grimms serious criticism from some modern folklorists, especially John Ellis in his book One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. He casts himself in the role of dutiful whistleblower exposing a pair of charlatans. Ellis claims, “It is very hard to imagine that they could have been unaware of the discrepancy between their insistence on authenticity, on the one hand, and their disregard for it in these actions, on the other” (93). Jack Zipes, another Grimms expert and translator of the tales into English, disagrees:

The Grimms thought that the “slight” changes they made in the tales did not make much of a difference … Due to their extensive work as philologists, they firmly believed that they could cobble variants together to bring out the profound essence of the tales … Yet the Grimms were somewhat ingenuous in thinking that their changes did not alter the meanings of the tales, and that their high German could simulate the dialects and reinvigorate the blunt and colorful styles of diverse storytellers. (xxvii)

Zipes concludes that the Grimms could have better defended themselves from critics if they had acknowledged that their stories were actually new tales, continuing the tradition of storytelling through the medium of print.

The wide discrepancy between the Grimms’ ideals and their practice can be explained by the fact that their sense of loyalty to their work was based in what they considered the “essence” of the stories, rather than their exact wording (Kamenetsky, 163). The brothers saw their changes as harmless because there was no author of either oral or written stories who could claim ownership of any tale. “The general public did not distinguish between oral narrator and tale writer and regarded published stories as common property free for anyone to change” (Dégh, 69-70), therefore the Grimms would have felt no qualms about altering their material, even those they took from previously printed sources.

Faith also played a role in the Grimms’ editing process. “The challenge which Wilhelm faced was how to revive the religious feelings in fragmented ancient pagan stories in such a way that they would elicit a religious reaction of the heart of Christian contemporaries” (Murphy, 7), which he happily did. Wilhelm saw the changes he made as not just harmless but necessary.

As previously discussed, strong patriarchal themes were already present in the tales, but the Grimms, whether consciously or not, enhanced them. In Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys; The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales, Ruth Bottigheimer illustrates how “male protagonists usually got away with devious behavior, such as lying, cheating, and stealing (as did Bruder Lustig), yet the female protagonists were caught in their dishonesty and literally ‘ended up in nail-studded barrels.’ She felt that, with few exceptions, the Grimms’ folktales portrayed women as mute and passive victims dominated by circumstance, a perverted one-sided system of justice, or a powerful male figure (king, prince, or father)” (Kamenetsky, 281). The Grimms also used their own moral outlook in widening the disparity of how good and evil characters are treated in the stories: “the innocent are treated more gently, but the evil or guilty are punished even more brutally” (Ellis, 79). Like all artists, the Grimms stamped their work with their own personal and cultural biases.

Despite modern criticisms, many folklorists still praise the Grimms for their innovation and devotion to preserving these relics of the past. In my research, I have come to see the Grimms neither as pure loyalists to tradition nor as unscrupulous frauds but as flawed human men, enthusiastic but oblivious. They are the picture of unexamined privilege: male, white, Christian, middle class, and well educated. It would never have occurred to them to stop and wonder what the implications and long-terms effects of the changes might be. What the Grimms saw as the “essence” of a story may have been completely different than those of the women who supplied the it or the poor Volk whom the Grimms claimed to represent. Nothing is known of how they might have objected to the brothers’ appropriations. For better or worse, the changes were made, the stories were published, and the KHM went on to sell second only to the Bible in the Western world.

2. Snow White

“Snow White” is among the stories in the KHMthat the Grimms changed dramatically from the original sources (Ellis, 74). This is partly because the several variations of the tale that the brothers collected were so disparate that there was no way to select one as “authentic” or “original.” Instead, the Grimms patched together their favorite bits, added some of their own inventions, and ended up with a tidy Christian fable.

One of the major changes the Grimms brought to the final version was the substitution of stepmother for mother. In the first edition, it was Snow White’s biological mother who is envious of her daughter’s beauty, which tells an entirely different thematic story than the one we are used to. Ellis describes it as

a dramatic version of mother-daughter rivalry and sexual jealousy, in which the older woman, at first identifying with the flesh of her flesh, later sees herself eclipsed by a younger woman who is really a separate person and thus a rival. The daughter’s active participation in the rivalry is more than hinted at; for it is at her wedding—the celebration of her own beauty and sexuality—that her mother is put to death in grisly fashion, being forced to dance in red-hot shoes until she drops dead. Thus, she is destroyed at the very celebration of her daughter’s sexual power. (74)

This theme of rivalry is especially true in the first edition, before the change was made, because it is Snow White’s father, not the prince, who rescues her, thus reinforcing the “competition for the affection of the father/husband” (Ellis, 76). By replacing the mother with a stepmother, the Grimms turned the story of a child’s self-actualization to one of Good vs. Evil: “In masculine psychology the stepmother is a symbol of the unconscious in its destructive role—of its disturbing and devouring character” (von Franz, 120). The story of “Hansel and Gretel” suffered an identical change, indicating that the Grimms were bowing to the social pressures of their time and culture, which held motherhood as sacred (Murphy, 124). Turning the wicked mothers into wicked stepmothers provided an acceptable distance between the heroes and their villains.

The story opens with the vivid imagery of three colors: the good queen wishes for a child as red as blood, as white as snow, and as black as ebony. These colors crop up in similar stories of initiation around the world: “Historians of religion and anthropologists tell us that white, red, and black are the colors which accompany initiation, the process of becoming a whole human being, and the child is given the parts of white, red, and black to mark her potential” (Bacchilega, 4). In earlier versions of the story, the Grimms explicitly listed these as physical qualities—lips/cheeks, skin, and eyes/hair. In the seventh edition, these physical traits were not mentioned, the ambiguity indicating that these colors are both literal and metaphorical. They represent the personal qualities that the queen desires in her child: red, warm and loving; white, innocent and faithful; black, humble and connected to the dark earth and mortality (Murphy, 123). The colors become the first indicator that the story has been given a decidedly Christian flavor; Snow White’s true beauty is not in her physical appearance but in her soul.

Snow White is driven out by her vain and jealous stepmother, who tells the huntsman to kill the child and bring back her liver and lungs for the queen to eat (Grimm, 197). Because Snow White is so beautiful (and therefore pure of soul), the huntsman cannot bring himself to kill her. This is another Grimm addition to the story, but “the episode of the huntsman is reminiscent of similar themes of the ‘compassionate executioner’” (Girardot, 289) found not only in other fairy tales but the stories of saints and martyrs. Snow White flees into the forest, the traditional setting in fairy tales for the testing grounds where trials are faced (Murphy, 126). The gatekeepers to this realm are the seven dwarves, monk-like in their compassion, industriousness, hermitic celibacy, and morality (Murphy, 128). They take in Snow White if she agrees to keep house for them, and they serve as the voice of reason in repeatedly warning her to beware of her stepmother.

In a story that is now no longer a coming-of-age but one of Good vs. Evil, the wicked queen has become Lucifer, who fell from Heaven “because of his infatuation with his own beauty and his refusal to accept that anyone else was ‘the most beautiful in the land’ … Lucifer tempts human beings out of jealousy… and he always tempts with some form of the same temptation to self-infatuation to which he himself succumbed” (Murphy, 126). So too does the stepmother tempt Snow White with beauty and vanity: first with colorful corset stays, then with a beautiful comb, and finally with the iconic poisoned apple, which, like Snow White herself, is beautiful and “white with red cheeks” (Grimm, 201). “In the three ordeals the stepmother sequentially attacks the white (breath), black (hair), and red (apple-blood) elements of Snow White’s nature” (Girardot, 291), the virtues of her soul that set her apart from stepmother who sees her own worth as purely physical. There is also the parallel “of the apple with the fruit of earthly desires in the Biblical garden of paradise which brings death into the world but at the same time makes Adam and Eve aware of their sexuality and godlike power to create new life” (292). Snow White’s temptation is not a mere apple, but all the apple represents—beauty and sexuality (and therefore vanity and lust).

Snow White succumbs to temptation in all three trials—not out of perversity or unquenchable female curiosity, like Bluebeard’s wife in another Grimm tale, but out of her naive belief in the goodness of people; the simple peasant woman offering her these gifts could not be evil (Murphy, 127). Because of her innocence and purity of faith, Snow White is not cruelly punished like many fairy tale “bad girls” but merely falls into a sleep-like death that will eventually be lifted.

In further evidence of the religious tone of the story, the dwarfs wash Snow White’s body with water and wine, and all work stops for three days while they mourn (Murphy, 128). Here it is helpful to examine the symbolism present in the illustration (medium unknown, but most likely an etching) by Ludwig Emil Grimm, one of the younger brothers of Jacob and Wilhelm, for the 1825 “Little Edition” of the KHM. The image shows Snow White in the glass coffin that the dwarfs have fashioned for her, placed on top of a mountain, and guarded by one of the dwarfs and three birds: an owl, a raven, and a dove.

Upon her death, Snow White is only seven years old (another detail added by the Grimms). When she begins to display the troubling tendency of giving in to temptation, she is put safely away until the danger is over. “The implication is that as Snow White lay deathlike in the crystal coffin for a ‘long, long time,’ she was of marriageable age at the end of the story—that is, she was around fourteen years old, or seven years beyond the age of seven” (Girardot, 283). If glass is a symbol of virginity (Faur, 27 Oct 2014), Snow White’s identity as a virgin is imposed upon her in the form of the glass coffin. She is trapped—literally by the glass coffin and figuratively by her identity as a virgin—until the dangerous time of adolescence has passed.

In example after example of Christian female martyrs, their “purity” is lauded as their most important virtue: Saint Lucy, Saint Agnes, Saint Agatha, the Virgin of Antioch (no name needed, apparently; her virginity is her identity), Saint Apollonia, Saint Margaret, and Saint Christina. It is a disturbing trend that the purity of these women’s faith is conflated with the purity of their bodies: “that the blessed virgin Lucy possessed the beauty of virginity without trace of corruption; that she radiated charity without any impure love; her progress toward God was straight and without deviation” (de Voragine, 27). So too is Snow White pure in body and soul, remaining true to the colors that define her: red/loving, white/innocent, and black/humble.

In death, Snow White’s body remains whole, pure and beautiful, suffering from no decay, which is consistent with other female Christian martyrs: “By the early modern period, incorruptibility of the whole cadaver or of a part (that is, remaining lifelike, supple, and without decay for decades after burial) was reported for almost every woman proposed for canonization” (Bynum, 70). Because Snow White is a virgin and pure of heart, her body remains whole in order to be ready for resurrection.

The dwarfs take turns watching over the body of Snow White, but she is also guarded by three surprising figures: an owl, a raven, and a dove. The symbolism here is threefold. First, it is a repetition of the three colors that represent the virtues of Snow White’s soul: the reddish-brown owl, the black raven, and the white dove. Second, they are a nod to Wilhelm Grimm’s belief in the universal truths found in pre-Christian religions: the owl for Athena and the classic beliefs, the raven for the old Norse-Germanic beliefs, and the dove for Christianity. Third, they are the ever-present Holy Spirit that stay with Snow White until the arrival of the Son and Father (Murphy, 131).

The final and perhaps most important addition by the Grimms is Snow White’s rescue and resurrection by the prince. Because Walt Disney’s adaptation of the story is so deeply lodged in our minds, most people are surprised to discover that in the Grimms’ final version Snow White is not awoken by the prince’s kiss. When the prince’s servants carry the coffin away, one stumbles, and the bite of poisoned apple falls from Snow White’s mouth. In Disney’s version, the prince and Snow White have already met and fallen in love. In the Grimms’ version, the prince sees Snow White for the first time when she is dead in her coffin; if the prince is merely a mortal man, the story wanders into the dangerously gruesome realm of implied necrophilia. Wilhelm Grimm wanted to stir the hearts, not chill the blood, of his readers. The Christ-like prince finds Snow White preserved in her virginal state, sees the worthiness of her beauty/soul, and enables her resurrection, telling her that he will take her to “my father’s castle” to “be my wife” (Grimm, 204). According to medieval writers, “a death to sexual reproductive life was inverted into a life in Christ as his special bride, and the late medieval authors likened the choice of a life of virginity to a death and rebirth as Christ’s bride” (Rubin, 156). If the prince were an ordinary man, Snow White would not have retained her purity in marriage. Instead, like a nun, she has become the bride of Christ.

Throughout the various editions of the KHM, the manner of the wicked queen’s death in “Snow White” remains the same. At the wedding of Snow White and the prince, the queen is made to put on red-hot iron shoes and “dance until she fell down dead” (Grimm, 204). This “recalls folk practices of destroying a witch through the magic agency of iron. There are also associations of slippers and shoes with the female sexual organs which, as expressive of the egocentric overestimation of the physical dimension of human nature, represent the root of the stepmother’s evil” (Girardot, 297). True to fairy tale style and the Grimms’ polarized views in doling out justice, the villain suffers a grisly death and the heroine claims her Happily Ever After.

3. Beyond the Grimms: Contemporary Re-appropriation

The fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm has remained hugely influential in the Western world for the past two hundred years. Adaptations appear in every conceivable medium, and “their success attests that the popular audience has internalized these formulas” (Dégh, 84-5). These retellings, often branching off into various subgenres and straying far from the “original” versions, have prompted certain critics to mourn the loss of the alleged purity of the Grimms’ collection.

In his article “Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales,” Donald Haase tackles the question of the ownership of fairy tales, debunking two popular myths in the process: nationalism and universalism. The Grimms’ tales are not purely German, for their sources can be traced back to French, Norse, and other European roots (385-6). The stories also cannot truly be called universal in nature, since the Grimms unconsciously wove in their own moral outlook. What psychologist Bruno Bettelheim (author of the renowned book The Uses of Enchantment) saw as universal truths were in fact the authoritarian, patriarchal values of Europe at the time of the Grimms—very similar, in fact, to Bettelheim’s own personal values (392).

So if the Grimm fairy tales are neither national nor universal, to whom do they belong? “To be blunt: I do. And you do … We claim fairy tales in every individual act of telling and reading” (395). Fairy tales have no pure, original, incorruptible source. They have been undergoing a process of individual appropriation since the words “glass” and “coffin” were first put together. The Grimms’ tales are not holy texts to be preserved from sacrilege. Some scholars have attempted to do so, but this results in a sterile picture devoid of meaning. It is through this process of individual reclamation and appropriation that fairy tales regain their meaning—the meaning we give them.

This is exactly what Western culture has done over and over again. The 1937 film adaptation by Walt Disney might almost be more deeply imbedded in modern American psyches than the Grimm version. Countless advertising and merchandising dollars over the past century ensured that Disney’s version not only became but stayed the new dominant narrative, the ultimate authority on Snow White. But Walt Disney was no less a product of his time than the Grimms. He downplayed the Christian symbolism in the story, but it is still present, especially in the final shot when the prince’s castle appears “not on the horizon as one might expect in a Disney film, but high above and ahead of the prince and his bride, radiant in the sky … like a golden city made of sunlight” (Murphy, 4). Disney gave us the sweetness of a happily ever after romance, a narrative produced and consumed en masse in Depression-era cinema.

Since then, however, we have not been content with Snow White as the docile and demure damsel in distress. Modern feminism demands more of its heroines, as seen in the influx of Snow White retellings in the past few years. In the ABC series Once Upon a Time (2011-present), this new Snow White is “spunky yet vulnerable” (Tatar), armed with a bow and a complicated backstory. Another example is the 2012 film Snow White and the Huntsman, “reconceived to appeal to an audience partial to high-decibel special effects … Like all fairy-tale adaptations, it also operates like a magnet, picking up relevant bits and pieces of the culture that is recycling the tale” (Tatar). Once again we see a Snow White who is strong and inspiring, who “channels Joan of Arc” (Fricke; Tatar) and leads an army to reclaim her kingdom. A lesser-known version is another film in 2012 called Mirror Mirror, in which Snow White avoids death altogether by seeing through the poisoned-apple trick and outsmarting the wicked queen.

In most contemporary adaptations, the powerful fairy tale images remain—the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, the glass coffin, and the resurrection by true love’s kiss. But Snow White is no longer the Grimms’ one-dimensional archetype nor Disney’s vapid and saccharine maiden. We have given her what the Grimms never did: a personality, a purpose, and a weapon.

The Brothers Grimm were another link in this endless chain, creating their own adaptation for their own purposes. Their failure, however, was in being oblivious to the larger implications of the choices they made. No fairy tale adaptation exists in a vacuum. Every story or piece of art is part of the greater narrative of how we represent martyrs, women, and other oppressed peoples. The artist has a responsibility to the truth as they see it, but the work will inevitably be colored by their own socio-historical context. We can—and should—continue to re-appropriate fairy tales, using old stories to find new meaning, but we must be conscious of our accountability and intentional in our choices. Every martyrdom narrative has consequences, but when the martyr is fictional, her voice is our voice; we use her story to tell our own. Snow White is still our martyr; she can be a martyr for each one of us.

Bibliography

Bacchilega, Cristina. “Cracking the Mirror: Three Re-Visions of ‘Snow White.’” boundary 2,

Duke University Press.15.3 and 16.1 (Spring – Autumn, 1988): 1-25. JSTOR. Web. 13

Nov. 2014.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Bodily Miracles and the Resurrection of the Body in the High Middle

Ages.” Belief in History: Innovative Approaches to European and American Religion.

Ed. Thomas Kselman. London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. PDF.

Dégh, Linda. “What did the Grimm Brothers Give to and Take from the Folk?” The Brothers

Grimm and Folktale. Ed. James M. McGlathery. Urbana and Chicago: University of

Illinois Press, 1988. Print.

Ellis, John M. One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1983. Print.

von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala Publications,

Inc, 1996. Print.

Faur, Amjad. The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA. 27 Oct 2014. Lecture.

Fricke, Cate. “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall: Who Has the Most Girl-Power of Them All?”

Something to Read for the Train.Pub. 20 Jun, 2012. WordPress.com. Web. 13 Nov,

2014.

Girardot, N. J. “Initiation and Meaning in the Tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The

Journal of American Folklore90.357 (1977): 274-300. JSTOR. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Translated by

Jack Zipes. New York: Bantam Books, Inc, 1987. Print.

Grimm, Ludwig Emil. Medium unknown.

http://kultur-online.net/files/exhibition/L.E.Grimm_Schneewittchen.jpg

Haase, Donald. “Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of

Fairy Tales.” Merveilles & Contes 7.2 (1993): 383-402. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.

Kamenetsky, Christa. The Brothers Grimm and Their Critics: Folktales and the Quest for

Meaning. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1992. Print.

Murphy, G. Ronald. The Owl, the Raven & the Dove: The Religious Meaning of the Grimms’

Magic Fairy Tales. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

Paradiž, Valerie. Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Basic

Books, 2005. Print.

Rubin, Miri. “Choosing Death? Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Europe.” Martyrs

and Martyrologies: Papers Read at the 1992 Summer Meeting and the 1993 Winter

Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Ed. Diana Wood. Oxford: Published for the

Ecclesiastical History Society by Blackwell Publishers, 1993. PDF.

Smith, Leonard S. Religion and the Rise of History: Martin Luther and the Cultural Revolution

in Germany, 1760-1810. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2009. Print.

Tatar, Maria. “Snow White: Beauty is Power” The New Yorker. Pub. 8 Jun, 2012. Web. 13 Nov,

2014.

de Voragine, Jacobus. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Translated by William Granger

Ryan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. PDF.

Zipes, Jack. The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales: From the Brothers Grimm to Andrew

Lang. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett, 2013. Print.