I can’t express how much this warms my heart. I’ve noticed that especially with Young Adult novels there’s a new emerging trend within publishing where they are pushing to have young Black girls on the front cover. It was unique and I’ve honestly never read a retelling quite like it. I loved how Bayron took a strong-minded Black female protagonist to question the patriarchal societies and the lies that come with it. Especially the older fairy-tales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. It’s a washed up, old-fashioned tale that encourages women to focus on just their looks. But this perpetuated lie that women have to be weak in order to have a man fall in love with them is old. This has always been my issue with Disney’s fairy-tales. But most importantly, she twisted it to emphasise that you should be your own hero. Kalynn Bayron took this fairy-tale and manipulated to reveal themes of patriarchy, magic and love. Maybe it’s the push for more diversity and a better reflection of the multi-cultural society that we live in today.īut I love when people take the rigidity, uniformity and lack of diversity of these fairy-tales and adapt them to fit whatever truth they are trying to tell. She became an untouchable fairy-tale alongside many others. Even modernised reboots of the fairy-tale had blonde characters playing Cinderella and Prince Mason. If you were handed a picture of Cinderella it never occurred to you to make her hair black and her dress green.
We all knew growing up that Cinderella’s dress had to be blue and she had long blonde hair. I’ve begun to question why it’s on this pedestal. We all grew up watching this Disney fairy-tale and whether we realise it or not it’s upheld on a pedestal. Especially, famous fairy-tales such as Cinderella. I think there’s always an added pressure when authors decide to do retellings of famous books, fairy-tales or legends.
And there she meets someone who will show her that she has the power to remake her world. Alone and terrified, she finds herself hiding in Cinderella’s tomb. And when Sophia’s night at the ball goes horribly wrong, she must run for her life. For the lives of those not chosen by a man at the ball are forfeit.īut Sophia doesn’t want to be chosen – she’s in love with her best friend, Erin, and hates the idea of being traded like cattle. And every girl knows that she has only one chance. Because every girl has to recite it daily, from when she’s tiny until the night she’s sent to the royal ball for choosing. Sophia knows the story though, off by heart. It’s 200 years since Cinderella found her prince, but the fairytale is over.
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