The Europeans: Bringing Civilization to North America (If you believe in fairies)”
We all know Disney’s sweet little story about Cinderella. It was a close adaptation of Charles Perrault’s Cendrillion (1697). The Brothers Grimm’s version is as different to those of Disney and Perrault’s as a blood sausage is to jellyrolls. In the folktale the Grimms relate, one stepsister cuts off her toe in order to fit her foot into the golden shoe, the other stepsister chops off a heel. Then birds from a magical tree peck out the stepsisters’ eyes.
Folktales, passed orally from generation to generation, reflect the values of a community and entertain while conveying moral lessons, this amusement factor probably accounting for why the stories were retold and survived. (The message in Grimm’s Cinderella is clear—don’t be mean, especially to a half-sister who is friends with birds.) In terms of horror, folktales are often worthy of Stephen King. They are replete with references to our body’s nether regions. Folktale historians gather and keep these stories intact. Modern writers bowdlerize them and produce G rated stories like Disney’s Cinderella. No gouged eyes in that one.
This country has folktales about the frontier hero, men who “tamed the wilderness.” What isn’t mentioned in these stories is the dark side of the “pioneer spirit”: the massacre of Native people, the racism toward them and African-Americans, the exploitation and destruction of the environment. Our history is scrubbed of historic facts and is as squeaky clean as Disney’s Cinderella in her Dior inspired dress. Stories creating a mythical West in movies, books, and comics, aren’t in the past but are the folktales we continue to pass on, the concept of Europeans “settling” this continent imbedded in our culture. As a former presidential candidate (2012, 2016) recently remarked:
“We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
It is this kind of attitude that my new novel, Ghost Dancer, seeks to challenge with its story about a courageous young woman who escapes the prejudices of a small town without having to marry a prince. She triumphs on her own. And although experiencing the magical, no one is blinded by birds.
Rather, spirits of the Ghost Dance allow her to see her destiny—and ours.
______________________________________________________________Ghost Dancer
Folktales, passed orally from generation to generation, reflect the values of a community and entertain while conveying moral lessons, this amusement factor probably accounting for why the stories were retold and survived. (The message in Grimm’s Cinderella is clear—don’t be mean, especially to a half-sister who is friends with birds.) In terms of horror, folktales are often worthy of Stephen King. They are replete with references to our body’s nether regions. Folktale historians gather and keep these stories intact. Modern writers bowdlerize them and produce G rated stories like Disney’s Cinderella. No gouged eyes in that one.
This country has folktales about the frontier hero, men who “tamed the wilderness.” What isn’t mentioned in these stories is the dark side of the “pioneer spirit”: the massacre of Native people, the racism toward them and African-Americans, the exploitation and destruction of the environment. Our history is scrubbed of historic facts and is as squeaky clean as Disney’s Cinderella in her Dior inspired dress. Stories creating a mythical West in movies, books, and comics, aren’t in the past but are the folktales we continue to pass on, the concept of Europeans “settling” this continent imbedded in our culture. As a former presidential candidate (2012, 2016) recently remarked:
“We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
It is this kind of attitude that my new novel, Ghost Dancer, seeks to challenge with its story about a courageous young woman who escapes the prejudices of a small town without having to marry a prince. She triumphs on her own. And although experiencing the magical, no one is blinded by birds.
Rather, spirits of the Ghost Dance allow her to see her destiny—and ours.
______________________________________________________________Ghost Dancer
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