Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
Unreliable narrators are one of literature’s greatest tools. Whether we know they’re unreliable from the start or it’s planted like a trail of crumbs leading deep into the shadows, such characters having control of the story forces us to reckon with the limits…
That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world…a beautiful little fool…
There are few things more dangerous to be in this world than a woman. There are few things more powerful to be than a straight white man. Unfortunately, these statements have only gotten truer as the…
I’ll show you my teeth.
Many things would probably end quicker if we believed women (and victims, generally). The entire horror genre might collapse in on itself into little more than 10-minute vignettes, but justice would out and predators of all kinds would probably be squashed before they were able…
Proof that Gothic Horror isn’t going anywhere…
There’s nothing quite like curling up next to a fire on a rainy autumnal night with a Gothic horror in tow. Done right, the foggy tendrils will reach out for you immediately, beckoning that you should fall under its spell and follow it…
Stories have power…and the truth will out
The origins of fairy and folk tales are never as polished as we imagine them to be when we are children. We picture princesses finding true love and adventure, escaping the confines of her sheltered life with the help of a prince. The…
A book about facing fear with bravery in a world made by monsters
Few things are as powerful in this world as a supportive guardian. Someone to see you in all your strangeness and encourage you to develop that into a unique garden through which you navigate the world. I…
If it’s a Devil they want, then a Devil they shall have…
Whether we realize it or not, our society is built on the idea of projecting our anxieties onto others. Think about it. The land we claim to have “discovered” was occupied by the time Columbus found it, but…
The curiouser and curiouser life of one little girl’s favorite story, and what adults found there…
I like to consider myself something of a student on Alice in Wonderland and its myriad adaptations. I can’t rightly say “Expert”, exactly, because there seems always to be something new to be taken…
In Which a world of very little brain bans a bear of very big heart
We all have that book. The one we treasure the most, that we beg incessantly for our parents to read to us over and over again, silly voices and all. The one that fueled our…
Children’s stories are a scary business…
Welcome back to On Literary Censorship, the yearly series released during Banned Books Month where we dive deep into why books get banned, what it says about the culture of the places that ban them, and revisit them with a more open perspective. A…
