A new book of classic Tales is being told
from a culturally diverse perspective.
It's a collection of 12 wildly
inventive and surprising stories
which reimagined Grimm's classic
fairy tales for modern readers.
Author Soman Chainani's,
Beast and Beauty Dangerous Tales explains
his new book offers a reimagining
of the classic tales with those
diverse and cultural perspectives.
Be somebody with my attempt to really
kind of retake the old Grimm stories,
the ones that we think we know.
Snow White, Cinderella,
beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid,
Jack and the Beanstalk,
Hansel and Gretel, and you know,
look at them through a new lens because
I think what's happened is Disney got
ahold of them and then you know the
old stories got kind of flattened out
and the good guy always won and they
became kind of sanitized and very young.
And that's not what they were meant to be.
They were meant to be sort of edgy,
provocative renegade.
Survival guides to life to
kind of wake people up.
Way back when and not just kids,
adults also.
And So what I wanted to do was get
that feeling back like fairy tales
feel kind of provocative and you know,
had that sort of flame throwing
quality again.
And so I just sort of went in
and we did them from scratch,
as if I lived in the 1800s
with a crystal ball.
Towards the future,
the little Red Riding Hood is about a
town where on the first day of spring.
The wolves howl,
and that's a sign that the town is dissent.
Their most beautiful girl into the
forest for the wolves to kill and eat,
and the town goes along with this
every year on the first day of spring,
they send their prettiest girl to get
sacrificed just so they can sleep easier.
And that to me seemed like a
metaphor for the larger kind of
world that we live in today.
And then Snow White's about the
only black girl in her Kingdom whose
mother names or that as kind of an
ironic jab that everybody else.
So every story has time with
this upside down.
Feeling right,
that's that's from a
completely different place,
and Peter Pan Peter Pan is the
villain with his lost boys,
and the pirates are the heroes,
you know,
because I always found Peter Pan
to be quite a creepy little child.
And so you know it was about taking
these stories and going deeper into
them and looking them, you know,
sort of flat in the face and saying,
what are they about?
You know, what are we trying to teach here?
And we doing them from scratch?
We can't just ignore these stories,
they exist.
And not only do they exist,
they've existed for thousands of years.
You know, to some extent,
because if you look back a lot of
these fairy tales existed in different forms.
You know, thousands of years ago,
across different cultures.
They're in our DNA.
Even if we try not to tell them they
will pop up again no matter where we live,
they they appear independently
throughout history,
in different cultures.
You know,
they're almost sort of instinctive
to who we are.
There's always a Snow White story.
There's always a Cinderella story.
There's always a Sleeping
Beauty story and so.
We have to get them right, you know,
and it seemed important to get
them right for today's time.
So I thought of it more as a
mission to encourage us all to look
at these stories in a fresh way.
You know what I hope is that people
see themselves in these stories,
'cause I don't think anyone sees themselves
in the old Snow White and Cinderella.
And you know, Sleeping Beauty.
It's just they weren't about us,
so I wanted to write something where you
can read these stories and and in one or
maybe more you see yourself directly and
you're like this is about how I feel this is.
What I'm like in the world and come
away with that sort of deep feeling.
Let's just taking one story at a time,
doing the research on the history of it,
where it came from.
You know what?
What, the original meaning of the story was,
and then trying to reinterpret it.
So really it was just taking each
story one by one and finding that own,
the setting,
the characters that worked for it,
so you know each one is like a it's
own little Polish jewel.
We are quite shocking and dangerous
amongst the rest and everyone is having
sort of a different reaction to it,
so I think it's the one that just you know,
really wakes everyone out.
So Blue Beard is the one I
think that will feel like your
morning coffee when you read it.
So be some beauty is available everywhere
you can get books at your bookstore
or online at the usual suspects.
There's also signed copies available
at evernever.com which is my website
and you can find me at ever not
never.com or on social media at someone.
See on Instagram.
Or someone chainani on Twitter.
So yeah, definitely, definitely enjoy it.
It's a beautiful book.
It's full color and it really
makes a sort of perfect gift.