TITLE: Into the Forest: Tales of the Baba Yaga
AUTHOR: Various
PUBLISHER: Black Spot Books
ISBN: 978-1645481232
PODCAST EPISODE: Episode 129
REVIEWER: Jenny Barrett
Black Spot Books continue in their trend of dark, evocative and often humorous story collections from women writers with a new anthology that captures new and fresh imaginings of the Slavic crone who has stalked Russian and European folktales for at least three centuries. Edited by the multitalented author, film director and academic, Lindy Ryan, Into the Forest: Tales of Baba Yaga envisions the forest witch from twenty-three unique but interconnected perspectives.
Unlike the fairy tale stepmother who yearns for beauty at any cost, or the benevolent fairy godmother who guides and protects, Baba Yaga refuses neat categorisation. Hers is a Slavic name that, it seems, is impossible to firmly translate but which seems to refer to a horrifying old woman. She is the crone with iron teeth who lives in a house that walks on chicken legs. She cannot be bargained with; she cannot be fooled. She may reward the virtuous while she cooks the foolish for her supper. And in her multitude of forms, sometimes youthful, sometimes not simply one woman but two or three sisters, she reveals herself to be the spirit of the wise woman, told in stories over centuries.
We can find manifestations of Baba Yaga in all corners of folktale and popular culture. An excellent collection of tales, introduced by Jack Zipes and edited by Sibelan Forrester, was published in 2013, Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales (University Press of Mississippi). There’s a host of movie versions, often with dubious links to the forest witch herself, and for the Jim Henson enthusiast, there is a graphic novel of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller which features Baba Yaga (‘The Witches’, issue 4, Archaia, 2014).
Editor Ryan describes both the authors and the stories of Into the Forest as ‘wild and fierce and feminine’, exactly the impression given by tales such as Gwendolyn Kiste’s ‘Last Tour into the Hungering Moonlight.’ Here, the so-called civilised world, in the form of elegant dinnerware, Amazon deliveries and perfect driveways, exists precariously on the border of the forest where the old hag calls to women at night. When they answer the call, it’s the movement of a sisterhood whose dreams turn all else to ash.
The authors include several Bram Stoker Award winners, including Gwendolyn Kiste, Donna Lynch and others, New York Times bestseller Jacqueline West, amongst a truly appealing array of US-based poets, essayists and novelists. Whether we find these reimaginings of Baba Yaga in forests, bogs or a mortar that flies at night, and whether she’s a witch, a wise woman or a monster who eats children, each incarnation conjures up a figure who arouses fear. The true terror of Baba Yaga is her refusal to comply to the rules and expectations of the folk who come her way. Beyond simple rebellion, she just doesn’t care.
At times, the Slavic heritage of this figure emerges through names, food or terms of endearment. Baba Yaga wonders if she can smell piroshki, a Russian or Ukrainian filled bread, in Catherine McCarthy’s ‘The Peddler’s Promise.’ These appealing touches combine with the ghastly. A villager named Yakov, lost in the forest, finds his way to Baba Yaga’s house where he discovers the truth about the tasty stew that saves him from the cold in ‘The Space Between the Trees’ by Jo Kaplan. We even gain insight into her motives: why does the forest witch prey on the children of the villagers? Lisa Quigley’s ‘Sugar and Spice and the Old Witch’s Price’ even strays into Medean territory. Tales such as Quigley’s and Kiste’s allow the sheer terror of Baba Yaga to reach into our contemporary world, reminding us that little about the human experience truly changes. There are, however, moments that are truly grim. ‘Stork Bites,’ by EV Knight, for instance, in which the narrator agonises over an unwanted pregnancy, is not for the faint-hearted. But, whilst we live in a world where the forests don’t close around enemies and eat them alive, we may find a satisfying gratification in reading about greedy or sadistic people getting their just deserts.
There is an overwhelming sense of unity that emanates from the stories, a chorus of voices that seem to join in a melody of the matriarch who resists convention, conformism and criticism. And even though they are set in locations as diverse as the Louisiana swamps and the arid regions of Eastern Europe, the various tales cohere around stages of life and fertility for women across all time: puberty, pregnancy, child-rearing, menopause. Somewhere, within and between them, we are invited to recognise Baba Yaga within ourselves and rejoice in the freedom that this brings. As Sara Tantlinger writes in ‘Of Moonlight and Moss,’ ‘The Baba Yaga is an idea, not a name.’
AUTHOR: Various
PUBLISHER: Black Spot Books
ISBN: 978-1645481232
PODCAST EPISODE: Episode 129
REVIEWER: Jenny Barrett
Black Spot Books continue in their trend of dark, evocative and often humorous story collections from women writers with a new anthology that captures new and fresh imaginings of the Slavic crone who has stalked Russian and European folktales for at least three centuries. Edited by the multitalented author, film director and academic, Lindy Ryan, Into the Forest: Tales of Baba Yaga envisions the forest witch from twenty-three unique but interconnected perspectives.
Unlike the fairy tale stepmother who yearns for beauty at any cost, or the benevolent fairy godmother who guides and protects, Baba Yaga refuses neat categorisation. Hers is a Slavic name that, it seems, is impossible to firmly translate but which seems to refer to a horrifying old woman. She is the crone with iron teeth who lives in a house that walks on chicken legs. She cannot be bargained with; she cannot be fooled. She may reward the virtuous while she cooks the foolish for her supper. And in her multitude of forms, sometimes youthful, sometimes not simply one woman but two or three sisters, she reveals herself to be the spirit of the wise woman, told in stories over centuries.
We can find manifestations of Baba Yaga in all corners of folktale and popular culture. An excellent collection of tales, introduced by Jack Zipes and edited by Sibelan Forrester, was published in 2013, Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales (University Press of Mississippi). There’s a host of movie versions, often with dubious links to the forest witch herself, and for the Jim Henson enthusiast, there is a graphic novel of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller which features Baba Yaga (‘The Witches’, issue 4, Archaia, 2014).
Editor Ryan describes both the authors and the stories of Into the Forest as ‘wild and fierce and feminine’, exactly the impression given by tales such as Gwendolyn Kiste’s ‘Last Tour into the Hungering Moonlight.’ Here, the so-called civilised world, in the form of elegant dinnerware, Amazon deliveries and perfect driveways, exists precariously on the border of the forest where the old hag calls to women at night. When they answer the call, it’s the movement of a sisterhood whose dreams turn all else to ash.
The authors include several Bram Stoker Award winners, including Gwendolyn Kiste, Donna Lynch and others, New York Times bestseller Jacqueline West, amongst a truly appealing array of US-based poets, essayists and novelists. Whether we find these reimaginings of Baba Yaga in forests, bogs or a mortar that flies at night, and whether she’s a witch, a wise woman or a monster who eats children, each incarnation conjures up a figure who arouses fear. The true terror of Baba Yaga is her refusal to comply to the rules and expectations of the folk who come her way. Beyond simple rebellion, she just doesn’t care.
At times, the Slavic heritage of this figure emerges through names, food or terms of endearment. Baba Yaga wonders if she can smell piroshki, a Russian or Ukrainian filled bread, in Catherine McCarthy’s ‘The Peddler’s Promise.’ These appealing touches combine with the ghastly. A villager named Yakov, lost in the forest, finds his way to Baba Yaga’s house where he discovers the truth about the tasty stew that saves him from the cold in ‘The Space Between the Trees’ by Jo Kaplan. We even gain insight into her motives: why does the forest witch prey on the children of the villagers? Lisa Quigley’s ‘Sugar and Spice and the Old Witch’s Price’ even strays into Medean territory. Tales such as Quigley’s and Kiste’s allow the sheer terror of Baba Yaga to reach into our contemporary world, reminding us that little about the human experience truly changes. There are, however, moments that are truly grim. ‘Stork Bites,’ by EV Knight, for instance, in which the narrator agonises over an unwanted pregnancy, is not for the faint-hearted. But, whilst we live in a world where the forests don’t close around enemies and eat them alive, we may find a satisfying gratification in reading about greedy or sadistic people getting their just deserts.
There is an overwhelming sense of unity that emanates from the stories, a chorus of voices that seem to join in a melody of the matriarch who resists convention, conformism and criticism. And even though they are set in locations as diverse as the Louisiana swamps and the arid regions of Eastern Europe, the various tales cohere around stages of life and fertility for women across all time: puberty, pregnancy, child-rearing, menopause. Somewhere, within and between them, we are invited to recognise Baba Yaga within ourselves and rejoice in the freedom that this brings. As Sara Tantlinger writes in ‘Of Moonlight and Moss,’ ‘The Baba Yaga is an idea, not a name.’