Kimberly J. Lau’s Specters of the Marvelous is a fascinating and thorough examination of racism through the lens of European fairy tales.
Foreword Reviews wrote of the book:
“Kimberly J. Lau’s Specters of the Marvelous foregrounds race in often whitewashed European fairy tales. A compelling history of race in literary European fairy tales.”
In her own words, here is Kimberly J. Lau‘s Book Notes music playlist for her book Specters of the Marvelous: Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale:
As a literary scholar, I live in a world of texts, so thinking about my work through music has been a wonderfully provocative experience. As soon as I started to consider the idea of a soundtrack for my book, I couldn’t stop thinking in songs. Specters of the Marvelous addresses the striking absence of race in critical studies of the European fairy tale and highlights the principal role of race in the development of the European fairy tale as well as the naturalized role of the fairy tale in the development of western racisms and racial formations. I hope my playlist evokes some of these ideas in allusive and affective ways.
“The Sleeping Beauty, No. 2” (Tchaikovsky)
It seems only fitting to begin with a classical musical interpretation of a classical fairy tale. I emphasize classical here to call attention to the ways that western European art forms are consistently unmarked, simply assumed to be foundational forms of universal genres. But, of course, there is no such thing, and my book works to restore the social, cultural, and political contexts that are rendered invisible in such classical genres.
“I Would be Your Slave” (David Bowie)
The first collection of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales (1634-1636), features a surprising number of slaves, both metaphoric and literal. David Bowie’s “I Would be Your Slave” resonates with Basile’s metaphoric language of slavery, an extension of the servitium amoris (slave to love) trope from Roman love elegy. This metaphoric language of slavery also puts into high relief Basile’s racializing of literal slaves.
Basile’s fairy-tale collection literally revolves around a Black female slave, whose deception and false tears allow her to displace the prince’s rightful bride in the collection’s frame tale. Basile’s description is fluent in the naturalized racial stereotypes and abusive behaviors of the period. Sade’s “Slave Song” calls forth the horrors of slavery from the perspective of the slave, and rightful—perhaps righteous—tears understandably anchor both the pre-chorus and the bridge.
“I’m an Animal” (Sly and the Family Stone)
As fairy tales develop after Basile’s The Tale of Tales, slaves and other racialized figures become increasingly metaphorized, very often as animals, an early example of common racial stereotypes. These implicitly raced animals are common protagonists in French animal bridegroom tales of the late-seventeenth- and the eighteenth centuries, such as “Prince Marcassin” and “Beauty and the Beast.”
“Rendez-vous dans une autre vie” (Francoise Hardy)
The late-seventeenth and eighteenth-century French fairy tales were deeply informed by French colonialism, first in “New France” and later in the Caribbean. These “new worlds” inspired imperial fantasies of other—often improved—lives, not only for les sauvages and slaves but also for French citizens living in the colonies, and Francoise Hardy’s “autre vie” captures the dreamy possibilities of such imaginary utopias.
“I Wonder What Became of Me” (Lena Horne)
Metamorphosis and transformation figure prominently in the European fairy tale tradition from its inception, and the French and German collections are especially abundant in such stories. Such metamorphoses were sometimes figurative—such as a rise in class status—and sometimes physical, including both disenchantment from accursed states and transformations into vilified, often racialized, characters.
“Black Queen” (Stephen Stills)
In European fairy tale collections from Basile’s Tale of Tales through the Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales and Andrew Lang’s Colored Fairy Book series, there are stories about true and false brides. Perhaps not surprisingly, the true bride is also a white bride while the false bride is a black bride, often installed as the “Black Queen” until the truth of her identity emerges. Stephen Stills’ raspy, soulful, almost plaintive “Black Queen” channels some of the fear and suspicion about her power.
“Motherless Child” (Eric Clapton)
Late-nineteenth-century fairy tale anthologies like Andrew Lang’s Colored Fairy Books often recontextualized and profited from traditional folk narratives, and the choices were often driven by personal investments and beliefs. Eric Clapton’s “Motherless Child”—itself a common fairy-tale trope—adapts and sells a traditional spiritual about the cruel breakup of families during slavery to represent his emotions about his own biography.
“Rum and Coca-Cola” (Andrews Sisters)
In addition to recontextualized traditional narratives, the Colored Fairy Books also included highly edited and crafted adaptations of non-European tales, which were primarily produced by Lang’s wife, Nora. As he writes in the preface to the Brown Fairy Book, Mrs. Lang “does not give them exactly as they are told by all sorts of outlandish natives, but makes them up in the hope white people will like them, skipping the pieces which they will not like” (1904). The Andrews Sisters’ 1945 remaking of Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca-Cola,” which laments the gendered effects of American colonialism in the Caribbean, exemplifies the adaptation of traditional genres for white tastes and consumption.
The Colored Fairy Books made British imperial fantasies accessible to children, and the twelve-volume series was incredibly popular throughout the empire. Several postcolonial and decolonial writers and artists have responded to the Lang series and its universalizing of diverse narrative traditions under the sign of “the fairy tale” by reimagining color in relation to narrative. Miles Davis’ “Blue in Green” captures the complex tangle of nostalgia, love, violence, and resistance that haunts such responses.
“Kaulana Nā Pua” (Makaha Sons)
The conclusion of Specters of the Marvelous considers some of the different ways that native, indigenous, and decolonial stories might come together in a “spectral politics of wonder” to call into question the universality of “the fairy tale” and to restore wonder genres to their own contexts. “Kaulana Nā Pua” was first written and performed in 1893 as a protest against the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani and the Hawaiian Kingdom. Today, it is performed in the context of Hawaiian sovereignty and in resistance to American rule.
“What a Wonderful World” (Louis Armstrong)
I conclude Specters of the Marvelous on a hopeful note by suggesting that decolonizing the European fairy tale can help return us to the kind of wonder that might sustain us in the seemingly unrelenting battle against racist hatred and violence. Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” animates the hope for peace and justice implicit in such wonder.
Kimberly J. Lau is a professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Erotic Infidelities: Love and Enchantment in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” (Wayne State University Press), Body Language: Sisters in Shape, Black Women’s Fitness, and Feminist Identity Politics, and New Age Capitalism: Making Money East of Eden, as well as articles in a number of interdisciplinary journals. Her research interests include fairy tales, folklore, and fantasy; feminist theory and critical race studies; and the intersection of popular and political cultures.