Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men - Hardcover

Cashorali, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062513087 ISBN 13: 9780062513083

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1995

Synopsis

In Fairy Tales, Peter Cashorali artfully contemporizes classic folk and fairy tales in order to give gay men stories that tell their stories. Adapting the magical and mythic language of traditional storytelling, he brilliantly addresses the life passages of gay men. From coming out and learning to trust oneself to "looksism" and looking for lasting love, middle age and mortality to AIDS, grieving, and helping others, here are new spins on tales from around the world, drawing on favorites by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Andrew Lang, Hans Christian Andersen, Italo Calvino, and others. Witty, romantic, and wonderfully contemporary, these stories feature fairy tale staples such as fickle princes, talking animals, and inanimate objects with incredible powers, plus personal trainers, aging boy-toys, a poignant Ugly Duckling, a movie-mad Hansel, and a Rumpelstiltskin with a riddle about HIV.

About this title

Review:

In this book, Peter Cashorali takes familiar folk tales and recasts them with gay men and boys in the starring roles: finally, a world where it's the gay man who finds love or fulfills his dream or solves the problem. As I read these stories, I felt emotional blocks inside me falling into place, having been suspended for decades; as a child, I had read the original versions of these stories, but I could not identify with the heterosexual protagonists and so felt a certain distance from the stories. Those stories weren't about me. But now, I have this wonderful set of tales, filled with humor, wisdom and compassion. The archetypes are there for me too, now--I can my heart resonating when the prince loves a boy, when the outcast gay man ends up succeeding. I believe that every gay man will benefit from reading these stories, to repair his childhood tapestry that included no gay figures. The stories work well when read aloud, too. The sources of the tales are given, so that you can trace them. The illustrations are charming and delicate. I would say that sometimes the humor of the texts is a little cheesy--for instance, getting a laugh by introducing some anachronistic detail like a car--but not enough to really detract from the effect. It's also worth noting that a quite wide spectrum of gay life is represented here, and Mr. Cashorali is brave about playing with stereotypes, subverting them and showing the nuggets of truth inside them. (I have to confess--I have not read a couple of the stories yet, though I've had the book for a year. I couldn't stand to reach the end, so I have saved two of the stories... I also bought the sequel to this book, which is equally good.) This book, and its sequel, are the only books I would unhesitatingly recommend to every gay man. --Reader

About the Author:

Peter Cashorali, is a writer and performer whose fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Men on Men, Indivisible, and His.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0062513087
• ISBN 13: 9780062513083
• Binding: Hardcover