A Fable About Overcoming The Odds

Speculating Canada reviews Rati Mehrotra’s “The Half Courage Hare” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales From The Margins

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

A Fable About Overcoming the Odds

A review of Rati Mehrotra’s “The Half Courage Hare” in Over The Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (Exile Editions, 2018).

By Derek Newman-Stille

Animals offer a fascinating element to folklore and fairy tales, often grouped into their own category of “animal tales”. These tales often use animals as symbolic representations of human characteristics, hyper-accentuating these characteristics. The animals are anthropomorphised (given human characteristics like speech, human cultural customs, and human behaviours) as part of this rendering of animals into the symbolic realm to speak about human experience. From Aesop’s fables to medieval bestiaries to the plethora of cartoon animal stories, we have been fascinated by our relationship with the animal world and with our belief that animals can reveal something about us and our experiences.

Fables are a form of folk tales that uses animals to convey lessons to people about…

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Not Malfunctioning

Speculating Canada reviews Fiona Patton’s “I Am Not Broken” from Over the Rainbow

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

Not Malfunctioning

A review of Fiona Patton’s “I Am Not Broken” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (Exile, 2018)

By Derek Newman-Stille

In our ableist society, disability is treated as a flaw, as a malfunction. In “I Am Not Broken”, Fiona Patton explores the problematic assumptions about disability by abstracting the image of malfunctioning onto a robot who has been deemed to be malfunctional and is preparing for disassembly. By making this parallel, Patton explores the way that our society assumes that disabled people are “broken” and not capable of fulfilling a social role. Patton critiques ideas of bodily conformity by pointing out production lines and challenges ideas of standardized testing by pointing out that it can’t encompass the complexity of individual value. Her tale is a challenge to power structures that try to force a singular normative system and fail to recognize the power…

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Skin Deep

Speculating Canada reviews Nathan Caro Frechette’s story “Skin” from Over the Rainbow

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

Skin Deep

A review of Nathan Caro Frechette’s “Skin” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (2018, Exile)

By Derek Newman-Stille

Selkies are creatures from Scottish folklore (but also noted in the Orkneys and Shetlands) who are capable of transforming from seal to human by shedding their skin. In many selkie tales, female selkies are stolen from their watery home when a man steals their seal skin and then keeps the skin hidden away, forcing his new selkie bride to do his bidding. These are generally coercive tales where women (or their children) have to escape from the control of the skin thief by finding out where the skin is hidden and stealing it back to disappear into the ocean.

Nathan Caro Frechette reshapes the selkie mythos in his story “Skin”, which plays with the idea of skin and identity, turning the tale into a Trans…

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Over the Rainbow Table of Contents

Here is our Table of Contents for Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales From The Margins (Exile, 2018).

Introduction: Fairy Tale Transformations – Derek Newman-Stille

Skin – Nathan Caro Frechette

I Am Not Broken – Fiona Patton

The Half Courage Hare – Rati Mehrotra

The Story of the Three Magic beans – Ace Jordyn

Iron Jenny and the Princess – Robert Dawson

The Waltzing Tree – Richard Keelan

Fairest Find – Nicole Lavigne

White Rose, Red Thorns – Liz Westbrook-Trenholm

Path of White Stones – Kate Heartfield

The Page of Cups and the Star – Evelyn Deshane

Unearthing History – Lisa Cai

Half Gone Dark – Tamara Vardomskaya

None of Your Flesh and Blood – Chadwick Ginther

Pied – Quinn McGlade-Ferentzy

La Bete Sauvage – Karin Lowachee

Martinis, My Dear, Are Dangerous – Kate Story

Daughter Catcher – Ursula Pflug

As Never Bird Sang Before – Sean Moreland