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Using the 2Z Blog Challenge and NaNoWriCAMP, to write twenty-two folktales and legends about maidens and matrons, I framed the stories into a sequence to answer the question, 'Why I like the story?'
I corrected that question to 'DO I LIKE THIS TALE?' after realizing my chosen folktales preached a code, a norm --> that 'women are servants', and sadly, she went along - norms, horrors.
I titled my selection of tales to Damsels in Distress. Revisiting these tales from the 14th to 20th centuries, I recognized the narratives are from the male point of view that upheld the notion that woman, female, her, she are to act as a server. The male carrying the sword and pen, he owned the norms. And worst, I thought only men were professional authors.
My girl child and youth smothered by this norm; males wrote the narratives.
After twelve years as a storyteller, telling at the Asian Art Museum, and the hundred-plus books of folktales, legends, and myths I studied from across the world ---> I shaped another vision and opinion.
Value, worth, and hope do exist in these tales; women survived by the various powers she possessed. After re-imaged the stories into a female point of view and narrative, I realized the males did not understand the norms set upon themselves. The freer the female, the freer the male, and powers exist to establish this balance within each.
