Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World

by Kathleen Ragan

The first anthology of its kind to feature a variety of multicultural heroines, this definitive sourcebook of folktales and fairytales chronicles the stories of courageous mothers, clever young girls, warrior women, and wise women who ruled their kingdoms.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Feminism, Fiction, Folklore, Mythology

450 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[missy jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection of folktales with women as heroines. I didn't always agree, though, with the editor's interpretations of the stories. It's just a personal preference, I think: I would rather not be told how to interpret a piece of folklore, because I think the timeless nature of a folktales lies in its malleability, its need to be held in different hands and molded and misunderstood and retold. If the editor's interpretations hadn't been so heavy-handed, I would have given this collection a higher rating.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This came really close to fulfilling all my criteria for a folktale collection. It certainly fulfills the primary one: an abundance of good stories. In addition, this has variety, especially cultural variety, and the stories told are told well. It certainly fulfills its mission of providing stories in which women center prominently, and those women are infinite in their characteristics.

There were, however, a couple of things I did not like. First, for a collection that exceeds most others of its kind in the geographic diversity of the stories' origins, it includes only one story from all of South America. Surely an entire continent with hundreds of distinct cultures isn't devoid of heroines?* While Ragan does acknowledge the collection's lack of South American folktales in her introduction, and while interest in South American folktales has grown immensely since Fearless Girls was published (therefore increasing supply), it's still disappointing.

Secondly, I was surprised to find two stories attributed to the "People of the Northwest Coast" were actually Frankensteins written by Christie Harris, a white anthropologist. Harris mashed together material from several different tribes and changed the vocabulary of the stories, calling chief's daughters "princesses." I spend probably more time than is healthy worrying about the tension between cultural appropriation and exchange in my amateur study of folklore, and I'm not going to argue whether or not Harris should have created these stories, but I am going to definitively say that they are no longer Native stories and should not be included as such. At least those two stories served as a reminder to take the rest of the collection with a grain of salt, as other stories were almost undoubtedly altered in more insidious ways through translation or during collection.

And lastly, Ragan's notes at the end of each tale got on my nerves. They're her personal reflections, and didn't add anything to my appreciation of the stories. I stopped reading them in fairly short order (though they did provide the information about Christie Harris, so I suppose they weren't completely useless).

For all of that, I still recommend it. It's big, including over a hundred stories, and a lot of those are excellent. Also, as annoying as Ragan's annotations are, the actual endnotes are fairly good. At the bare minimum, they provide the source of each story, and some include additional information on how the tale was originally collected or some cultural context. Always appreciated.



*Spoilers--it's not. Check out John Beirhorst's Latin American Folktales for starters.

[Georgina Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of stories about heroic women from around the world is great for any readers that want to explore and analyze the role of women in traditional folklore. Sometimes the narratives feel a bit disjoined and seem more like rough translations of the original text with a brief note of personal interpretation from the author. I would recommend this collection for academics in folklore when they want to explore the role of women in fantasy. Some of the stories feel stronger than others.

My favorite stories from the collection include these titles:

The Stolen Bairn and the Sidh - Scotland
The Ghost at Fjelkinge - Sweden
The Pigeon's Bride - Yugoslavia
The Princess and the Magical Hat - People of the Northwest Coast
The Innkeeper's Wise Daughter - Jewish American
The Mirror of Matsuyama: A Story of Old Japan

One of these stories features conflict between a young girl and her stepmother but the stepmother is not villainized. This story has good themes about reconciliation, redemption and recovering from loss.

I am currently reading this book, and I will have more to add when I am finished.

[Aine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loving these folktales!

The three sisters and their husbands (Ireland): loved this story of three wives attempting to win a bet by fooling their husbands.
The horned women (Ireland): a group of witches descend on the home of a young woman and she must resist them. I enjoyed her efforts at breaking their spells.
Molly Whuppie (England): loved Molly who shows spirit to rescue herself and her sister.
The hand of glory (England): a quickwitted servant girl faces an unexpected threat
'My Jon's soul' (Iceland): a woman goes to great lengths to ensure the safety of her dying husband's soul.
The wood maiden (Czechoslavakia): a young girl is distracted from her work by a dancing maiden
The child who was poor and good (Greece): the youngest daughter of a poor woman must find her own warm clothes
Where the girl saved her brother (Cheyenne): a young Cheyenne warrior is so brave in saving her brother on the battlefield that the enemy backs off. A legend not a fairytale.
The huntress (Inuit): a young woman who provides for her family is trapped away from home and must face man-killing monsters to save her innocent neighbours.
I'm Tipingee, She's Tipingee, We're Tipingee, too (Haiti): I loved this story of clever resistance from a young girl and her friends.
A Rani's revenge (Orissa, India): a female warrior breaks with traditional revenge in order to save another woman the heartache that she experienced.
The mirror of Matsuyama: a story of Old Japan (Japan): beautiful story of a mother passing on a mirror to her daughter so that she will remember her face when she dies.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent anthology of folktales from all over the world showcasing the common strengths of women from different cultures. The Native American tales from North and South America, tales from Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East were my personal favorites. Specific stories I loved:
-Anait
-Where the Girl Saved Her Brother
-The Princess and Mountain Dweller
-Altyn-Aryg
-The Man Killed for a Spinach Leaf
-The Leopard Woman
-Women's Wiles
As a lover of fairy tales and folktales, I was surprised to only find one story in the whole book that I recognized - an alternate version of Little Red Riding Hood. Forget about Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. You won't find any rescuing princes here. Instead you will find story after story of clever, brave, strong girls and women who solve their own problems autonomously. Extraordinarily empowering and inspiring. A must read for any girl/woman of any age. Highly recommended.

[Finch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a good book - the stories were interesting and there were a lot I haven’t read before! - but the author has some astronomical takes in the little footnotes to each story (comparing a heroine who has to run away from danger to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine??) and I think it’s a little bit of a missed trick to not consider the implicit ableism in the story Women’s Wiles as it intersects with femininity. The qadi’s disabled daughter is a throwaway character directly because she is disabled and not considered worth as much as the protagonist - surely if you’re looking at a woman’s role in stories, and have brought up in previous stories that women who aren’t traditionally attractive or valued are equally as important as other women, it’s worth pointing out?

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

"One hundred great folk tales and fairy tales from all over the world about strong, smart, brave heroines. A definitive sourcebook of folktales and fairytales and the first of its kind to feature a variety of multicultural heroines."

It took me almost two weeks to read Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World and I even skipped several tales that I'd read or heard before -- that's how chock full o' goodies it is.

In her introduction, Kathleen Ragan stated that she read over 30,000 stories and used sources that "were as close to the oral literature as possible." The tales collected in Fearless Girls were organized within six geographic locations: Europe, North and South America, Asia, the Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, and North Africa and the Middle East. Based on my personal research and reading, I felt South America and Africa may have been slightly underrepresented; the Middle East as well, but since she had limited herself to American libraries and available English translations, perhaps that pool was shallow to begin with? Ragan added her thoughts to the end of each tale -- sometimes those were interesting/ helpful/ useful, other times, meh. Each story had additional information and bibliographical details in "Notes" at the end of the book.

This anthology plus the "Notes" plus the "Further Reading" are a goldmine for those studying or researching female heroes in folklore and fairy tales. I'm definitely gonna pick up a used copy for my personal collection so I"ll have a permanent home for all the sticky notes I wrote and inserted reading the library's copy.

For the casual reader of fairy and folktales, Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters will certainly keep you busy for a few weeks.

4.5 stars

From the foreword written by Jane Yolen, "Anthologist Kathleen Ragan, has, with the publication of this book, become an important figure in the restoration of the feminine aspect of the hero. She gives us here the broadest selection of female hero stories than has been published before. Her finds come from all corners of the globe; her female heroes are all ages and in all stages of life. These women save villages, ride into battle, figure out riddles and rituals, rescue themselves from ogres, make predictions, call down storms...The stories were always there. Only we were not."

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES! This is a collection of stories about tough, clever, women HEROES. That's right. Finally a collection of real stories that have been passed down through the ages about the awesomeness of women. In a world where we make a movie called Brave all about a tough little girl who wants to make her own choices in life and the next day the movie studio takes that girl and dresses her up in her least favourite outfit...well let's just say this whole collection made me feel a lot better after reading that.

Get a copy, give it to the favourite girl in your life. Read her some of the stories. Read your favourite boy these stories too -- they should know girls can be clever and badass in their own right.

[Haneen Asfoora · Rating 2 out of 5]

While some of these stories were great, I didn't think most of them fit with the "women power" message I thought the book was going for. I got this book so that I could adapt stories from it to tell me daughter, but most of the stories showed women in a negative light because the women were mean, lied, stole, etc. Some women lucked into "saving the day" others were the villains of the story. In one, the women trick their husbands into looking like fools (including making them think their brother had died) just for money. There was about one okay story for every seven or eight bad ones.

[Faith Justice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I collect books on folk and fairy tales and this book filled a large gap in collecting stories with female protagonists from around the world. Ragan did a heroic job haunting dusty libraries and obscure collections looking for folktales that showed women in a positive light. As you might expect, they were few and far between, but Ragan gives us over 100 stories from six continents. Kudos for the effort and applause for the result. Recommended for any parent of girls or boys or folks who like a good yarn. Isn't that everyone?

[Allison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointingly meh. I expect more from my feminist folk tales.

[Danielle The Book Huntress]

We read stories from this volume in my Folk and Fairy Tales class. I love what I've read and I'm 1000% on board with empowering girls by giving them exposure to these collected stories about strong (in a variety of ways) femininity. I plan to go through my class notes and write about the stories I read sometime this summer.

[Jessica Cottrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved a lot of the stories and I wish people would do more research when creating movies or shows based off of fairytales. There are so many to choose from then just the well known ones

[christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty cool, I really liked the author's notes at the beginning of the book and at the end of each story. While this is definitely a great reference book, I would say for every 1 story I liked there were 2-3 more that I was 'meh' about in each section. There were definitely some stories that were just as good, if not better than Sleeping Beauty, Snow White or Cinderella, and it's rather disappointing that they are not more well known. However, there were a lot of stories where the heroine ended up having to marry the man who caused all the misfortunes in the story, or the husband was rewarded for the heroine's good deeds. Needless to say, it was hard to land on a rating for this book. The tales from Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East are probably my favorite sections of the book. Below I outlined my top four stories from each section.

Section 1 - Tales from Europe:
The Pigeon's Bride - Yugoslavia
How The King Chose A Daughter-In-Law - Romania
Marichka - Gypsy
Anait - Caucasus

Section 2 - Tales from North & South America:
Where The Girl Saved Her Brother - Cheyenne
Chief Joseph's Story of Wallowa Lake - New Perce
The Princess and Mountain Dweller - People of the Northwest Coast
I'm Tipingee, She's Tipingee, We're Tipingee, Too - Haiti

Section 3 - Tales from Asia:
A Rani's Revenge - Orissa, India
How Parvatibai Outwitted the Dacoits - Maharashtra, India
The Story of Princess Amaradevi - Cambodia
A Woman's Love - Uigur People, China

Section 4 - Tales from the Pacific:
A Calabash of Poi - Hawaii
Rau-Whato - Maori People, New Zealand
The Magic Coin - Philippines
The Creation of Lake Asbold - Asmat People, Irian Jaya, Indonesia

Section 5 - Tales from Sub-Saharan Africa:
The Midwife of Dakar - Sengal
A Woman for a Hundred Cattle - Swahili
Wacu and the Eagle - Agikuyu People, Kenya
Nonikwe and the Great One, Marimba - Zulu

Section 6 - Tales from North Africa and the Middle East:
The "Pink Pearl" Prince - Iran
Who Is Blessed with the Realm, Riches, and Honor? - Israel
The Sultan's Daughter - Sudan
Yousif Al-Saffani - Sudan

[Rani · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really wonderful collection. Basically, this is a collection of folktales from around that world that features women as protagonists. I loved reading this -- it felt like I was on a journey right along with all these heroines. And while I can't say that I liked every single story in the book (there were a lot of them), I think it's fair to say that I really liked most of them. The stories feature a range of protagonists -- some are warriors, some are mothers and wives, some are simply clever women who have a unique way of looking at a solution. And I love that it shows that there are so many ways to be powerful. Reading it really was a fantastic experience and I commend Kathleen Ragan for putting it together.

My main problem with this book, however, was the italicized editor's notes at the end of each story. The stories are strong enough to stand on their own and really don't need any commentary. But if there was going to be commentary, I wish it had contained historical and cultural fact rather than the musings of one person. Furthermore, I actually think that emphasis on how women can totally be strong in the editor's notes undermine the point of the anthology. We don't tell young boys stories of male warriors and clever men and say "look he was strong and clever AND he was a boy!" If we tell girls stories of female warriors and clever women, but have to point out that women can be strong and clever every time we talk about clever women, then we do start to send the message that maybe there really is something unusual about clever, strong women. And that's not a message that we want to send. I did enjoy the forward to this collection, where Ragan talked about her struggle to find female protagonists for her daughters. But I thought that most of the stories could have done without the commentary.

Still, (despite my rambling paragraph), I really did love this collection.

[Doria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took several months to leisurely read this book, which continues a fascinating and diverse assemblage of tales, drawn from every continent of the world except for Antarctica. The theme of the collection is that of strong female protagonists, and it was well worth the time it took to read this extensive collection. Ragan clearly put a great deal of effort into organizing and researching the stories, and even took the time to add her own personal "reaction" at the end of each tale, in italics, perhaps in an effort to situate the stories in a broader context of shared female experience. In all honesty, I could have done without most of these, as they served mainly to distract me from individual merits and interest of the stories themselves, constantly reminding the reader of the editor's presence and significance. The collection of stories itself stands as tribute to the hard work and dedication of the person who took such pains to share them with the general public. Enough said.

[Juli Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly wonderful collection of folk and fairy tales. The variations in theme, structure, and flavor, as well as a fairly international sourcing, have created a well rounded and collection. I sometimes very much enjoyed the editorial notes at the end of each story, and sometimes found them a bit cloying (or somewhat less compatible with my own feminism), but I think they definitely make this collection a bit more accessible to multiple audiences. There are many women in my life who will be receiving a copy of this book in the next year.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collections of tales from around the world highlighting heroines.

Females are so often taken out of folk tales, or they are merely saved by some man. Here are classic tales from cultures the world that show this isn't the case. These women do the rescuing and have the brains.

I've used this book for bedtime stories at Girl Scout camp, and the girls always enjoy them. It's about time they start hearing old tales of how awesome their gender is.

[Madison LibraryBookFamily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is best read in small doses. While it covers a wide range of stories from various parts of the world, it doesn't cover all areas. Better maps and descriptions of how the stories were assembled would have been helpful by each story instead of at the end. I enjoyed the introduction but feel like literature has come a ways since this book was written. As a mom, I'd love to share some of these strong female stories with my kids.

[Tish · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all those sick of the helpless princess featured in so many tales, who must always be rescued by the daring prince, here is a collection of folk tales from around the world featuring women as they really are. Refreshing. A must read for any little girls beginning to show signs of Disney disease.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The folktales themselves are great and it is a fun collection to read and re-read. However, the commentary after each tale I found to either be helpful or unrelated or just silly. Maybe if I ever have children I will be able to relate more to he quips about the women in her stories and her children. Read this book for the collection of tales.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Serena turned me on to this one. Fairy tales from the female perspective with female protagonists. The author gives statistics on how many females are actually represented in available literature (precious few!) Although i did not enjoy all the tales equally, there are enough great ones to make this collection a worthwhile read. The last story is my favorite!

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough book to rate. The stories themselves were generally more a 4.5, although there were certainly more than a few that were definitely indigenous stories filtered through a very western rewriting.
The commentary after each story by Kathleen Ragan, however, was awful. It didn't add anything to the stories, it was just sort of stream of consciousness and pretty tone deaf at times.

[Regan Berkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved these stories - kind of like Grimm's for girls! I recommend reading a handful at a time, as sitting and reading them cover to cover did get a little tedious for me - however, when I set it down for a while then picked it up again some time later, I was delighted all over again.

[Bleachedblackcat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have been better without being told what to enjoy about the story and how the stories are better then "violent" ones. I did love that there is a nice collection like this and just read those and skip the introductions to them.

[CJ - It's only a Paper Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome collection of stories!

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic fairy tales and essays/thoughts at the end of each. Centers around heroines.

[Jaina Bee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love love love collections of folk tales, and this is one of the best. A very wide variety of cultures and styles, with interesting annotations.

[Cristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, glittering, inspiring... perfect. A book that I'll always keep close.

[Kavita · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as rich or easy to read as traditional fairytales. The only reason it gets 2 stars instead of 1 is that it is one of the few books that attempts to highlight female heroines in folklore