Photo: Harper Collins Publishers
Soman Chainanifollows up his bestselling young adult seriesThe School for Good and Evilwith a modern update on the works of the Brothers Grimm.
TheBeasts and Beauty: Dangerous Talesauthor, 42, tells PEOPLE about what inspired the collection of classic fairytales, which navigates some of today’s most relevant themes like racial trauma, sexual assault, and immigration.
He explains that some of the most common versions of fairytales lead readers to “believe in this very black-and-white version of good or evil. Either you’re the good guy or the bad guy, and you’re one or the other. And there’s no nuance. And I think it affects our politics. I think it affects the way we treat each other. I think it just doesn’t leave that understanding that we are everything, and there’s a balance and there’s an exchange.”
Chainani previously debuted in 2013 with the first in his six-book seriesThe School for Good and Evil, all of which have made theNew York TimesBestseller List. He prides himself on building a magical fictional world that exists with “no labels.”
As a gay man, an Indian-American, and a self-proclaimed lover of fairytales, he decided to use his next book to explore that familiar genre. The finished product includes 11 fables for women, BIPOC, LGBTQ folk, immigrants, and those who didn’t feel “represented” in the original tales.
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InBeasts and Beauty, he deconstructs such stories asSleeping Beauty,Hansel and Gretel,andLittle Red Riding Hood"as if they were set in those times, but had an eye to the future."
“I think it was just about going back to the original Grimm stories and seeing why they were written in the first place. Not looking at the Disney stories, but the actual original tales,” Chainani explains. “What were these survival guides to life we were teaching?”
In his version ofSnow White, Chainani also mines his personal experience as an Indian-American, who was one of the few kids of color at his Florida grade school. His adaptation is about the only Black girl in her kingdom “being such an outsider and having to find your own self-worth.”
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“You really feel like an alien. You have nothing to fit into. You just feel like you don’t belong, and it’s very difficult to accept yourself. And I think fairytales is where I kept going back to because something about them is comforting,” Chainani explains. “But I think there always was this longing to, as an outsider, find the rules of the world I lived in. And as I got older, I started to realize, well, I need to rewrite those roles.”
Soman Chainani’s new bookBeasts and Beauty: Dangerous Talesis now available through HarperCollins Publishing.
source: people.com
