The Hunter Maiden. Ethel Johnston Phelps

      

      Published in 2017 by the Feminist Press

      at the City University of New York

      The Graduate Center

      365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

      New York, NY 10016

       feministpress.org

      First Feminist Press edition 2017

      Introduction copyright © 2017 by Renée Watson

      Copyright © 1981 by Ethel Johnston Phelps

      Cover and interior illustrations copyright © 2017 by Suki Boynton

      All rights reserved.

      This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      First printing October 2017

      Cover and text design by Suki Boynton

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

      ISBN: 978-1-9369-3205-4

      To Carol Levin

      and Ranice Crosby

      for more reasons than

      I could ever list

      CONTENTS

       TITLE PAGE

       COPYRIGHT

       DEDICATION

Introduction by Renée Watson

Preface by Ethel Johnston Phelps

Mulha

The Hunter Maiden

       Elsa and the Evil Wizard

       Maria Morevna

       Duffy and the Devil

       Lanval and the Lady Triamor

       Bending Willow

       Finn Magic

       The Old Woman and the Rice Cakes

       The Husband Who Stayed at Home

       Scheherazade Retold

       Suggested Reading

       Acknowledgments

       Series Teaser

       ABOUT THE EDITOR and ILLUSTRATOR

       ALSO BY FEMINIST PRESS

       ABOUT FEMINIST PRESS

       INTRODUCTION

       RENÉE WATSON

       We cannot create what we can’t imagine.

      —LUCILLE CLIFTON

      Let’s imagine a world where women are seen as whole beings and not as body parts, quests to be conquered, or damsels to be rescued. Let’s imagine a world where women save their own days, save the world, even.

      Let’s imagine women as hunters.

      I have always been drawn to female characters who chase, pursue, explore, interrogate, rescue. Kill, even. Every good story has a character who desperately wants something. But too often the desires of female characters revolve around clichés—gaining the affection of a man or wanting to be popular at almost any cost.

      But not here. This is a collection of tales that have imagined worlds where women are on the hunt, where women are in search of their own independence, of finding what will truly quench their physical, spiritual, and emotional hunger. These are women who will sacrifice and risk all for who and what they love, what they need, what they want. They are wise and they are strong. They are like the women I know in my real life who are often criticized, undervalued, silenced, or invisible.

      Here, in these pages, a space has been created for their stories to be told. I believe we so desperately need these kinds of spaces—books, classrooms, writing workshops, community centers, homes—where women from all backgrounds can be seen and heard. These imaginary and actual spaces influence each other. If reality is flawed with sexist stereotypes and expectations, I should be able to read a story, a poem, and see what the world could be when characters prove to be more than those assumptions. When literature fails to show the myriad of experiences of what it means to act like a girl, I should be able to look in my world and find many examples of girls and women living life on their own terms. What we experience, what we imagine, and what we create are always in conversation with each other.

      This collection is a space where that conversation lives. Some of these women I feel like I’ve met before. Some of them have traits I recognize in myself. Others feel so outside of what I am used to, what I know. They all have a place here, and because they do, they can influence and impact what is created and imagined about women.

      Here, Mulha, a fourteen-year-old South African girl, comes face-to-face with a monster and does not “waste time crying.” She does not crumble under adversity but instead finds light even in the darkest of circumstances. The thing that should destroy her becomes a means of provision. Mulha’s story reminds me of the women who raised me, who made a way out of no way, who found joy when all there seemed to be around them was pain and sorrow. There is a space for them here. Mulha’s story validates the years of waiting on an answer to a prayer,