Woke Cinderella: Twenty-First-Century Adaptations

Glass slippers, a fairy godmother, a ball, a prince, an evil stepfamily, and a poor girl known for sitting amongst the ashes: incarnations of the Cinderella fairy tale have resonated throughout the ages. Hidden between the lines of this fairy tale exists a history of fantasy about agency, power, and empowerment. This book examines twenty-first-century Cinderella adaptations that envision the classic tale in the twenty-first century through the lens of wokenesss by shifting rhetorical implications and self-reflexively granting different possibilities for protagonists. The contributors argue that the Cinderella archetype expands past traditional takes on the passive princess. From Sex and the City to Game of Thrones, from cyborg Cinderellas to Inglorious Basterds, contributors explore gender-bending and feminist adaptations, explorations of race and the body, and post-human and post-truth rewritings. The collection posits that contemporary Cinderella adaptations create a substantive cultural product that both inform and reflect a contemporary social zeitgeist.