Cinderella Liberator (Fairy Tale Revolution) - Hardcover

Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books including Men Explain Things to Me, Call Them by Their True Names, Hope in the Dark, and The Mother of All Questions.

Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) was a prominent British illustrator of many classic children’s books from The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm to Sleeping Beauty. His watercolor silhouettes were featured in the original edition of Cinderella.

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and disaster, including the books Men Explain Things to Me, Call Them By Their True Names, Hope in the Dark, and The Mother of All Questions all with Haymarket Books; a trilogy of atlases of American cities; The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; and River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West. She has received numerous awards and accolades, including a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. She was a finalist in 2017 for the PEN America Art of the Essay award for The Mother of All Questions that was also listed as one of The San Francisco Chronicle’s best books of the year. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a columnist at Harper's and a regular contributor to The Guardian.

“[Solnit] recast[s] this familiar story into a tale that is fundamentally about freedom. The decision to use Arthur Rackham’s original cut-paper silhouette illustrations was a brilliant choice. This is, hands down, a wonderful book — one that even the jaded reader will clasp upon completion with a contented sigh.” —New York Times 

"Solnit retells the classic story in a way that liberates each character from the constrictions imposed upon him or her by someone else’s story and confers upon each the dignity of a complete human being with agency and autonomous dreams. Emerging from these simply worded, profound, richly rewarding pages is Solnit the literary artist, Solnit the revolutionary, Solnit the enchanter, Solnit the subtle and endlessly delightful satirist, Solnit the sage.” —Brainpickings

"This is a reminder of hope and possibility, of kindness and compassion, and—perhaps most salient—imagination and liberty. Through the imaginations of our childhoods, can we find our true selves liberated in adulthood?” —Chelsea Handler
"Solnit is, in many ways, our fairy godmother. With the tap of her pen and fervor of her imagination, she has transformed a beloved but morally outdated classic into a powerful narrative of female agency with a moral compass we can all believe in." —Brit Marling

"Cinderella Liberator is a stunning example of how talking lizards, cakes, misguided stepsisters, and even a prince Nevermind can reframe some of our most iconic traditional narratives, and is a beautifully refreshing wind of change in the arid desert of modern-minded children’s stories.” —Amber Heard

"Cinderella Liberator is something I desperately wish I had read when I was a child. While so many narratives impose unhealthy expectations on children or celebrate brute strength over an open heart, Solnit, tells a new story, giving a whole new sense of agency to Cinderella. Like all of her stunning work, she celebrates the authentic self and the willingness to embrace one another, to strive for compassion, and to harness the magic of life. This is a powerful book, not only for children, but also a beautiful reminder for us all that honesty, kindness, and empathy are what will lead us to discover and connect to our true selves, not a fancy crown, not a ‘perfect’ person, and not a 'happily ever after.’”—Ellen Page

"Sometimes real magic comes from the inside out. Cinderella Liberator stages a break-out from within the walls of old myths and stories that have kept us quiet, pretty, and well behaved, in love with gowns, shoes, and tiaras. In this phenomenal retelling, female strength erupts like quicksilver. What would the world look like if girls grew up reading fairytales made from the magic they carry inside themselves? Breathtakingly beautiful, is what.”—Lidia Yuknavich, author, The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children

"An exquisite little jewel of a book, wise, witty, scathing, and humane.” —Molly Crabapple

"Being a princess is absolutely fine if that’s what you choose. It’s having those choices taken away from you that make for big problems. Cinderella in Solnit’s book is given that choice. She’s allowed to say what her dreams are, and then she goes out and attains them. And they’re not huge ridiculous dreams but small, happy, manageable ones. Ultimately, that’s the gift Ms. Solnit is giving kids with this book.” —School Library Journal

“Rebecca Solnit is essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic

“Rebecca Solnit is the voice of the resistance.”—New York Times Magazine

“Rebecca Solnit is a treasure.”—Marketplace