Working for Your Own Happy Ending: ‘Cinderella is Dead’

I remember hearing about Cinderella is Dead through the grapevine through YA Twitter and had my interest piqued. I love fairy tales and folklore and love to see new spins of them. Reading further told me that this book centered a Black girl named Sophia as the protagonist in a book with an elevator pitch of “Girls team up to overthrow the kingdom in this unique and powerful retelling of Cinderella” didn’t hurt either. What followed was a well-paced tale of a queer Black girl who stepped out of place, out of line to ultimately bring down patriarchy that ruled her home and the girls and women of it. “I don’t want to be saved by some knight in shining armor…I’d like to be the one doing the saving.” The book wastes no time establishing the land and the awful kingdom that treats the womenfolk basically as second-hand citizens. Sophia longs for a time where social obligations for women set by the men in power means it won’t harm them, dismiss them, and leave them as powerless. It’s been 200 years since Cinderella’s death. We learn that Cinderella’s life, marriage to Prince Charming, and death at a young age of 38 reveals that she married a cruel man who helped create the current climate that bears its tyrannical way of life over the people that treat women as mere pawns, not whole persons. But Sophia wants a life outside of what’s laid out for her. Our protagonist is in love with her best friend Erin and is expected to be someone she isn’t: a doll, prettied up and on display a…