It’s a fun twist on the traditional scene, and it sets the tone for an adorable retelling, engaging and character-rich.Ĭrucially, this isn’t a rescue arc, where the famous actor with all the money swoops in to save the heroine from her worries. Weatherspoon’s heroine, Amanda McQueen, holds on to her shoes, but unwittingly makes off with her one night stand’s brand-new Oscar statuette. Most Cinderellas famously leave a slipper behind. And now in Rebekah Weatherspoon’s IF THE BOOT FITS (Dafina, 288 pp., $8.99), where much of the plot is internal, a personal assistant to Hollywood royalty comes to realize that her own dreams and ambitions are worth putting first in her life. Beverly Jenkins’s lyrical “Indigo” celebrates a heroine whose hands are permanently stained from slavery Alyssa Cole’s “ A Princess in Theory” is about a graduate student in epidemiology whose work is often credited to her white, male lab partner and whose true heritage as long-lost royalty helps her eradicate a plague in her prince’s kingdom. It’s also why retellings by Black authors have particular resonance in a culture that so often devalues Black labor, love and lives. This is the subversive streak of the fairy tale that can never quite be suppressed, the thorn that lurks in the heirloom roses.

Seen through this lens, a heroine’s happy ending isn’t about beauty or luxury or even innate goodness, it’s about having her efforts recognized and recompensed. Because labor is as much a part of the fairy tale as romance is: Cinderella shouldn’t have to work so hard for nothing. One with advancement potential built right in. “Cinderella” retellings start to look a lot less escapist once you realize that “princess” is just a metaphor for a better, more rewarding kind of job.

If the boot fits rebekah weatherspoon