Rattling Perrault’s Dry Bones: Nalo Hopkinson’s Literary Voodoo in Skin Folk

Abstract

Nalo Hopkinson’s collection of short fiction, Skin Folk (2001) includes imaginative and innovative variations on classic fairy tales, including ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘The Fairies’ and ‘Bluebeard’. My contention is that as she rewrites these stories from a postcolonial perspective, Hopkinson inflects them to explore body politics as she combines issues of gendered and racial identity, encapsulated in the central metaphor of ‘skin’. Further, by submitting the European tale of magic to a process of cultural translation, Hopkinson practices a form of literary voodoo that gives it new life and bite by challenging the norms and values encoded in the traditional, and naturalised, versions. While her de-centering of Perrault’s literary tales (among others) enacts the struggle with the fairy tale canon represented by the French writer, she also invokes him as a ‘Papa Legba’ figure who opens up new possibilities and facilitates a dialogue between Europe and the West Indies, the dead and the living, past and present.