Review: Ask Baba Yaga: The Audiobook Collection
Ask Baba Yaga: The Audiobook Collection by Taisia Kitaiskaia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A few years back, on Fairy Tales News Once Upon a blog, I read about the Ask Baba Yaga columns which formed the basis of this book and were one of the inspirations for Jane Yolen's forthcoming Finding Baba Yaga. Having been obsessed with Russian folktales since childhood you might say I've always been a little obsessed with Baba Yaga (no, not John Wick, do not go there). I've always disagreed with the idea of Baba Yaga as a one-dimensional evil figure because she was certainly transformative in some stories as you can see in Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. At the interface of Russian folklore and Zen Buddhism, in Ask Baba Yaga we see her as a figure dispensing deep, if occasionally abstruse, advice.
Who is Baba Yaga? In her own words, "I am the unknown soul, the chaos in the mud. The snake roiling in butter, the nightmare in the bark, the owl sleeping on the nightmare.; In each egg, I am the cracking, and the bird, the delirious chicken scratching yr wound. You reach your hand into my dress, come up with diamonds, then worms. Ha! I am your fear turned inside out like a sleeve..."
Asked "How do I keep from dwelling on the love I haven't had?" Baba Yaga's answer is:
"The life of every being has some vast emptiness in it. Unspeakable, grievous, there is a field in the middle of my wood where no one goes. It is the heart of my loneliness. I go there to dance and be quiet & I love the intensity of its silence. If I were human I would wish to take another there. You must know every contour of your emptiness before you can know whom you wish to invite in."
or
"Why does this one physical feature make me grotesque?" to which she answers:
"All mirrors tell the wrong story." Your cloak-hem has already brushed the ink-pool that mars all of us; the marring of being not as we thought we were... You have made a loveliness of your body through the moving of it & the mirror is a false confidant. Evermore, to be as I am is an honor & a magic."
I recently listened to the audiobook collection, which includes Baba Yaga's Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times: From Ask Baba Yaga, as well as the first book, Ask Baba Yaga. The collection is colorfully narrated by Zura Johnson, and it made me realize yet again how interesting (weird and wonderful) Kitaiskaia's writing as Baba Yaga is. Johnson's voicing of Baba Yaga (properly pronounced Baba Yagá, by the way) is wonderful and grew on me as I listened.
I received the digital audiobook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Want the digital audiobook of Ask Baba Yaga: The Audiobook Collection to benefit your local independent bookstore? Click HERE.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A few years back, on Fairy Tales News Once Upon a blog, I read about the Ask Baba Yaga columns which formed the basis of this book and were one of the inspirations for Jane Yolen's forthcoming Finding Baba Yaga. Having been obsessed with Russian folktales since childhood you might say I've always been a little obsessed with Baba Yaga (no, not John Wick, do not go there). I've always disagreed with the idea of Baba Yaga as a one-dimensional evil figure because she was certainly transformative in some stories as you can see in Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. At the interface of Russian folklore and Zen Buddhism, in Ask Baba Yaga we see her as a figure dispensing deep, if occasionally abstruse, advice.
Who is Baba Yaga? In her own words, "I am the unknown soul, the chaos in the mud. The snake roiling in butter, the nightmare in the bark, the owl sleeping on the nightmare.; In each egg, I am the cracking, and the bird, the delirious chicken scratching yr wound. You reach your hand into my dress, come up with diamonds, then worms. Ha! I am your fear turned inside out like a sleeve..."
Asked "How do I keep from dwelling on the love I haven't had?" Baba Yaga's answer is:
"The life of every being has some vast emptiness in it. Unspeakable, grievous, there is a field in the middle of my wood where no one goes. It is the heart of my loneliness. I go there to dance and be quiet & I love the intensity of its silence. If I were human I would wish to take another there. You must know every contour of your emptiness before you can know whom you wish to invite in."
or
"Why does this one physical feature make me grotesque?" to which she answers:
"All mirrors tell the wrong story." Your cloak-hem has already brushed the ink-pool that mars all of us; the marring of being not as we thought we were... You have made a loveliness of your body through the moving of it & the mirror is a false confidant. Evermore, to be as I am is an honor & a magic."
I recently listened to the audiobook collection, which includes Baba Yaga's Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times: From Ask Baba Yaga, as well as the first book, Ask Baba Yaga. The collection is colorfully narrated by Zura Johnson, and it made me realize yet again how interesting (weird and wonderful) Kitaiskaia's writing as Baba Yaga is. Johnson's voicing of Baba Yaga (properly pronounced Baba Yagá, by the way) is wonderful and grew on me as I listened.
I received the digital audiobook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Want the digital audiobook of Ask Baba Yaga: The Audiobook Collection to benefit your local independent bookstore? Click HERE.
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