Happily by Sabrina Orah Mark
Posted by d'Ettaquette
A former Yeshiva girl from Brooklyn “raising two Black Jewish boys” as well as a stepdaughter from her husband’s second marriage, author, Sabrina Orah Mark, now 42, connects her “personal history with fairy tales. ” In her new book, Happily a compendium of 26 brief essays Mark focuses on motherhood, marriage and protecting her two sons from harm in a county “not fully awake” to peril, prejudice and uncertainty. That surrounds her family.
Though Evil is defeated in fairyland, Mark posits it’s not always so in real life. In a society awash with jeopardy, she wishes she could provide her sons greater security without inculcating them with horrors. When son Noah begins to carve “superheroes” from wood Mark associates his hobby with the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue. She doesn’t tell her sons about the horrific event. Accused of keeping her sons in a “bubble ”she admits she wishes she could provide her children with a “golem” created in 16th century Prague who purportedly guarded the Jews against antisemitic crimes. She affirms she doesn’t know how she can assure her sons’ safety. Should they be wearing a “humsah” a protective amulet? She doesn’t want her boys to get into trouble as does Pinocchio the “wooden boy carved from a tree.” Yet she can’t keep them in a cocoon about the life’s risks.
In another essay, Mark draws on Little Red Riding Hood “the cautionary tale” about a girl who “strays from the path”. In the fairy tale, “mothers disappear and grandmothers are gobbled up”. Fairy tales, Mark points out, present a world as unsafe as the menacing woods into which Little Red enters to visit her grandmother. Mark shares her own grief with the death of her grandmother and losing her sister to lymphoma. Grieving, she wonders, was it a spiteful fairy who caused her sister to die? Mark sees death “not as a spell to be broken” as in the fictitious Sleeping Beauty. Nor does she give her sons “fairy tales as an explanation for the mystery of death, “but shares its permanence with the death of another Princess,--- Dianna.
Mark turns to the stereotypical tropes of wicked stepmothers and poison apples to contrast her close relationship with her beloved stepdaughter Eve. Humorously aligning herself with the “tooth fairy” Mark parallels her willingness to sacrifice everything for her family. She reflects on the plight of innocent women who pay a heavy price for disobedience or transgressive behavior as does The Little Mermaid who sacrifices her beautiful singing voice in order to live among humans.
Provocative and entertaining author, Mark skillfully employs timeless tales, and captivating characters to raise awareness about “the unreal to get to something even realer.”