Welcome all: get ready to be inspired by some original girl power! This collection of stories highlights the women who had such incredible lives and legacies that their stories were shared - which was not common in their eras!
I will keep the stories very true to the original by following the same plot and themes, but you will get to see some of my interpretations through modernized examples of the stories we read. This collection will emphasize women of the Bible and women saints, but I plan to include a few women from Greek mythology as we move forward in this class, such as Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war (you can find more information about her here). Athena is an obvious choice in the Women of Strength collection - I mean, goddess of all things wisdom and/or war?? I am also excited to see how strength will be displayed in different ways - such as choosing to turn from sinful choices and live a humble life, even while falsely accused, hidden as a man, such as Saint Theodora (more information about her can be found here). Additionally, as many of those stories of women were shared around the same time, it will be fun to see similarities even across cultures and countries between them. It will be interesting to compare and contrast how women were portrayed, what was believed about them, and the large roles, big decisions, or extreme actions that they took.
This storybook will be more of an anthology of separate stories, but the common theme of focusing on the lives and stories of women throughout history will connect the storybook.
For more concrete hints at what is to come, in this storybook you will find stores of women from the Bible that may be more recognized, like Esther, or less recognizable, like Potiphar's wife, who was not even named with her own name. There are also women saints, such as Saint Martha, who overlap with the Bible, and others like Saint Eugenia who may not appear in the Bible but were common in orthodox Christian or Catholic stories. Although I have not reached the stories of the Greek goddesses and mythology, I know that women like Priscilla come from the Greco-Roman world and would be fun to compare with the other stories of women.
***sneak peak***: the first story is a Fiona-from-Shrek, fairytale mash-up using an amazing woman saint, Saint Christine.
This is an image of Esther from the Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook. I chose it because she is a very iconic woman of the Bible. I got it from the Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook Women of the Bible page, found here.
As I approach these stories I will try to highlight the decisions that these women made and the influences that they had in their world. I also want to make sure to retell the stories in manners that demonstrate any struggles and challenges that they went against, including how their stories were told for them. Normally I try to make the stories very similar to the original so that it is clear how they were translated into the storybook, but I also try to make it more relatable or to put in a modern touch that gives credit to their situation and shows the story in a way that we can hopefully understand more from our perspectives.