The Monkey Girl is an essay that first appeared in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall; Women Writers Discuss Their Favorite Fairy Tales (2002), edited by Kate Bernheimer and later republished in the Journal of Mythic Arts. Kate asked women writers to reflect on their favorite fairy tale and I instantly thought of The Monkey Girl, a wonderful tale from the Sudan. As a young graduate student in African Language and Literature, I found the monkey girl to be one of the most memorable of heroines, and she seemed to have entered my life at exactly the right time. To this day, I still feel I owe her a debt of gratitude.
*Art The Arabian Nights, illustrated by Edmund Dulac
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
